ISLANDS OF SANCTUARY WITH CORRIDORS OF CONNECTIVITY

 

The apricot tree is absolutely amazing at the moment, with perfect white flowers. When you stand underneath of it the humming song from the wild bees, the honey bees and the bumblebees creates its own type of Haiku poetry. With the warm sun and fragrance in the air, we can finally stop the worrying about chilled brood and not enough nectar for the bees and all of those other concerns with a late Spring. Life cannot get better than this. Finally those Van Gogh-sunbursts of blazing yellow dandelions are everywhere and the bees are absolutely silly with happiness, flying back and forth as if the months of waiting in the hive has made its own pendulum-like push of energy for them. This is our favourite time at the honey bee Sanctuary – the long fresh green grass has white areas of
wild strawberries and every tree has chosen a shade of green to dress itself in.

Here at Bello Uccello Honey Bee Sanctuary we like to think that we have created an Island of Sanctuary for and with the Bees, with corridors of goodwill and connectivity  to other natural keepers of bees who are creating their own  Islands of Sanctuary for the honey bee. These corridors of connectivity from Bello Uccello’s Honey Bee Sanctuary   include all of the people of goodwill who we communicate with in  one way or another and they share their various ways of helping the honey bee through  planting  heritage seeds,  not putting  chemicals on their properties , buying  only honey from non-honey-factory hives and doing many  other wonderful acts of respect and kindness to nature and the bees so we all can thrive on this planet.

Each of us, in our own way, are creating small Islands of Sanctuary and it is now the time to make sure your good work within your Island of Sanctuary for the things and beings you love, have corridors of connectivity to others. This is how we transform this planet, because eventually all of those Islands of Sanctuary will have so many corridors of connectivity to other Islands of Sanctuary that the entire earth will represent something new – something respectful and joyful and  inclusive of all of the web of  life and beings on this planet .  .

The Chemical Warfare of Toxicity and Poison Era is in its last throws and the Human Being and this Beautiful Earth with its web of life Shall prevail. As we watch corporations now openly destroy living forests to grow GE trees for biofuel, try to patent” life- resiliency” as a commodity and basically try to compromise our food and water  supply in every way possible; we know their days are numbered and the tides have turned. People everywhere are refusing to give their life forces to be implicated in that web of death and are busy at a very personal and local level manifesting their dreams and in so doing they are creating small Islands of Sanctuary. .

There is a” hidden Truth within the nature of great transformation; a new path of harmony always emerges out of the chaos of the present moment”(Caroline Myss) So it is interesting that yesterday we gathered with 22 very warm  and creative people who each have made  their own version of life-enhancing  sanctuaries for their  Life on this planet. The gathering was called “Bee Harmony” and there was sharing about the honey bee and biodynamic farming and how each person was manifesting their dream and creating their own small Islands of Sanctuary for their families, and their communities.  It really was an experience and exploration together and we left having met new friends and feeling a new connectivity with the dreams and manifestations of other people who now have a corridor of goodwill to each other’s Islands of Sanctuary. For us here at Bello Uccello Honey Bee Sanctuary we no longer look “out there”  to change the world, but rather we are trying to Bee the Changes we wish to see in the world…………just like so many of you are doing also.

MORE INFORMATION ON LEY LINES AND THE HONEY BEE
For you readers who wish to learn more about ley lines (geomagnetic fields on the earth) in connection with the honey bees, you will find the book “Geomagnetic Honey Bees” by John Harding very interesting. John is very clear about his long experience with honey bees and the geomagnetic lines of the earth. It is about a vibrant hive and also a very plausible solution to the varroa mite problem. We highly recommend this book for new and experienced keepers of bees alike.

 

 

HOW TO LOCATE A HIVE SO IT WILL THRIVE

Slowly the snow has been replaced by snowdrops in the garden and they too seem to be just a fancy and they already have made way for the sun-yellowness of the daffodils. Forsythia is in full bloom here and dandelions appear as  spotted dinner plates for the bees on the unmowed grass. Maple trees are flowering their very understated flowers
which feeds the bees big time in the Spring. Because frosts are still a possibility, we have been very reluctant to unseal the hives. In fact, the hives which we have opened and inspected, still have a small 4 watt xmas bulb keeping the brood warm. This past winter was really a challenge for bees and people here in Southwest Nova Scotia.

Last week we began inspecting  some of the hives and it was so delightful to find the Queen busy laying eggs and capped brood. In “Bee World” this means that the Queen has survived   winter once again  and will reign for another year  and that  the hives are in the process of building up their family size by the thousands. This is really a celebration time for us —— to greet the  same Queens who are now three years old and see they are still doing well is wonderful.. Happiness is hearing  the hum of the bees inside of the hive and seeing  them flying back from a mission for protein gathering,  with both pollen sacks
fully stuffed with greenish yellow pollen.

Bello Uccello’s honey bees have survived another challenging winter , with some hives being more resilient than others.
Why is that? Why are some hives so strong at the end of the winter and others rather small? We also observed the strangest things – like the top bar hive bees all moved to the South end of their hive and then moved back to the other side. And then we found another hive where all the bees were located at the South end. If the reason was the sun’s location , then both hives would have had the bees locate towards the South. The 150 pounds of
honey and pollen left in the hives for winter was pretty well gone when we opened up the hives and so it was not a “food location” decision by the bees to locate where they did. Then there were hives where everything was organized as  it would be in full honey -season. This mystery sat with us until our new book,’ Moon Time ‘by Joanne Paungger arrived in the post. I have the wonderful habit, despite what everyone else says, of opening a new book  to a random page and then to  start reading that page in full search of significant clues to the “meaning of life”:-} With this book’s random page my treasure hunting paid off because  I found a plausible explanation as to why
the bees were arranged in their hives as they were.

Apparently the Bees and their Hive wish to be located on the intersection of ley lines of the earth and  they wish to do this because they thrive on such locations.
In Europe, when you are about to build a house, you hire a dowser to come and find the ley lines on your property so your home can avoid them .Feng Shui is another practice from China where these energy lines are seriously considered in creating health and harmony in gardens,homes and businesses. Unlike Human Beings, the bees love the intersection-points of ley lines! The Universe is a mystery and so is everyday life. Although our ancestors seemed to know these very helpful things about nature and living things and water;  for the most of us, we have forgotten about  rhythms and cycles., We have somehow been educated right out of the truth of our natural life and it is hard  to find such simple knowledge about ourselves and our relationship to the web of life on this beautiful planet. We can thank people like Joanne Paungger of Austria, whose grandfather passed along to her his deep wisdom on such matters and which she has put into a number of books that have significantly influenced the growth of the organic movement in Austria and Germany over the past years.
Although we have found wells with dowsing rods and located our house to avoid ley lines which could make our home unhealthy for living, we still had to wonder about this information regarding  bees locating their nests on the ley lines. Soooooo, probably just like you, we too had to test this claim out and see if it is indeed true. Years ago we purchased some dowsing rods to find water when we were building our new home and so we brought them along and off to the Sanctuary we went with the usual bit of excitement and skepticism which protects our credibility. The first hive we tested was exactly centered on an intersection of the ley lines. it also happened to be the most robust hive in the Sanctuary. Every hive in the Honey Bee Sanctuary was either on an intersection or on one of the ley lines. The bees and Klaus had definitely worked out the locations for the hives quite well. The ones on just one ley line were not as strong a hive as those sitting on the intersection of ley lines. In the top bar hive the bees were all crowded over to the ley line crossing which just passed through the hive on one side only. Obviously they went over to the South side for the food and then went back to the other side where the energy line was located. This proved to be true with two other hives in the Sanctuary. At the out apiary the bees proved this ancient wisdom to be true also. Needless-to-say we have inched the hives which were on one line only on to  ley line intersections and we will note with interest in the coming season the results of every hive being placed the same in relationship to the earth’s energies ..

LESSONS FROM THE BEES: LOCATION OF THE HIVE
Place your hive on the intersection of the ley lines for strong and happy honey bees. And for a happy and healthy life for yourself
place your bed in a place which totally IS NOT on any of the ley lines. This is especially true for a baby’s crib.

“MoonTime”  author is the granddaughter of an Austrian farmer who passed on to her all of his old knowledge about living symbiotically with all life and being cognitive of those relationships. We love the book and everyday we discover other really helpful and forgotten wisdom of our forefathers.  Biodynamic farming is another example of the ancient wisdom of Human Beings being almost lost, until Rudolf Steiner renewed that body of knowledge which has now brought us the highest standard of agriculture in the world.  This is not a belief system, it is a written record of our heritage and the deep connectedness we Human Beings have with the Earth and the Cosmos.

