Buzzing about Bees

**Beginner Level** 

"Watch the trailer of the movie www.vanishingbees.com"  

5/19 - Watched the Vanishing of the Bees trailer.  I couldn't find a source to stream the full length documentary, but I found The Pollinators which explores similar challenges and was filmed 10 years later.  At this point, commercial beekeepers are likened to the last cowboys, herding bees across the country.  Their entire inventory is deployed for the almond bloom.  They are continuing to see losses of 30% per year and say now it is de rigueur to split and re-queen all their hives annually.  The stress of pesticides, herbicides (defoliate apple bloom so only the 1 king apple flower is pollinated for larger more perfect produce), varoa mites and the loss of grassland forage in the midwest to soybeans and corn is unsustainable.  

What can we do?  Opt for local organic produce grown in season, tolerate blemished or otherwise imperfect produce, buy domestic honey even if it is more expensive, avoid the use of pesticides and other "jugs of chemicals" on our own properties, plant flower forage for bees and consider getting into backyard beekeeping ourselves.   

Plant bee-friendly flowers in your garden

4/30 our Girl Scout council hosted a Zoom session with a local beekeeper that young cultivator and I listened to.  Did you know a single honey bee makes 1/12 a teaspoon of honey?!  Savage's book corroborated this finding, but I was so impressed the presenter knew this statistic off the top of her head to answer a young scout's question.  While we listened, YC and I colored in bee finger puppets (see image) and flew them around the yard, mock pollinating.  The lecturing beekeeper also suggested that bees particularly like plants which make small purple flowers.  A UC Davis resource corroborates, featuring mostly purples and a few golden flowers.    

In our yard, they mob lavender, but I am not sure if it the flower color and shape so much as the fact that it is a long-blooming perennial here that offers them a steady supply.  I have had to watch my step on the sidewalks that have jacaranda (another perennial purple flower) because the bees go after this so hard, they are climbing into blooms that have fallen on the ground.  Conversely, our California pepper tree sounds like it is humming with bees but its flowers are tiny white ones, which is a vote for perennial bloomers rather than purples.  That said, our 2+ story house is painted purple and gold so maybe the bees are pulled in just based on the am-bee-ance?  Maybe we should paint it peptobismol pink and see if we draw even more (Secret Life of Bees house (assignment below)).  A Reddit query on this topic and found we have a lot of other favored flowers this year -- zinnias (even saw a big black native bee visit these), sunflowers, fruit tree blossoms.  I am adding a sterile variety butterfly bush to my nursery wish list as this was also upvoted by Redditors but came with the caveat that it is considered invasive because it is so low-maintenance it can outcompete natives...  Gee, I kind of wish they hadn't patented a life form to contain it though, at least it is perennial so you aren't having to repurchase it every year.  

Read... 

Secret Life of Bees

by Sue Monk Kidd

This was delightful.  (spoiler alert next 4 paragraphs)

I loved how with the calendar sisters, Kidd created a black sisterhood that would be considered successful by my New England "waspy" standards.  They have financial independence, academic credentials, an accomplished musician, even an eccentric they care for privately and find cause to appreciate.  However, it was apparent how much hard work and lucky breaks it took to achieve this status; a father who was one of the few high-ranking professions available to him, inherited property, the decisions of the sisters not to marry and disburse.  If a few cards fell in another direction, and the cards likely would for most, they might easily have been in Rosaleen's spot of having a conviction they were not treated fairly, but little recourse to challenge the status quo peacefully or improve their position.  If their business wasn't something which helped local farmers; if their terms for the farmers (free honey and pollination) weren't so generous, would they have been as tolerated in the community?    

I also loved how they had woven together a fellowship, rituals and religion around the masthead and eclectic cultures that really spoke to them and helped them make sense of their struggles and those of their ancestors (slavery, the role/value of women in society).  I found myself thinking it could be helpful to build our own "wailing wall" to process grief, to have an Assumption party if we felt August needed more celebration, to incorporate fruit salad candles into our lunch rotation, to fill our bathroom with sea shells to remind us of the ocean, to give ourselves permission to do the minimum (stay hydrated) on the hottest times of the year.  