BACKYARD BEEKEEPERS BEWARE OF NEW “honey on tap”

In a dusty corner over Klaus’s assembly table in his workshop is a faded cartoon given to him by my late father, several years ago when we first started this adventure with the Honey Bees. It shows a disheveled- looking Langstroth hive with a comical , not to bright looking fellow, dressed in a bee suit ,standing beside the front of the hive with a Ketchup bottle stuck under the entrance hole with a tap installed , waiting to fill his bottle with ketchup. The caption under this drawing is “Ketchup Bees”. The absurdity of this cartoon never ceased to get a smile out of us every time we happened to glance at it.

 

The Industrial- Revolutionary- worldview ,which has reached its zenith in turning Human Beings and everything else on this Planet into perceived Objects just waiting to be exploited with mechanical cleverness,still persists, albeit in its dying throws at the moment. People are waking up everywhere and we are all re-educating ourselves to become free thinking and feeling Human Beings that have the Freedom to have critical thinking and to live goodwill towards all Life on this planet. The 99% are unwilling to be dehumanized into assembly-line- enslavement- systems or be the manipulated into ” brainwashed- consumers” that give their creative life force away to buy a material trinket that is no more eternal nature than a sneeze. Times are changing and so is the language and images being used to fool all of this goodwill which is present at this time. Green- washing is just one of the ways in which  people’s goodwill is being usurped into agendas that are still about exploitation .

The growth in the number of people concerned about the Honey Bee is amazing. It is happening all over the world. We all can be Keepers of Bees by being seed savers, planting indigenous flowering plants or  by becoming one of the  increasing number of people learning to be  hobby or backyard beekeeper.  These people  are sincere in wanting to help the honey bee and make a difference. This growth in numbers has also made the backyard beekeeper a target for the next marketing ploy, as they present an Opportunity. Lots of concerned people of goodwill, who perhaps, do not know all of the facts, is a ripe target for this predatorship  to manifest.

The first example we have is the FLOW HIVE  TM. Everyone has seen the ads, seen the tap and the happy child waiting for their honey jar to be filled with honey. No more disturbing of the bees, just crank and pull and take away your honey. A pure mechanistic approach to the new Factory Hive. Only a Predator looks at the living superorganism of the Hive as a factory for honey  which they can “harvest” and consume as they wish. You can even have multiple taps and hoses to “tap” the honey —-like a maple syrup operation. Let’s take a closer look at why this is not a good idea. In an era where battery chickens are now seen as unacceptable by most of us, why on earth would we accept the same mentality for a living bee hive? Look past the priestcrafted words and investigate deeper into what is really going on. As backyard beekeepers, creating islands of sanctuary for the bees, until the world once again becomes connected to the living beings and species which sustain our very life on this planet; we need to be careful to not be used by the profit -making -industry, to compromise the great work that we all  have done in saving the honey bee.

Let’s look inside of this superorganism of the hive:

The hive has combs of wax cells which the Queen fills with eggs to create baby bees and which the worker bees fill with honey and pollen stores so the house bees can feed the young and the Queen and create a larder for winter. This honeycomb is equivalent to the skeleton in your body and it is the skeleton of the hive itself, which holds the superorganism of the colony . All life within the hive takes place on these wax combs which the bees love to make. . The bees vibrate the comb made from their own wax for communication within the hive, similar to our nervous system messages, and they also have birth and dance on the wax comb. If you use foundation sheets of wax, you will often find the bottoms of the foundation sheets nibbled free from the wooden frame so the vibrations for their “messaging system” can work best. This will never happen on the ridged plastic frame, unless of course the bees are given false teeth in the future. Besides the poisons and chemicals, factory- Queen- raising and other stressors which are causing the demise of the honey bee; the ever evolving Commodification of the Factory Hive continues to help bring great peril to the bees. The plastic frames is what commercial beekeepers put inside of their hives to save time and money. The plastic frames are colder in temperature than the wax ones and it makes a cold bridge within the hive in the winter. The plastic frames are ridged and no longer allow the bees to naturally communicate through vibration. The living skeleton of the hive body has been replaced with a plastic part instead. This Thought Form alone is going to come back to bite us all if we don’t start to See the basic disrespect for life such “transgenic thoughts” hold towards nature and all life. The plastic frame is unethical and turns the hive into an assembly line. The Queen Excluder used in these hives keeps the Queen from living and moving within the entire superorganism, which is her home . The new Factory Flow HiveTM has a plastic frame inside of it where the bees can do nothing but put honey into the man -made cells and then what it does , when you crank the handle,is that the separated sections of the plastic frame cells crack open and you break the transgenic- skeleton of the hive. The honey runs out and then the bees can once more continue their enslaved work on those frames and fill them up again for the next Fill Up with your honey jar.

And the second example to compromise the life enhancing work of the backyard beekeeper is the Nova Scotia Department of Agriculture’s new policy to
pay a high percentage of the costs for you to buy new hives or split your own hives and then take them to commercial farms for “Pollination Services”. We assume these
subsidies have been made to commercial beekeepers before now, however the new target of small backyard beekeepers with 2 to 9 hives is new. It is basically
tempting the backyard beekeeper with money to compromise their bees and start to think about the enslavement of the honey bee for a “profit”. The islands of
sanctuary which backyard beekeepers are providing for the honey bee is now being seen as not to small to target…………how interesting. Oh,by the way, the backyard beekeeper who just keeps his bees for honey is not qualified for funding in this program. Only if you wish to compromise and commodify  your hives are you funded.

Please be advised – backyard beekeepers are seen as a target for unethical beekeeping practices .

EARLY SPRING PREPARATIONS

As the winds continue to blow at 50 kph and our driveway once again becomes
a quarter of a kilometer  of snowdrifts that are almost as high as I am,;we
ignore it all and like the bees we feel ,that despite what we see, Spring is
indeed preparing to present herself soon. Actually this Saturday will be the first day of Spring .

unusual winter with St Marys Bay filled with frozen ice

The hum in the hives is not strong and we worry about our bees and wonder if they can
hang on much longer. We are snowshoeing into the hives to check them
for snow drifts blocking their entrances and by knocking on the side of the hive and then placing our ear against  it, we can hear them hum. Thank goodness we
always leave most of the honey in the hive for the honey bees and take only the surplus. This means there are  lots of protein and carbs  in the hives for the bees if they can get to it without freezing. But the prolonged winds daily hitting against the hives, coupled with the freezing temperatures, has never been as bad as this year.

In Austria they used to have honey bee houses where the bees
lived inside a small beautiful log house with outside entrances painted different colours
for each hive.  Those bees did not have to face the winds and the snowfall like our bees are doing.  handmade small cell foundation from homemade press

PREPARATION FOR SPRING

1.MAKING SMALL CELL FOUNDATION

The small- cell -size- foundation wax press which we discussed in an earlier blog is
working out very well. After melting 11 kilos of pure cappings wax and the clean- bees- wax- comb which got cracked or broke in the honey extracting process from last year; Klaus was able to make the followng:

90 large sheets of foundation
20 medium sheets of foundation

What this means is that, even if there are emergency circumstances where we help  our bees by putting in foundation, they will  have no contaminated wax in their homes.  Remembering that when things are normal in the hives the bees are drawing out their own comb  and we encourage this practice because nothing can replace the subtle creative cells that the bees themselves create. The wax smells exceptionally wonderful because there is floral and vanilla scented propolis in the wax.  Imagine the best aromatherapy session ever and you have an idea of what the bees in their home are enjoying.   Considering that propollis is one of nature’s strongest antibiotics we can assume that the  hives will be very healthy because of the aroma from this wax foundation.
2.PREPARATION FOR NATURAL BEEKEEPING WORKSHOPS BASED ON BIODYNAMIC PRINCIPLES

The notices have gone out, that we will be once again offering two Natural Beekeeping
Workshops based on Biodynamic Principles on June l7 & 18 and June 20 & 21. Lots of registrations have already taken place and the increasing interest in Natural Beekeeping based on biodynamic principles is a huge movement globally.
For details contact us at bello.bees@gmail.com

3.RESEARCH AND READING

Part of being a good Keeper of Bees requires that you are always doing your own observations in the Bee Season and research and reflection in the Off Season.  Nothing in nature is “instant soup” — it requires you to be totally Implicated with the Hive and its environment.  This is the ethical way to relate to any other living species that you are involved with, and the bees are no exception to this rule.  We recently joined IBRA (International Bee Research Association) based in the UK and all of their past magazines since 1919 to the present day are now available to us to read.  This is truly an enriching experience.