The "bee" theme was also intriguing to follow through the human saga.  In what ways did the analogy hold up?  In what ways did it break down?  The discussion guide queried who the Queen Bee was and that didn't seem entirely clear.  August seemed to be the "leader," but it wasn't like she was directly filling the hive with her own offspring.  And when May, who seemed like a selfless "worker" sister passed, they followed the black veil tradition to notify the bees which seemed to elevate her to more queenly status.  You might be able to see June agreeing to marry as the hive spawning a second queen.  You might also look at Lily's apprenticeship as beekeeper as spawning another queen, perhaps the "queenless" hive was the problematic dynamic the Owens household had with the loss of her mother.  The "drones" also didn't seem to fit as freeloading breeders, the men contributed to the hive as employees and legal counsel.     

The only area that continued to feel a bit distant, implausible, unrelatable to me, was ironically within the white family.  Perhaps because this story opened with a pre-teen narrator who I immediately assumed was angsty and unreliable, I had trouble believing T. Ray was that bad of a father figure.  However by the end when he is disassociating and threatening her with a knife while calling her by her mother's name, my opinion flipped, and judging by contemporary standards I was questioning why he had custody of the girl for so long.  This opened a personal can of worms for me, questioning the efficacy of therapy and mental health-- my hot take is that in some circumstances, therapy can be helpful but in a sad way; that historically this therapy role was probably handled by friends and the community and now we've turned it into a transactional experience.  Instead of investing in training more therapists, we should be investing in social capital so everyone has people they can turn to for support without having to submit an insurance claim.  

So yes, overall, I am glad this was a suggested read for a badge.  It might be worth a re-read and a personal copy so I can dog-ear some of the more thought-provoking insights about the human condition, but I felt like I got the gist from a single read-through.  I am also excited that it looks like there is both a movie and a Spanish audiobook of it available so that if I am inclined, I could experience it in another language or medium.  

**Intermediate Level**

"Research the health difference between raw honey and processed honey"

Processed honey is flash pasteurized and micro-filtered to increase its shelf life because it is less likely to ferment or crystalize.  However, this comes at the expense of several nutritional benefits as outlined by Mann Lake below (a beekeeping supplier):

Benefit	Raw Honey	Processed Honey
Enzymes	Preserved	Destroyed
Antioxidants	High	Reduced?*
Antibacterial	Strong	Weaker
Nutrients	Rich	Less
Pollen	Included	Removed
Flavor & Aroma	Richer	Uniform
Glycemic Index	Lower	Higher**

However!  A study from the National Honey Board (possibly more commercial/processed interests?) was less conclusive.  In their 3 producer samples, they found enzymes dropped an average of 35% which made sense because the heating can break these down.  *This study found that antioxidants actually increased on average 16.4% in the processed honey.

The source plant for honey can have a big impact on its glycemic index independent of how processed it is.  For instance, honeydew honey is 30-35 while manuka is 50.  **The same resource says raw honey has a lower GI than some processed honeys with raw testing in the 30-45 range.  It posits that enzymes in honey could make it less problematic than its GI would indicate (and we conjecture that if there are more enzymes in raw honey, the benefit would be bigger for raw honey than processed).  It suggests that lighter honeys typically have higher GI than darker honeys and reminds diabetics to be mindful of the quantity of honey consumed regardless of GI score.      

My takeaway from this is that raw honey is, if anything, a bit more nutritious, that you can enjoy the unique terroir of small batch sizes, and you can feel good about supporting your local food shelf if you can find a raw honey supplier.  Opt for that option when stocking your pantry, preferably in smaller quantities because you might experience a shorter shelf life and some crystallization.  But there isn't a need to be hyper vigilant about how honey was processed if consuming a treat that you did not make at home.  From the Pollinators documentary, if you find yourself purchasing processed honey from a US supplier, you are still doing some good by providing them with a revenue stream to help offset the losses they take on their core business of renting their pollination services to industrial farms.

Find a local honey vendor. 

Our farmer's market carries Noah's bees brand honey.  This is sort of local, in that it is West Coast.  I will quiz the vendor next Wednesday about the sourcing for her products, maybe there are two Noahs keeping bees, maybe Noah has expanded his operations.  Ideally, we could find a supplier with hives in Southern California.  After a lot of online spelunking, I found Backyard Bees which will sell at the farmer's market a town over.  [update: $14 over venmo scored me raw honey harvested in my city!  I used it as a sweetener for a turmeric tea mix I bought at the same farmer's market]  I might be seeing things, but I believe Janet, its founder was the guest lecturer at the Girl Scout zoom session and might even be the contact my Scout co-lead had made who was offering to host a bee field trip for our girls.  Small world.  This farmer's market inconveniently meets at the same time as my long triathlon training rides, but as soon as I finish the 70.3 race in July (get moving advanced badge), I am looking forward to making the pilgrimage and stocking up.  If anyone else is struggling with where to find local honey, this locator site was very helpful.  

Read:  

Bees: Nature's Little Wonders

by Candace Savage

It took me about a quarter of the book to get comfortable with the "aimless" structure of this slender novel.  Readers are loosely following the bee communication research breakthroughs of two German biologists from WWII to modern times.  However, there are plenty of awe-inspiring interludes to appreciate ancient and contemporary art.  The research itself is humbling as well.  I am picturing the discipline it would take to painstakingly watch one bee for 117 hours to be able to report back she spent 56 of those hours scanning her surroundings for work she already knew how to do.  To faithfully carry out that research takes an attention span and faith in the process I'm not sure many of us could muster.  

Some other random connections that crossed my mind as I leafed through these pages-

*  47% of the observed worker bee's time was spent cruising around looking for work seems pretty similar to my MO when in the house, starting a load of laundry, picking up an abandoned dish, emptying the trash, etc.  And husband does seem to be on more of a drone operating system without the same drive to leave the nest nicer than he found it.  It also crossed my mind that my 6 year old understudy could start picking up the more straightforward tasks before graduating to the more exciting provisioning excursions off the beaten path (i.e. shopping at the farmer's market).  

*  Dancing after finding a particularly rich resource before heading back out to reload gave me pause.  I had been ruminating about "To Do List burn out" and theorizing that adding a little more celebration at task completion would help keep up the momentum.  My less adaptive instinct is to gorge on something sugary or retail therapy.  Maybe instead I could dance or share my "wisdom" with friends.  

*  Resource unload speed gives an indication of hive resource bottlenecks.  I wonder if we might see this in the velocity of money through a checking account if a family is living paycheck to paycheck?  What would be the analog in households who are bottlenecked for other resources like quality time?  What would rapidly unloading someone who came home with a juicy batch of quality time look like?  Materially, this reminds me a bit of the minimalist adage about if you haven't worn/used the thing in a season/year, you didn't need it and should declutter it, that is a worker bee hanging out at the entrance for ages waiting to be unburdened.    

*Hive hunting collective decision-making offers us some help as a collectivist species as well.  Savage notes that it works because (1) The bees have conviction about their first hand observation - so often it seems we gaslight ourselves when our experience doesn't match "the collective" wisdom we glean from prior research or social media.  Another youtuber suggests not doing any/much research until you've actually gone out and attempted the project because it is so easy to elide from preparatory research to procrastination that feels productive.  So now I am pondering how to shift our culture to one that holds space for a discipline of first hand observation and the potential for divergent results.  (2) The bees aren't attempting to compromise, this is a friendly competition.  Too often, we end up worse off than either option by compromising between the two.  I think to make competition friendly, we might need to be more blunt about our interests/observations, more comfortable with the potential conflict this could bring.  I also think we need to do this more often, make it a repeated game, so our sense of identity isn't so closely linked to this singular proposal.  I also think we have to have an appetite to follow the winning pitch, even if we think it is dumb, if only to see if it goes off the rails in the ways we suspect it will.  

10 New Ways to Eat More Fruit and Veggies

 

1.  Stock a countertop fruit bowl.  It turns out some produce actually stores better on the counter than in the fridge.  When you see it, you are more likely to reach for it.  My kid eats twice her weight in apples a year because they are the easiest thing to offer her when she complains that she's hungry.  We also stock cherry tomatoes, kiwi, mango, bananas, limes, mandarins, pears, limited quantities of grapes.  We let avocados ripen on the counter and then move them to the fridge.  We also counter-store savory options it is easy to forget you have like garlic, winter squash, zucchini, and peppers. 

2.  Stage your fridge.  We have hacked a chest freezer to maintain fridge temperatures.  We try to stock the easiest to reach upper levels with more nutrient-dense, calorically light options.  You have to physically move a bunch of prepped crudités, salsa, hummus, berries, and easy reheat grilled cruciferous veggies to get to the tortillas, eggs and cheese hiding below.  We even store some of this less-healthy food in a basement fridge/freezer so if you want it, it will cost someone a flight of stairs worth of exercise.  