We ordered  our Maria Thun’s  “Biodynamic Sowing and Planting  Calendar for North America 2015” and we are reading it from cover to cover.  This is a necessity for biodynamic beekeeping as it has the calendar for working with the bees also.  All of the students who take our course are given a copy of this calendar.   We can highly recommend this calendar and this year it covers “ashing” to deal with mites and other hive problems.  Besides helping us planning activities for the Spring around the Bees, it also helps us to work out our planting activities at the Glasshouse.

4. PREPARING .PRESENTATION AT THE UPSKILLING EVENT APRIL 9,2015

We will be making a presentation about the World of the Honey Bee  at the Upskilling Event taking place on April 9th  in Annapolis County.  Check out this event and the Local Prosperity Conference at http://www.localprosperity.ca  Hope to meet some of you at that time. Please do introduce yourself to us.

5. WORK AT MY  WORKSHOP

Building supers, repairing damaged supers , assembling  Wooden Frames, scrubbing bottom boards,and making lists of supplies needed for the upcoming Spring season are all taking place in my woodworking shop since the beginning of the year.  Being prepared is so important for the Keeper of Bees, because when the hives make their grand entrance back into the landscape things move very quickly.  There are not enough hours in the day to keep up with the total Joyful Life Abundance Manifestation which takes place in late Spring and early Summer.

Visiting the hives themselves next week is anticipated.

BEES ENJOYING THE LIFE OF THE COMMONS

BEES AS TEACHERS OF THE COMMONS – freedom from  the Enclosure mentality

A deep quiet has come over the honey bee sanctuary. It is winter and only by knocking on the side of the wooden hives do we hear  the soft humming song from within . There is a connectivity with nature and land here in the sanctuary. This is a joyful and sacred space  and this  space brings up similar feelings to us of entering into the Fox Shrine in Tokyo or entering into that very tiny Baroque church in a small village in Tirol, Austria. The expanded levity of the bees of summer has now contracted into a winter’s small version of the cosmos;, ever spiralling around the central Sun their Queen and waiting for the Spring Equinox . At this time, all of nature seems to be imitating  the bees —— the earth also  secretly and silently bursts with hidden life, under her snowy blanket .

Winters Tale- keeping the hives clear of snow, especially the upper entrance

This ancient Winter’s Tale of the Honeybee has been unfolding for the past one hundred million years on this earth . It is this tale which draws pictures of our world’s landscapes being formed by the bees in a dance with nature and mankind. And while we contemplate on such Imaginations on these early dark nights of winter; we enjoy another type of gift of Illumination from the bees;—- this time it is their candle light.

THE FREEDOM TO ROAM – a right of the Commons

“The freedom to roam, or everyman’s right is the general public’s right to access certain public or privately owned land for recreation and exercise. The right is sometimes called the right of public access to the wilderness or the right to roam.” wikipedia

Regardless of where you place a bee hive, the bees will happily  fly in all directions for at least five kilometers.They have what is called “the Freedom to Roam”. They are symbiotically connected to the landscape which they have helped to create. Because flowers are rooted into the earth and cannot walk over to the next flower to be pollinated, the bees are the” legs” of the flowers . They will not only visit all of the flora of the area where they live and pollinate ,they will also bring necessary life-forces, in the form of acid vapors and warmth , to the plant world so that they can stay healthy and live. When one reads about the new Harvard designed Robotic Bee, which they see as the future pollinator of plants, we can question the depth of a science which
sees living species in such a “dead” materialistic way. So much more than just  the movement of pollens happens between the plant world and the
honey bee and without those life enhancing processes the plants will eventually become sick and die, despite the robotic manipulation of pollen transfer. And not only do the bees do all of this amazing co-creativity with the plants and the  landscape; they then bring back to the hive the shared gifts from the plants . There is the nectar which they transform into the perfect food – honey and into wax- which brings us illumination when darkness falls upon us and nature’s perfect medicine, propolis. How special is all of this! And all of this Dance of Life of the Honeybee takes place without borders or Enclosures , without money and without ownership of any kind. The bees demonstrate freely through their loving nature,  the True life of the Commons, with the right to the Freedom to Roam, which all Human Beings also enjoyed before it was stolen from them.

. When we first brought the honey bees to live with us, we noticed that the landscape started to have an aliveness which was not there before. After their arrival,  there were just far more flowers in the fields, but more than that ,there was a “happiness” factor which the land did not vibrate with before the arrival of the bees. This “happiness factor” has only grown over the years, as the bees and the landscape around them, started to blur into one dynamic picture of total connectivity. Are they revealing to us their secret covenant with creation through this connectivity? The bees are lovingly  100% implicated  in the world they live in; are we?  They are truly part of everything and the consciousness of the goodwill and freedom of the Commons ethos is being demonstrated by all that they dedicate themselves to. They have made a covenant with Creation and together with nature they create a world of Beauty and Abundance. Is this not the same legacy which each of us can give to our own lives, community and to the earth? Heather Menzie’s, in her absolutely inspiring and brilliant book “Reclaiming the Commons for the Common Good” is a must read for anyone who wishes to become a true keeper of the bees. It is an exploration which requires that we open up to the inner call of the “commons ethos” so we too can be free to empower the life around us and create a world of
Beauty and Abundance and in so doing we automatically will be nurtured with the “nectar of the gods”- just like the bees.

BIODYNAMIC CERTIFICATION BY DEMETER

This week was very special because  Bello Uccello Honey Bee Sanctuary, has now become a Certified  Biodynamic  Honey Bee Sanctuary through Demeter Canada. 

We tried to let the bees know that this is a very big deal for them and their hard work, but they just buzzed about inside of the hive ignoring all the commotion the keeper of bees was making in their yard:-} 

This certification was pursued by us because we want people here in Nova Scotia to become more  aware of biodynamic food and the label of Demeter,  The Annapolis Trader and Farmers Market now has Bear River Farm and Bello Uccello Honey Bee Sanctuary, both offering food products which are certified to be biodynamic.  Let’s hope many more farmers will be inspired to also follow this wholesome path to good food.

On November 29th at the Bear River Holiday Spirit of Xmas Show we will be selling our honey .  We wish to thank our customers and people who take an interest in the work which we do,  for supporting the Bello Uccello Honey Bee Sanctuary and we wish you a Very Merry Christmas and a New Year filled with Abundance.

HONEY BEES AND SNOWBEES – REFLECTING SACRED GEOMETRY

SNOW BEES VISIT THE HONEY BEE SANCTUARY

Today we woke to one of the most wonderful sights of nature— – snowflakes falling from the sky— the first snowfall of the season.   Pure Joy!  The bees had a great last fling earlier this week, with temperatures well above normal for this time of the year; but now they are inside of their sacred space within the hive and the Dance of Winter has come
for them. The Queen of the Sun is centre to the galaxy inside of the hive and the rhythmic spiralling pattern of keeping the Queen, the brood and each other warm has begun.
As these holders of the blueprint of life withdraw from sight, their replacement has arrived – – – a swarm of hexagonal- shaped snowflakes.  In the folk tale, The Snow Queen, they are referred to as Swarm of Snow Bees.  In a complementary way, they are carrying on the life- enhancing – business of the bees of summer, by bringing the secret and invisible patterns of the Music of the Spheres to our earth. The quietness
which the snowflakes bring, as they cover the earth with a downy blanket of silent white, enables us to hear the music within ourselves.

LESSON OF THE BEES –   Snowflakes

The honey bees have been on this Earth for approximately 100 million years and therefore one can be quite confident in assuming that they have something to say to us about life here, especially  if we take the time to observe and feel.   It is from this perspective of   observing  the similarities of the swarm of bees of summer to observing the swarm of snowbees (snowflakes) of  now, that many questions arise.  For example,  why are snowflakes, so Perfect in their beauty and symmetry and yet   they have  been formed out of the  water cycle  from the earth  which has had imprinted upon the water’s very Structure, due to its exposure to   everything from toxic chemicals to sewers, a less-than-symmetric design? To research more about the nature of water, we recommend researching the scientific work of the late,  Dr. Masaru Emoto, who  demonstrated clearly that water is not to be looked at through just a chemical analysis, but also through its transforming Structure.  His studies revealed that water is a living substance which reflects in its “Structure” the nature of the environment it is in and it  even reflects  “sound frequencies” and “intent”.