3.  Eat your weeds.  Weeds are just plants out of place, right?  Maybe the plants are in the right place and our perspective is distorted.  I now think of spiky perennial artichoke as a weed while Granny thinks of it as a delicacy.  So when I inevitably fall so far behind on weeding that there is no hope of defending the perimeter (or interior) of the veggie beds, I checked out some books on edible weeds and did some googling.  Now my kid will eat wild-harvested oxalis (sourgrass) and snack on artisanal dandelion leaves.  

4.  Plant finger food in Zone 0 and 1.  I've strewn peas, beans, cherry tomatoes, cucumber, kumquat and alpine strawberries in containers on the walkway between the backdoor and the garage.  Like an endless Easter egg hunt, the kid or I will pause to enjoy a fresh off the vine snack we found ripening in this high-traffic area. 

5.  Travel to exotic lands.  Ideally to places that don't offer the standard kids menu beige processed food lineup.  Your kid may discover they like sautéed banana, papaya or zucchini.  

6.  Perpetual Soup.  If the week looks really busy, my texting accountability buddy and I will kick off a pot of "sopa perpetua."  This is usually a kitchen sink affair of whatever aging/freezer burning veggies we want to move, maybe a lentil, tofu or other protein, maybe some miso paste if we don't have stock.  Simmer it on low, sometimes for days on end.  Then we report back on how many meals/bowls of it we managed to eat. The ultimate comfort/convenience food.  Even my kid got in on this when she was playing a video game that has a seasonal event where every character in the town contributes an ingredient to a shared soup.  She contributed cinnamon and sugar but it still came out pretty tasty.     

7.  Garnish your kid's plate.  They asked for pasta or chicken nuggets, but throw some sliced cucumber, seaweed snack, carrot sticks, or apples on there and they will probably disappear too.  If they don't, you can disappear them yourself when you're clearing the abandoned plate.  Sometimes I can get my kid more actively involved in an "eat the rainbow" project, where we try to find and consume a fruit or veggie in every color of the rainbow.  This can also work for carnivorous husbands.  They may not grill broccoli or bake potatoes if they are prepping a meal just for themselves, but if you "strew" those items around the counter in easy reach while they're searing their sous vide, they might scrape some onto their plate if only to avoid offending you.      

8.  Lunch envy.  Most schools in our state do free lunches for everyone, but this Charter has kids pack in a lunch.  I asked my kid what lunch items her classmates bring that she wishes she got.  Sometimes she mentions desserty junk food and occasionally I'll oblige.  But sometimes she mentions things like hummus or carrots sliced into coins that I had no idea she would be willing to eat.

9.  Game- blindfolded taste tests.  There's some trust that goes with this one, that you're not going to feed your kid exclusively challenging foods, but if you can assemble a mix of old favorites and things you can't fathom why they avoid, you can sometimes get them to branch out a little.  My kid won't eat all tomatoes, but she'll sample one if she thinks it might be a grape or tomatillo.  

10.  Kid-lead charcuterie boards.  We had this concept of bringing toppings to "garnish" budget pizza slices at a girl scout meeting.  This was a space-themed meeting.  In searching for appropriately sized and colored food objects to stand in for planets, our kid was willing to partake of capers, olives, pineapples and blueberries.  Not a common pizza combo, but now she doesn't flinch when she sees them as toppings on pasta, yogurt, cereal, etc.  

Know Your Food: 1 Month Food Journal

 "Write a food journal for a month to observe more closely your eating habits.  Do you know where your food was grown?  Read labels."  -Farm Kitchen, 1.  Know Your Food, Beginner Level

This is the most challenging beginner level badge I've attempted so far.  

I wish labels were more specific.  Living in Southern California, a product of Mexico might have traveled less distance than an American grown one.  This grocer is headquartered in Arizona, so I also wasn't sure if food grown in California was first routed to Arizona and back.  I also discovered that Mexico and USA have different "organic" labeling agencies and rules, but it was unclear whether one was consistently more rigorous than the other and it also was vague which agency had endorsed a given product as organic (i.e. a Mexican avocado could be certified organic by either the USA or Mexico).  