Now this made us wonder, if snowflakes all come from an earth- based -water cycle ,where we know the water would look like “mold”, based on Dr Emoto’s work, then what is up in our atmosphere which cleanses the water of those bad “memories” and transforms the water back to its perfection, so it reflects such Beauty and Symmetry?

How does polluted water with memories of war and suffering and contaminated toxins of this materialistic world, come back to this earth, from our atmosphere, holding structurally visible Patterns of Perfection  ?

What Is in the atmosphere to bring about this transformation of the water? Is our atmosphere filled with a Song or Frequency of pure Love, and like the water in the “I Love You” glass of Dr Emoto’s water study, it causes a sacred geometry to manifest and transform   the damaged water molecule?.

.Are these swarm of snowbees, which come tumbling to earth, messengers of the gods; with the task of “Holding the Sacred Pattern of the Blueprint of Life” during the winter while the life- enhancing- bees rest until Spring?. The bees are Love for sure and they bring Life Enhancement to this planet and to human beings. Do the snowflakes, in their own Way, serve humanity and this earth by Holding the Memory of a Creation Blueprint of Beauty and Symmetry in a Pattern of Love? .
This reminder from the Clouds of Beauty and Symmetry must help us wake up from our dream sleep and feel a world alive and well. Holding the pattern of Human Evolution in Sacred Geometry is no small task for the snowbees and the honey bees. In a world where  man has decided to play god in separated consciousness and make his own patterns of evolution through transgenics; it is reassuring that bees and snowbees continue to  hold the sacred pattern of Life  and help us remember the Blueprint to  becoming  fully  Human on our  sacred journey  of evolution   , on this very beautiful planet.. We do have a Choice.

WINTERIZING OF THE HIVE
If you are preparing your hives for winter, it is time to place the unsprayed straw under the cover.  We cover the prevailing -wind- sides of the hive with blue sheets of foam insulation and then wrap the entire thing with a sheet of wind-protection paper.  (never plastic)  And because the sanctuary sits on the side of St Mary’s Bay and winds are strong, we also strap the hives to the ground.  This was a really good idea, when last year a hurricane blew through and knocked down trees in the sanctuary, and the hives withstood it all.  Let’s hope the honey bees will experience a Peaceful Winter and awake to an early Spring.

 

 

BIODYNAMIC BEEKEEPING- CONTRACTION OF THE HIVE

asters in late September in the honey bee sanctuary

The sun is shining, the bees in the Langpohl Top Bar Hives still have six or more full frames of brood yet to hatch.(which is somewhere around the
42,000 baby bees yet to come,)  and all is buzzing in the sanctuary!
For us here at Bello Uccello Honey Bee Sanctuary we can say it has been an amazing year for the honey bees. It has been a warm and dry summer with a constant supply of wild flowers for their banquet. The fields this autumn are so full of asters and golden rod that we hear people remarking everywhere about the abundance of these flowers in the fields and ditches. Last year there was really no “honey season”  in the autumn, to speak of ; but this year, the sanctuary, which has never had more than two golden rod plants growing in the entire area , is absolutely full of these brilliant golden- yellow, two- to- seven foot- high flowers! Life here has become the aroma of golden rod.

CONNECTING AT THE FARMERS MARKETS

Our next market at The Annapolis Royal Traders and Farmers Market will be Thanksgiving weekend and we look forward to meeting our regular customers , as well as meeting new ones. Along with the usual large jars of honey , we are making 250 ml small jars of honey available at this market, for those guests who wish to take a healthy “house gift” for Thanksgiving Dinner.

This summer we met the children’s author, Lela Nargi, from Brooklyn, New York. It is wonderful to see all of the different people so generously  sharing
their talents and life forces to help the honey bee and humanity as a whole. Our library ordered “The Honeybee Man” book and it is available in the Digby
Library. Details about this book and Lela’s other great work with kids is noted below:
http://www.lelanargi.com
http://www.citysciencekids.blogspot.com
schooltube.com/channel/citysciencekids
<http://schooltube.com/channel/citysciencekids&gt;

LESSONS FROM THE BEES – “As summer turns to autumn”:

If you have ever had the chance to just lay down on the grass near a hive of bees and watch them freely dance in the sky and around the Hive, as they Sing their Song of
Summer; you can actually feel the  timelessness and peace and sheer joy of life! This activity could be a great addition to any Natural Health Spa!   There seems to be very few straight lines involved in their movements, but rather complicated swirling, curling, and spiraling flight patterns. It is truly amazing to see them full of such
freedom of movement and intent and on the other hand, to feel they have such a selfless identity and inner knowing of the oneness with the Hive- as-a- Whole. Is this something we, as evolutionary human beings, are trying to understand within ourselves? Is the Question we all form in one way or another, one of  trying to solve the great mystery of how to maintain our wonderful free beingness and the singularity as an Individual and at the same time, have our Dance as that Individual somehow have the subconscious and the conscious Intent to help co-create a world of love and peace for all Beings on this Beautiful Planet? Do we carry this same “blue print of Oneness” within our Soul and are we just all here trying to put the pieces together with each other? The bees, as sun beings of love do an amazing job in this regard, – an inspiration to us all.

Steiner compared the bees flying freely about to the pattern of the thoughts of a person. In the summer it is true, we all have more ideas about what our days will be like, than hours in the day to do them. In a funny way we are flying around in swirling, curling and spiraling vortexes all summer long and we all feel so Free! Gravity, in all of its implications, seems to have let us go out of its grip and anything is possible! It is so Warm and so Easy.
Then Autumn arrives, as it did this week, and there is a contracting of the flight patterns of the bees and the organizing of the Hive into an entirely different configuration which  starts in ernest, for the upcoming Earth- Bound- Winter  that  lies ahead. Here in rural Nova Scotia the crickets are still singing loudly, but our thoughts are contracting to the practical matters of firewood for winter, jams and preserves being stored in the pantry,
children back in school, harvesting our gardens and basically manifesting Earth- Bound ideas.  The Sun is not getting up as early and she definitely is going to bed earlier, as are the honey bees!. This is the time of the Michaelmas Festival, the celebration of the breath-in, which the Earth is starting to do — as are we. As the Queen of the Sun shines consistently within the hive and their world spirals around her, so we look to the sun within our hearts to warm our simmering, emerging inspirations which will carry us through the winter- to- come into the budding of Imaginations and Manifestations in Spring.

FEEDING PARTIALLY FROZEN HONEY ON INNER COVER

Klaus has been visiting the hives and ensuring the bees are healthy and he is removing the excess honey supers from the hives. Since the days can be hot or cold
for the next 60 days, he also is ensuring the bees have lots of honey to fill up the brood cells , after the bees hatch. We are keeping buckets of honey in the freezer, to feed back directly to the bees for their present needs, so that  all of the  stored honey and pollen in the frames can be saved  for the winter months ahead.
Last year’s six months of confinement for the bees showed us we can not be too careful about this issue of ample food.

 

 

 

 

Top Bar Hive ……. How to make a Langpohl Top Bar Hive

Here is the plan for the Langpohl Top Bar Hive. It has been a great success here at Bello Uccello Honey Bee Sanctuary, with lots of brood, bees and honey. Although Klaus designed and drew the plans and created the model, we have much gratitude to a fellow natural beekeeper and friend, Carl whose address is noted on each of the computerized drawings he created for all of us. We wish you
well in the creating of this top bar hive, where ventilation, spacing and the overall well- being
of the honey bee and the hive has been of paramount importance. It takes Klaus 30 plus hours to
complete one hive with the created templates.

This top bar hive invites ease of use by the keeper of bees, regardless of their physical situation. Inclusiveness brings the richness of more people being able to enter into the world of bees and help nature and our world.

One big advantage is that in the winter you can pull out the screen bottom board and clean the hive bottom without disturbing the wrapping for winter or the bees. What clean hives there were in the Spring! The drone cafe lends itself in the winter for adding rye straw for the insulation of the hive and to absorb the excess moisture. You can even add a feeder in the middle of the straw over the hole to feed extra food if necessary. We loved these features last winter!