But here are 8 improvements that this adventure sparked:   

1.  Planting market staples:  I realized every week organic cucumbers, strawberries, tomatoes, and avocados are on our shopping list.  While there is no way our lot will achieve self-sufficiency this season, and that we should probably scale back on these in the off season, at least some plants are in the ground in our yard.  Fewer food miles, fresher more nutritious food, less plastic packaging, and another excuse to get outside in the sunlight.  win-win-win-win.

2.  Farmer's Market reboot:  In the spirit of less plastic packaging and better food mile visibility, I insisted on a stop at the closest weekly market on the way to a kid activity.  I scored cheaper and more flavorful tomatoes and a copy of the "chef's sampler" of mushrooms (grocery store is currently out of stock) both without the plastic packaging and from less than 100 miles away.  I also added to my weekly to-do lists reminders about several other markets in the area and hope to explore the vendor selection and pricing there as well in the coming weeks.  Hopefully my kid will again relish the ritual of carrying a reusable bag and some cash into the market to make her berry selection all by herself in the market, but at this point, she would rather crawl around in the parked car trying to figure out how to honk the horn.    

3.  Husband's Beef:  Generally, when hubby shops the grocery store, the "deal" to be had with deep discounted meats sparks the most joy for him.  When I online shop for him, I try to get grass-fed versions of his favorite quick-cooking cuts, regardless of price.  Through this project, we discovered he actually prefers the hyperlocal grass fed version of these cuts (sourced mail-order or pickup from a ranch which grazes cattle in our foothills to help as a firebreak) to anything available at the grocery store.  I discovered that the chuck from the same supplier which is supposed to be super good when left in the sous vide for a century stayed gum-tough (maybe I should have seasoned it more?) so I have better intel on what cuts to stock up on and what to avoid.   

4. Hummus lunch box envy:  One of those backseat drive discussions we got to talking about how healthy my kid feels her lunch is compared to peers.  Middle of the road, not a Lunchable, but not as healthy as X's.  What does X bring?  Hummus and bread.  I had no idea my kid was willing to eat hummus.  Now it is a snack time staple.  

5.  Sustainable milk research:  I had waffled so much on dairy and alternatives.  Is it better to just get plant-based milks?  Their ingredient lists look so much more processed and many have lower quantities of protein.  I may one day dabble in homemade soy milk, but in this season of life, it is an appliance I am unlikely to actually use.  So I spent time closely studying the milk brands my grocery carries and settling on a favorite for its regenerative practices (organic, all/80% grass fed) and vat pasteurization technique which might enable me to more easily make things like yogurt or cheese in the future. 

6.  Food-borne illness avoidance/cultural education:  We spent some of this month at a resort on a Caribbean Island with an all you can eat buffet.  While it would have been hard to pull of this trip as a strict vegan, I found that identifying as a vegetarian had its benefits.  My plate was less calorically dense, so less weight was gained.  I could also order "the Typical Honduran" vegetarian plate of rice, beans and veggies, which was delicious and I imagined to be more consistent what the locals ate.  And I did not come home with the souvenir of traveler's GI problems as experienced by poor hubby.  

7.  Cut backs on eating out:  In part, because they were so hard to track in the food log.  We found a recipe for pizza dough that is better than most budget pizzerias and we can dial up the number of organic ingredients and dial back the preservatives and sugar.  We also started a "tacos Tuesday" tradition of home-fried tortilla chips, guac, and tacos and are starting to eat at least a few dinners a week at approximately the same time and in the same room as each other which was the historic benefit of going out somewhere to eat.  I am now aware of the love-hate relationship I have with our local coffee shop.  When I am there, it is so tempting to order a sugary signature beverage (bad!) but their fairly sourced and roasted on premises coffee beans are such an upgrade to mass produced options at the grocery store, I have become a coffee snob.     

8.  Convenience food swaps:  these still count as processed, but I feel like we're moving in the right direction when we swap organic corn tortillas for generic and then fry them at home in our own canola oil rather than buying them bagged as chips, opt for plant-based "chicken" nuggets shaped like dinosaurs, and resupply plant-based protein powder with an eye to which has the most disciplined testing and controls for contaminants.  

There is still a lot about our diet that I'm not proud of -- my daughter's breakfast staple is a pop-can biscuit slathered in Nutella; a nontrivial amount of my monthly fruit/veggie intake is eating the "garnish" she abandons on her plate;  I discovered in trying to make a copy-cat recipe for my favorite beet chip that these are basically deep-fried potato chips.  But I think we are moving in a healthier direction!