Also because the dimensions are equal to the Langstroth sized supers, one can add an entire second level during the high honey season. We did that this year and have just removed the extra honey and brought the hive back to one story. The slotted bottom board is so full of bees resting and hanging out each time that we inspect the hive, that we know that this top bar hive design is made to make the bees happy and healthy. The drone cafe is also quite the hang out!.
We do not accept the usual top bar hive design because of its many shortcomings in considering the
health and respect for the bees. If you wish to use commercially made frames you can, and if you
wish to put the frames in without any foundation, that is preferable. Just make sure you put some wire stablizing, like you would normally for foundation frames. The flexibility in this top bar hive is great.

In the spirit of Bello Uccello Honey Bee Sanctuary’s goal to serve the well beingness of the honey bee with biodynamic principles, these plans are offered for free for private, personal use only.
Should you wish to produce this commercially,please contact us for further details. We also
offer this Langpohl Top Bar Hive for sale in Canada and you can contact us for further details.

BEES AND WILDFLOWERS OF NOVA SCOTIA

Singing “Mellow Yellow” seems to be appropriate, as we see all of the yellow coloured wildflowers blossoming at this time, here in the Bello Uccello Honey Bee Sanctuary. The honey is amazing this year and Klaus is taking off the surplus and with the help of our l4 -year- old visitor Virgil, from Paris, France;, extracting it into jars in readiness for sale at the Annapolis Farmer’s Market.

Virgil is watching the honey spin into the extractor

Virgil visits from Paris,
France and becomes a
great Beekeepers Assistant
Last week we were at the market selling our honey and enjoying meeting our regular customers and talking to new ones. The interest in the honey bee grows with each year and very few people now ask “why is the honey bee dying” because they Know
Why now; it is more discussions about what they can do to help the honey bee.

Last weekend we traveled 150 kms through the Annapolis Valley area, where agriculture has been taking place for at least three hundred years. It used to be a place where there were many small road- side stands selling the extra produce which the farmers grew in that very fertile area.This was a time when farming was a Way of Life, encompassing the entire family, community, and most importantly, good human values with connectivity to nature. .A farmer used to look at the sky and knew what the weather would be;now they look up at the geoengineered weather conditions and wonder what on earth will be next! Today GMO soya and corn basically cover this beautiful Valley. The beekeeper we visited reported that his bees have been relying upon the honey supplies they gathered earlier in the season for
at least two weeks already, because there were no flowers in bloom at that time for them. Sometimes the simplest statement can open up “worlds” in your consciousness. Where were the wildflowers? Did they become “enemy no. 1” to the farmers?
and Why did their status change from “Beautiful Wildflowers” to “Weeds”? Did the biodiversity leave the rich soiled Valley with the Weeds? Can this be true?

So upon our return trip back home we decided to look for the wildflowers growing along side of the road and see if this lack of food for the bees was true. At home our honeybees were still having lots of variety of flowers from which to gather pollen and
nectar . The beekeeper was speaking the truth, because other than some Queen Anne’s lace there was really nothing growing in the fields or in the ditches for the bees. It had never dawned on me that the legacy of even small sized farms spraying pesticides, herbicides and all the other “cides”for such a long time, would be to eventually kill off the “others”,
namely biodiversity” in favour of the mono-crop. The song “Where have all the flowers gone……long time passing”, or words to that nature, seemed to fit. When the sign Annapolis Royal came into view , we noted a huge change and wildflowers started showing their happy faces everywhere – brown-eyed Susans, daisies, Nova Scotia thistle,
butter and eggs, and by the time we came to the beginning of the shores of St Mary’s Bay,the diversity was the most and one could only sit back and be amazed by the colourful site. The contrast was striking! Ditches full of nature’s abundance.

Here are a list of “some” of the flowers blooming now around the Sanctuary which I know the names of and the others I will have to leave as research homework for their proper names at another time. These wildflowers belong in all of Nova Scotia and may they someday claim back their cheery spots in this beautiful Province, along with the Monarch butterflies and pollinators:

wild mustard

purple loosestrife daisies nova scotia thistle stjohn’s wort white clover red clover
brown eyed susans buttercups canadian thistle horsetail yarrow sea lavendar
butter and eggs vetch pearly everlastings tiger lilies cat tails sea grass
wild artichokes elderflower golden rod oregano roses dandelions
wild mustard bouncing bet jewel weed

Pollen Chart: http://shelby.ca.uky.edu/sites/shelby.ca.uky.edu/files/Pollen_color.pdf

If you wish to help the pollinators, planting wildflower seeds is very effective. Also it is important to mention that a very positive paradigm shift is happening in rural Nova Scotia, in that there are many young people and young-hearted people moving here to create Natural Lifestyles with the Land and the Natural Environment, and they burn brightly as the hope for a future which has room and respect for the awesome symbiotic relationships of all Life.

BIODYNAMIC HONEYBEES HAVE PROPER NAMES AND PERSONAL LOG RECORDS

EACH HONEY BEE HIVE HAS A PROPER NAME

The Natural Beekeeping Workshops based on Biodynamic Principles have taken place again in 2014 at the Sanctuary in June.
At that point the hives were small and easy to observe. Naturally the bees enjoyed the student visitors and were very kind
to them and, naturally, the new keeper -of bees- were stellar with the bees – as always. We have a theory that there is something special about the Individual who decides to become a keeper -of -bees and this includes some of the commercial beekeepers we have met.
One student inquired into the “rest of the story” about the huge , overpopulated hive which we had in the sanctuary last year.
It ended up to be the smallest hive in the Spring – alive and well – but small. What a strange experience that was and
we are now watching to see if any new traits have developed with this hive, after surviving six months of being wrapped for cold weather and survived. These observations are all duly noted in a note book which Klaus takes with him every time he visits a hive. Record keeping is a very important part of the Natural keeping of bees.

For all of you who took the courses this early summer, those small two and three story hives have grown to the point of
Klaus once again climbing step ladders to tend them.”Rose” , who resides in the new Langpohl top bar hive in the Sanctuary,
started out with a few frames. She was one of the three hives beginning her life in the condo Langpohl top bar hive located at our out-apiary where we wintered small swarms and nucs. She now has 60 frames and asking for more. The bees seem to be extremely happy
with the Langpohl Top Bar Hive !

Rapid increase in the size of this top bar hive in a very short period of time.
This design allows for an additional second “story” and also has the very effective Drone Cafe for hanging out on those hot summer days

Under the Nova Scotia provincial law we must put our beekeeper’s number on each hive, but we also have named each Individual Hive, because we simply do not think it respectful to the bees, nor to life itself, to number a Living Being. All of such thoughts come from a place other than Love and they “seed” the commodification of Life, Nature, the Elements and Planet and Humankind. Actually the numbering of Beings is a Nazi thought
and we accept it now as “business as usual” – it’s purpose is to dehumanize and to devalue the Beingness of Life. Number your houses
and use numbers for counting , but don’t Number Beings……….then again, the rich and famous Name their Houses don’t they! Interesting.

The “Rose”hive received her name because she was a swarm which landed in our friends rosebush last summer. She has since made two more hives – Little Rose and Big Rose:-}

A Keeper of Bees work is never done. To prevent losing any members of the hive we came at 10pm to close up this nuc which would be picked up by its new keeper of bees the next morning.

In the record-keeping-book, or the Diaries, which I mentioned earlier, Klaus has a section for every single hive in the Sanctuary. Each hive has such Individuality and the relationship with every hive is different. Each page starts with the proper name of the hive and the origins of where they have come from. These places of origin influences their names – for example, the rescued feral hive found in a chimney and terribly damaged by a fire the people lit to get rid of them is called “The Chimney
Swifts”. They are still in the isolation field and will be able to join the Sanctuary next year. We make sure such hives have no
diseases and are healthy and happy before we bring them near the other disease- free- hives. So far, so good. These happy
bees make regressed small- cell- foundation already and so we are excited to have these traits brought to more nucs for
our students. Yesterday we removed two full supers of capped, rose- smelling- honey from them and there is much more almost
ready to be harvested. This is the “extra” honey – as each hive will be left with plenty of honey and pollen inside of it for winter.
Other names of the hives or nucs are Paul, Uriel, Michael I, Michael I I and Michael I I I etc. There is a hive called Demeter and it is such a very kind hive. The songs sung in each hive are also different and we
had a visitor who has a music background and could hear the “notes”
being sung. What a great project – to have some music written from the
songs of the bees. Another participant studied healing and she heard
the songs as the elements of wind or fire or water. How interesting
it is to journey along with the wise honey bees who have something to teach us all.

Below are some of the things which we record in the record book and if
you are a keeper of bees, making diaries of your honey bees will give
you a deeper insight into the hive and its life.

The pages of the record book have such things as
1. the date you inspected the hive
2. the number of frames of brood and eggs observed at each inspection,
3. the amount of capped or uncapped honey and pollen
4. if you saw the Queen a notation is made
5. what frames have Queen Cells or Emergency Queen Cell Cups
6. when the next inspection must be done based on what is observed within the hive
7. what must be done in the next inspection – like to inspect to see if the Queen Cup has turned into a Queen Cell,was the Queen mated,etc
8. adding or taking of supers
9. splits made from the hive and the name of the new nuc
10.dusting with ground sugar dust or with light water mist for mite control and date for next dusting

UPDATE
The plans have been completed for the Langpohl Top Bar Hive and a Friend of the Honey Bees is now putting it into
a more professional drawing to be posted to this blog next week, if all goes as it should. Naturally these plans are
for free for any one who wishes to build one for personal use and not for profit.

THE HONEY BEE AND WHITE CLOVER STORY

Everyday here at Bello Uccello Honey Bee Sanctuary we experience the miracle of Nature and the Elements. Sometimes these miracles are very simple and yet profound at the same time. For example, the white clover seed, which we purchased from The Halifax Seed Company, (Canada’s oldest seed company), is one such miracle of simplicity. The white clover seed is for the honey bees and the red clover seed is for the bumblebees. and we seeded wherever we saw an empty space of ground in our neighbourhood.. Now this clover has taken over large areas in the Sanctuary, and also in the neighbours’ lawns and fields and ditches. So far no complaints and it was
truly rewarding to hear our neighbour, who is confined to a wheelchair, exclaim to us about how beautiful all the white clover
was on their large lawn. This simple act not only fed our honeybees but also brought enjoyment of nature to our lovely neighbours.
Nature seems to always be like that – bringing just the perfect thing which is needed.

It is indeed worth thinking about the unadulterated simple seed, which holds within itself the ability to bring forth such abundance. Talk about Life Enhancement – that one plant can become the source for thousands of other plants. If one simple seed can bring forth so much beneficial Life and one simple Queen Honey Bee can lay her own weight in eggs every single day of her existence within the hive; ,then the question begs the answer—- What Does This Possibly Mean About What a Human Being is Capable of Co-Creating with Life to benefit
mankind and our planet? Maybe the addictions of acquisition and sentimentality (materiality) are blinding us to our own potential to become Free to be a Seed ourselves, within the Garden of Humanity and its home, Earth. You don’t need permission from Any Body
to pick some wildflower seeds in the ditch and then distribute them in the Common areas of our communities. By beautifying our
Common areas we will be making them visible and by the flowers adding colour and fragrance and divers birds, bees and other Beings of
Nature to these Common areas we might help raise the consciousness of us all. These Common areas are for the entire community’s Use
and Enjoyment, and not to be silently usurped into parking lots, shopping centres and all other such unimaginative manifestations.
.So we ask that you sow none- neonic wildflower seeds wherever you can and the pollinators and birds will love this extra food and the beauty of lupins or brown-eyed Susans covering an abandoned area will truly bring healing and life enhancement at several levels.

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BEE DISCERNING – NATURAL LIFE ENHANCEMENT SOLUTIONS TO PROBLEMS

So many good hearted people are concerned about the killing of the honey bees these days that many people

would like to do their part to help change this situation.  Such Good Will and Intent is what will help the honey bees and will also help our world to become the kind of world we all would like to live in – a Peaceful one, filled with Good Will to All Life.   Thank you for all that you do for the honey bees, it is important.

Two days ago I went to the local greenhouse to help my mum  buy her hanging plants.  When I asked whether there were poison chemicals used, the answer was yes.  Also he informed us that the  occasional bee goes in the open greenhouses and they die. By now you know that the GMO seed will most likely kill the honeybee and other pollinators and that the Neonicotinoids, based on the most recent Harvard Univ. study, Will Kill the Bees  – but did you know that you need to ask at stores that sell “bee friendly seed” and “bee friendly plants” whether these plants have been treated with   neonicotinoids?  It is shocking to buy a plant with a cute bee picture on the tag and then find out they are bee killers.  Anything which you buy requires a Question to be asked – is this GMO, and  does this have poison chemicals in it or on it or does it have Neonicotinoids.  Organic seeds and organic flowers and  plants  and flowers  from  a local grower who can assure you that they do not use the “bee killers” on their plants or seeds are your best bet.

As we all learn to Ask Questions, we usually find out there is always more than “meets  the eye”.  For example,this week we read that Spider poison is being put into honey bees and “it does not kill the honey bee” and they think it might kill the mite.   Here at Bello Uccello Honey Bee Sanctuary we approach the entire question of “mites” and other diseases as a Question of naturally  Enhancing the Life Forces of the Honey Bee, rather than “killing something”.   Mankind has spent the last couple of hundred years truly “killing” off whatever it sees as a problem  and where has this gotten us?  This approach lacks critical observation – as we continue to kill bad bacteria, the mutating  1% which survives becomes the super-bacteria which holds the potential to wipe us out because we have no natural defence to the very  unnatural “enemy” we ourselves have just created . The mites have mutated to the point that they  actually thrive on some of the poisons which they put into the hive to kill them. The honey bee’s burden has became  worse because the mite is now stronger than before

.  It is time we think about making the Good so strong with natural, Positive  Life Forces  that give a High Vitality to the Hive , that the negative is “neutralized” and disappears because of its own irrelevance.  Let’s start searching for all of those amazing people, Johann Grander from Austria (water), Dr Higa from Japan (effective micro-organisms), Dr Franz Hormann from Austria (new economy); Rudolf Steiner’s llectures;Ing. Werner Rauscher, solar pioneer in Gussing,Austria http://www.solar-zentrum.at/englisch.htm; Spirit Science of Drunvalo; the Grounded Movie on Earthing,  and this list could go on forever……………………………..

Let us all stop being Compliant to the Pied Piper song of destruction of our beautiful world  and simply Ask the Questions which need to be asked.  This will save the Honey Bee and this will save you and your Love Ones because we are all so interrelated.

Biodynamic Keeper of Bees – part of the hive _   Bees help keep the head cool

question: POSTSCRIPT: What is Natural that they call adding spider venom to a honey bee a “Natural Solution”?  — mercury is a natural product, but I don’t want it in my teeth or drinking water.  The word Natural is being used to manipulate the population into thinking that because the word “natural”is used then it means it is good. Nature is good – right?  Discernment is so important for us all to practice at this time.

REVITALIZED WATER FOR THE HONEY BEE’S VITALITY AND HEALTH

Today the rain is filling up the bee’s bird bath in the honey bee sanctuary.  Natural moss and rocks were gathered in the wild and then situated in the bird bath to cover the bottom, so that the bees can land on them to drink and not drown. I have been making special “drinking spots” for the honey bees since we began our mission to help the bees. The bees had a way of
finding each station lacking and returning to the spring water which comes out of the cliff bank near the sanctuary. It is sort of like trying out a new cafe but finding yourself back at your favourite one after a couple of weeks of novelty. But this year something very new and special has developed  around the drinking water for the bees.

For l5 years we have had a Grander Revitalized Water Board from Austria for treating our own drinking water. A few weeks
ago we invited the Maritime representative of Grander Revitalized Water to come and speak to a small group  of friends about this life enhancing, pure water which is in the healing  health spas of Europe, in the bakeries and food companies of Austria and Germany , in their swimming pools and gardens, in their Industries and in the drinking water systems of regular people in Europe,Japan and  of the “rich and questionable” here in North America. You probably have not heard of this – right? We call this amazing gap between” knowing of natural- life -enhancing discoveries in Europe and Japan and the world elsewhere  and not knowing of them here in North America” the Great North American Deception”. We have and use 
these wonderful- natural discoveries  and it is a pity that our honey bees get to enjoy these very wonderful gifts of nature but our fellow citizens here in North America, for the most part,  do not.  Why is that?

 

To help our honey bees we have applied these globally discovered “natural solutions” to solve some of the problems which the bees face. After Optimal Water installed a Grander system for our entire house’s water system, we decided to try this water for the bees and for our biodynamic gardening. The change was not subtle – it was Amazing! Now
there are 25 to 50 bees at any one time, hanging out  and drinking this very healthy water. They stay much longer than usual
and when viewing the sanctuary from a distance, the number of bees buzzing around the bird bath in a “holding pattern” is similar to the number of bees at a small hive entrance. What we are looking forward to seeing is if this 28,000 Bovis energy drinking water will help the bees with their vital health and with the the overall hive- life-force. We  personally benefit from it and should you wish to find out more about the Element Water in general or Grander Water in particular ,we recommend again the following utube films:

Water the Great Mystery,

Johann Grander The Waterman of Tirol;

Viktor Schauberger

 The bees bring us to form QUESTIONS, which lead us on a search, which in turn opens up finding possibilities for peace and health and balance in life; not only for the bees, but perhaps for all of us .At the Heart of all of what is found in these awe-inspiring  symbiotic relationships revealed in the  Life around us,–Nature , Human Beings, and the Stars—,it is there that Truth resides. 

 

 

,
http://www.bellouccello.wordpress.com

 

NATURAL LESSONS FROM THE HONEY BEES AND THEIR HIVE – LESSON 1 Meandering or Marching?

 

 

Observe the honey bees as they leave the hive and you will see that they really do meander; contrary to the whole “beeline mythology”. They take time to smell the roses, sup up the yellow of the dandelion and hum a happy song while they do it. Somehow they manage to multi-task and get the job done and yet keep the adventure and variety in their lives— and sing a song of happiness!!. It is only when they have visited many places, brought life forces to many flowers and blossoms and filled their “pockets full of goodies, like pollen” that they then beeline it for home. Impressive —- truly—they actually succeed in the tasks  to feed their young, keep the hive clean, provide food for everyone, build a house continually, create a proper atmosphere of not too hot and not
too cold  and make a food larder for winter —–and all of these chores are completed in harmony and love, with Song and Dance and with each Individual Bee taking full responsibility for his or her own  contribution to the hive; and all of this success  without a Manager or Controller. Hmmmmmm…….. Take a look at nature and you will see that nature seems to form patterns of spirals and meanderings too. Even the human DNA is a pattern of spiralling. Check out on utube Water The Great Mystery
and Viktor Schauberger’s work on water, to view meandering in action and see what it does for health and happiness.

 

Now let’s take a look at the Human Being whose intrinsic nature is to be creative and loving and live in joyful community with others.  Children naturally  seem to emulate the bees as they too, in pure Trust of Life, hum their
unique song in their Heart and playfully copy  the honey bee’s wonderful,  “meandering pattern of adventure and trust of  abundance” wherever they go.
As adults, we too love the Freedom of meandering along a hike trail, or on a sandy beach – we love it, we thrive on it and we need it because it brings health and happiness to the depths of our Soul. There are no straight lines in the true nature of the Human Being; and straight line thinking and manifestations are “learned behaviours”. As children start becoming trained for our technical- industrial working world, the first thing they must learn to do is to form a straight line and march into the day care, into the school, into the bus and into their seats at school, which are also in straight lines. We as parents, teachers and caregivers of children are actually brainwashed ourselves; to the point we train our “good children” to stop useless Imagining and Meandering and behave efficiently, in a straight line,( of course,) to complete the tasks given,give the “right answers”  and be a winner.  Commodifying life always looks like this- straight lines to nowhere..

 

We take away the natural Beauty and Wonder of the Dance of Life which defines each of us as a Human Being and we replace this possible model-of-life, like the  bee- and- the- hive-society ,with a world of mental-dead-activities in straight lines. We are programmed this way — to be controlled and to be a perfect cog in the Industrial-Technical  machine. One day we are a child learning how to behave and think in straight lines and the next day we are men and women “marching” in straight lines to war .

 The Bees have something to teach us and Lesson 1 is that you can be a responsible Individual and contribute to the well beingness of yourself, your family and your community without giving up your true Human Being nature to be Joyful, to do Life Enhancing activities inside of the home and outside in nature (just as the bees do) and to freely meander through life by using your pure Love of Life and Imagination and Creativity to determine where your next step will bee. 

When we start meandering, we will gain our FREEDOM to love and with this, All is possible. This is what the 5th dimensional bees have asked we share with you from our Heart to yours.  For fun, the next time you take your walk, imitate the bees path and just walk in a long curving pattern back and forth and see what your body says !

 

 

Bioynamic Spring Tea Tonic for the Honeybees and the Langpohl Top Bar Hive Design

Greetings from Bello Uccello Honeybee Sanctuary where the warmth of the sun has finally found us. After being “winterized in their warmly wrapped hive for six months, we are happy to announce the joyful dance of the honeybee is now filling the air with joy and song. How they managed to survive the coldest and longest cold- weather retreat in eight years is still a bit of a miracle and mystery to us. One late swarm in the fall did not make it, but the 1,500 pounds of honey left in the hives definitely contributed to the bees surviving that long a winter. The biodynamic oat straw which we purchased from http://www.brfarm.com was put inside the cover of each hive last autumn and that was really effective in giving warm insulation and also in absorbing the moisture from the hive. One of the reasons honeybees die in the winter is from the condensation, caused from fluctuating temperatures, dripping on the bees in the hive.

So the circle of life begins anew and  Klaus has reorganized all of the hives and welcomed the bees to Sun and Spring.

 

  RECIPE :  VITALITY SPRING TEA TONIC FOR THE HONEY BEE

Thanks to Gunther Hauk’s book,” Toward Saving the Honeybee”  we are able to share with you a Tea  Tonic  Recipe for the vitality and health of the honey bee in Spring.  It is made up of herbs that stimulate and heal the metabolic processes of the Queen and the workers.  

Prepare a mild tea by pouring boiling water over a mixture of the following:                                                                                            

chamomile         yarrow          dandelion flowers       peppermint leaves and stems            rue        hyssop

horsetail             stinging nettle          thyme

(remember if you are missing any of the ingredients please do still do as much as you can)

In a separate preparation soak  oak bark  overnight and make a very very mild tea, and the next day pour this solution into the herbal tonic tea mix you have already made.  

Add a bit of the bee’s own  honey to attract the bees to the tea.  The milder this tea tonic is the better it will be for the honeybees and it is just one of those wonderful things about life – more is not always better.  The bees just continue to teach us such good lessons!

Although we managed to collect some of the above-noted herbs and flowers last year, we did not have them all and we contacted the Josephine Porter Institute for Applied Bio-Dynamics,Inc (http://jpibiodynamics.org to receive the oak bark and also the small amount of other biodynamic preps we require for our honey bee sanctuary.

CROWNING BIG BEE 

As Klaus was attending to the hive at the out-apiary, a few bees crawled up inside of his helmut and he could hear them fanning. After awhile he stopped and took the helmut off and let the bees fly out, but what he did not know was that there was a double handful of bees that all decided to sit on the top of his head like a crown. He put the veiled helmut back on and he could still hear bees fanning but went back to work at the hive. He was very hot and the fanning continued. After a bit, his head seemed to cool off and the fanning stopped.These bees are very obliging!   In closer investigation we found a crown of bees sitting on his head. They seemed to identify his head as part of the hive – how cool is this?!  The bees continue to teach and demonstrate connectivity and gentleness to us – there is a Great Mystery with the Bees and it is an adventure to dance with them. In retelling this story to our daughter she decided that Klaus is a member of the hive with the name – “Big Bee”:-}

 

LANGPOHL TOP BAR HIVE
With a bit of tongue-in-cheek, the newly designed Top Bar Hive which Klaus has designed and built for the health and happiness of the honey bee, has been named the Langpohl Top Bar Hive. (Langstroth is the name of the normal horizontal hives) Last year we put two small splits and the Observation hive into this newly designed top bar hive. We are happy to report that the bees really thrived in that model and they are building up very quickly. By using full separation boards between each hive it can be divided into “row housing” for three small swarm hives for the winter months. The shared walls do give  extra heat to the hives and we did not use the small light bulbs which we usually do for the Langstroth hives. Now that Spring is here, two of the
hives will be given their own Langpohl Top Bar Hive and one of the hives will remain in the original Top Bar Hive.

And so the adventure begins again and Bello Uccello Honeybee Sanctuary is alive and well.

THE HONEY BEE AND WINTER SOLSTICE – FABLES AND FAIRY TALES ART SHOW

This past weekend Bello Uccello was part of a group art show in Bear River, Nova Scotia – “Fables and Fairy Tales”.  Luckily the hives had provided four old cracked wax foundation frames for the art to be created upon.  Being a mixed media book artist, I used these wonderful smelling old frames as the “pages” of my book.  The theme was the Winter Solstice and three fables were woven into this “art book”.  My original poem themed itself throughout the “book”:

                                                               

            THE SUN’S WINTER RETREAT

 

          The Sun has gone on a Cosmic Retreat,

         She packed up her radiance, light and heat;

 

 

 

 

        And just when all was seemingly dark,  

 

 

 

 

 

        She made herself known inside of my Heart.

                                                         

 

 

 

The obvious tale of the Winter Solstice is one story, however there are several other stories within this art book. The first page is definitely the Sun preparing for her little cosmic holiday and her “bag” is packed with kindred-spirited nature- things.   The middle page shows that the Queen of the Sun, a Light Presence from Venus, is dwelling within a very dark hive and the hive itself looks to  the inside Light(the Queen Bee)  to enliven their reality through the deep winter months.  The entire hive is moving around this Queen Sun, just as our planet continues to move around our Solar System’s Sun.

 

  Mankind also is faced with a  choice – do I allow myself to go with the external dying away of nature in the Autumn and wait out the winter, get diagnosed with winter blues  or do I do like the bees and break with the external influences and go Inside and find radiating there my enlivened Life-spirit of Imagination, which frees me from the slumbering earth’s drama.

 

The last page tells the story in waxes of yellows and sky-blues of the  Creative Heart’s Song being sung by an etheric bird and a physical bird .  This encaustic painting has the bird singing joyfully its Songs of Life,  inside of the metal world which encircles it.  The songs which she is singing are from the Inspirations which come through to the Imagination and manifest

in the small altered book which you can see inside of her  birch bark nest  on  the middle page. This book holds  within its pages Poetry, Music, Painting, Sculpture, and Architecture which all  came as a wave of love from the inner creative light of the Heart.

 

Let’s join the Song  and celebrate Winter as the highest time of creativity!

 

 

 

 

HOW TO HELP CLEAN UP THE CONTAMINATED WAX FOUNDATION IN THE HIVES

                                   WAX FOUNDATION PRESS – making  organic, clean small cell foundation from your own wax

 

Winds are blowing 60 kilometres  an hour, snow is blocking the view of the bay and instead of snuggling in by the fireside with a good book, we are as busy as bees making our own wax foundations for the beehives for this Spring. The idea of the existence of winter is now an illusion. Our days are full of new ideas for the bees for this  coming season, and Bello Uccello’s special designed  six top- bar- hives are in full- production in the woodworking shop.  Squeezed in the middle of all of this, Klaus has  managed to use up all of the clean, uncontaminated cappings wax which we have saved for five years, to make a pile of wonderful smelling,deliciously golden coloured, pure organic wax foundations for the beehives.

 

PICTURE OF HOMEMADE SMALL CELL FOUNDATION FROM CAPPINGS WAX

 

 

Why Make Your Own Wax Foundation for your Hives from your own Clean Cappings Wax?

 

All the commercially sold wax foundations  are contaminated with insecticides, mitecides, antibiotics, neonicotinoids, herbicides, pesticides and all the other poisons which cover our rural countryside where the bees and other pollinating insects try to survive.  Some of these toxic mixtures  are brought back to the hives on the bees themselves  and

others are deliberately  placed inside of the hives to kill mites etc.  So even if you are doing organic beekeeping; if you are using commercial- wax- foundation, the honeybees have a stressed condition in their hives from the get-go.  Going foundationless is the ideal way to proceed; however it does have its drawbacks, such as the honeybees do not always draw out the right comb size, and  they sometimes make far too much drone- cell- size comb which is counter-productive for the

welling-beingness of the hive and for the beginning keeper of bees, all of  this can make for  a difficult situation .

 

  We decided the beginner keeper of bees could use a helping hand in  bringing their  organic hives back to their “natural size” with the following strategy;

 

1.  By making your own Foundation Press with a reduced- cell -size of 5.0 you will be making the first step in the regression

of the bee size in the hive.  At the same time the question of proactive, non-chemical reduction of the mite problem is being

addressed.  Mites prefer  the larger drone- cell- size to complete their  life cycle and the  small- cell- foundation seems to not provide the mites with a ripe situation for their reproduction. This intermediate- size- cell will also help the honeybees eventually get back to their original  pre-commercial size of 4.9  or smaller;  rather than the commercial- commodification- sized cell of 5.4.  This larger sized bee drama  has the same story as the supersized cow udders and every other agribusiness commodifcation supersized strategy  which distorts Life and Nature for its own greedy ends.

 

2. And the other advantage, besides the obvious uncontaminated wax environment within the hive, is that   one kilo of wax equals 7 to 9 kilo of honey and bees which already have the  organic-foundation-wax provided for them,  can put their energies into building up the hive and providing  more honey for this thriving- hive-condition.  (This has definitely been what we have experienced here at Bello Uccello  – more bees, who eat lots of their own honey and less excess honey to share for selling. You can see why this thriving condition may not be appealing to anyone in the commodification business of the honey bee:-} )

 

FOUNDATION PRESS MADE HERE AT BELLO UCCELLO FROM RECYCLED MATERIALS with FOOD GRADE SILICONE RUBBER

FOUNDATION MATRIX  

 

Voila!!!!! a wonderful wax sheet ready for easy removal from the press and put into a frame 

 

 

Method to Regress the Bee Size with  your own Foundation Press:

 

Step 1  is to place in the super your new  small cell foundation and this is done to encourage the bees to draw this new -small- cell foundation into combs.

 

Step 2 is that once the bees have successfully drawn two adjacent small cell combs,that have been capped; then you can place between those two- capped -bee frames, made with your new foundation, a foundationless frame. Repeat this pattern until your whole hive is made by the honeybees. This works the best when you do it during the main honey flow.  If you carry this plan forward in your apiary; eventually you will have a beehive which draws its own small cell foundation and you will have hives which are

non-contaminated.  

 

 

 

 

 

NATURAL BEEKEEPING WORKSHOP BASED ON BIODYNAMICS -N.S.

NATURAL BEEKEEPING WORKSHOP FOR BEGINNERS BASED ON BIODYNAMIC PRINCIPLES
LATE SPRING 2014

photograph by Marc Geuzinge

Bello Uccello Honeybee Sanctuary will be holding it’s seventh and eighth Beginners Beekeeping Workshop based on Biodynamic Principles in late Spring 2014.

Klaus Langpohl, an experienced biodynamic beekeeper, will be your teacher and guide as he shares with you, one-on-one, the Amazing Life of the Honey Bee, inside and outside of the Hive . The workshop is designed to prepare you for your journey to become a Natural Beekeeper based on biodynamic principles. This is an intensive l5 hours
of classroom and outdoor, hands-on experiences. In a small class setting you will learn about the world of the Queen of the Sun and you will:

– learn about the science of the bee and the hive and the life cycle of the bee
– discover how to take care of the bees without chemicals,
– gain hands on experiences with the hives,gaining confidence in approaching, observing and working with the hive throughout the season
– learn about the equipment and assembly of a hive, and make your own wooden frames for the hive
– practice the art of inspecting the hive and Seeing what to look for as a natural beekeeper
– learn about the pests and diseases which threaten the bees and natural solutions to these challenges
– discover the calendar of beekeeping as a biodynamic beekeeper and view the natural world relationships which influence the honey bee
– meet others in a small class setting who are also environmentally conscious and place a high value on organic/biodynamic food quality
– learn how to regress the size of the honey cell back to its original mite resistant size
– discover how to locate a hive on your property

FOR 2014 Course Details please write to bello.bees@gmail.com

snow rollers in nova scotia

Winter is amazing – we know nature’s artistry, which creates landscapes from the transformed element of water into snow and ice, makes our experience of living here in Nova Scotia all the richer. Today a soft, fine- dusting-snow has accumulated on the fields all day long, creating snow sculptures with the winds help.How white can white be?!
Last week we had a field full of “snow rollers” – they are those self- rolling snowballs which start out on their own and soon create a moonscape appearance
in the yard. That morning everything was quiet

and sunny and beautiful outside and then, all of the sudden, the entire yard came alive. The movement of the snow,
rolling on its own, into hundreds of snowballs was an “Event”!. In 20 minutes this dramatic show, performed by wind and snow, was over. The perfect wind, the perfect temperature and the perfect snow, had come together to play “sculptor” in our yard and they created hundreds of these snow rollers. Luckily we took the photos below
immediately, because within one hour it was raining and they melted away.