my desk and dog

I have to go to SCUBA class and really irks me to no end, NOT because I'm sick of it, I love the class and my class mates. It's just that I'm ultra sick of having my work flow being interrupted. It kind of burns my brownies you know? None the less, I'm going and will have fun when I get there... here's my desk and my dog, Panda.

This should be at least interesting.

Working on a deliverable!!

Alright, so yes public...it is time. Time for me to collect my fruits of labor and create a deliverable. What that means is I will make something, a physical object, fueled and fed by the information gathered in this blog. I've chosen a booklet/poster combination. here are some prelim sketches. don't judge ;)

What it is that Dr. Delaney does

Her name is Debbie Delaney and she is a Postdoctoral Research Student at NC State, meaning she is actually DOCTOR Debbie Delaney. Very cool.

Her research is on feral honey bees or wild/undomesticated honey bees. She is researching this in light of the honey bee health crisis known as Colony Collapse Disorder or CCD. She is hoping that after all of her data is collected that she will find something in the feral bees' genes that will help our domesticated honey bees overcome CCD.

Dr. Delaney has contacted many people all across the state, literally from the mountains to the coast, that know of wild or feral nests. She then trecks out to these places and gathers samples of both honey bees (with a SWEET bug net) and honey comb.

In the up coming winter months when the bees become very dormant and inactive outside the hive, Dr. Delaney will run tests on the collected bees' genes and the collected honey combs' chemical make up to determine if the feral bees have better, more robust genes and if the honey comb contains any pesticide or harmful residue.

She says that to help honey bees out we should allow a few weeds to grow, such as dandelions, something that honey bees love to forage. Also, when landscaping your yard, plant some yellow or blue flowers, colors that attract honey bees, because at the end of the day what it amounts to is this: honey bees feed us, so we need to feed them.

With out honey bees we wouldn't have the yeilds that we have and MUST have to feed our current population. Honey bees add 15 million dollars to our annual agricultural profit and more importantly they add nutrition to our diets to keep us healthy.

With out honey bees we wouldn't have almonds, watermelon, cantaloupe, cucumbers, squash, cherries, apples, blueberries, strawberries, oranges, etc.

Every 1 out of 3 bites of food you take is efforts produced from honey bees, whether directly [squash, watermelon, strawberries] or indirectly [steak, chicken, pig]. You may be wondering about the "indirectly" claim. I say indirectly because even though a honey bee does not pollinate Daisy the cow, the honey bee DOES pollinate the alfalfa, a major commodity for cattle feed, that Daisy eats. So the milk, meat, butter and cheese that comes from Daisy is in fact, thanks to the honey bee.

So if we are to loose our honey bees to CCD this is what we would live without:

>> 15 million dollars annually + all the jobs that went along with the farms that will fail.

>> all cucurbits: squash, watermelon, cantaloupe, honey dew, pumpkins.
>> many berries and anti-oxidant rich fruits such as blueberries, strawberries, oranges, kiwi, apples, pears.
>> Almonds, alfalfa, buckwheat.
>> a major reduction in: beef, poultry, pork.
>> a major reduction in their by-products: butter, milk, cheese, ice cream, eggs, etc.

So that means you could sit down to a meal with oatmeal, bread, water and turnips.

No jam for your bread. No butter for your oatmeal. Forget meat, it will be too expensive.

There will be tomatoes at least, bumble bees are responsible for tomatoes.

So, as you can see, Dr. Delaney's research is VERY important, not only for America and her Farmers but also for our health and quality of life.

Getting to know the person, Dr. Debbie Delaney

How did you come to honeybees for your life's work?

"I used to be in art school and I basically went to college to draw human beings but then I fount insects a lot more fascinating and more interesting to draw, and so I switched over to insects and while I was there I realized that I wanted to LEARN about insects. So I went to school for entomology, I switched schools, becoming an art school drop out, and um, I took a general entomology course and there was this class devoted to honey bees and I immediately was fascinated. I got bee fever, I found out right after class, how fast I could get a colony of my own."

Dr. Delaney went on to get one hive or a nucleus hive, and that grew into 70 which became the foundation for her bee business. She also likes them because, "They are fuzzy." :)



(the picture above is NOT Dr. Delaney's personally, it is just a good example of what her's looked like)
Dr. Delaney doesn't mention it, but while getting her Masters she lived in Oregon and went to school there. Meanwhile her and her husband lived together in a small, sustainable house called a yurt. A yurt is circular nomadic structure and commonly used on the steppes of Central Asia.

In the center of her own yurt, Dr. Delaney and her witty sense of humor painted a mariner's compass. "That way I could refer to my kitchen as being in the west wing and the sitting area in the east wing. It was very fun," Delaney said. Dr. Delaney also has three children and has done a spectacular job raising them. She says that they have helped her keep her footing, her bearings and her priorities on what is important.

More w/ Don Hopkins

Don shows us worker bees and drones, up close and personal!! He also finds a "verroa mite," a major killer of honey bees.



a diagram for your enjoyment!! :)

a Quote by Dale Carnegie

Today is life-the only life you are sure of. Make the most of today. Get interested in something. Shake yourself awake. Develop a hobby. Let the winds of enthusiasm sweep through you. Live today with gusto.

[Dale Carnegie]

some sweet Social Culture of the Honeybee

Like any social group, honeybees have cliques or castes (the technical term).

There are drones, workers, larvae, and the Queen.

Drones are the males and they have no stinger. You can tell them apart from the workers because they are bigger and their compound eyes are huge and look like one unit where as on the workers, the eyes are smaller and in more distinct eye shapes. The drones are considered helpless in a way because they can't feed themselves, the workers feed them, they can't make wax and they can't secrete royal jelly. Their sole purpose and function is to mate with the Queen. They mate "on the wing," which means in flight, and die immediately there after.

Conversely, all worker bees are female and they DO sting. They are smaller than the drones and have two distinct eyes versus the drones very large ones (it's hypothesized that they are extra big so that they can see the Queen to mate). Worker bees forage, produce wax and can secrete royal jelly from a gland in their heads. Royal jelly is the determining factor for what makes a Queen bee.

The Queen bee starts out as a little white egg that is laid by an existing Queen. Then, the worker bees, who feed all the young, will feed a few specific eggs royal jelly, a special food that makes the larvae develop into a Queen. If a larvae isn't fed royal jelly then it will hatch into a worker bee. The drones are hatched from eggs that the Queen lays but that were not fertilized. Only fertilized eggs yield females.

Also, another distinguishing characteristic of a Queen is the Queen cell. Workers hatch from regular honey comb, where as the Queen is housed in a vertical, peanut shaped cell.

Earlier, I spoke of the colony will "fix a Queen fight." What that means is that there will be many Queen cells, maybe 5 or 10, and when they hatch, the way that one Queen is chosen in through Queen fights so that way the fittest will win. However, Dr. David Tarpy, a professor at NC State in entomology, specializing in honeybees, said that some how the bees will favor one particular Queen and will aid her, "fix the fight," to make sure that she wins.

Bees have specific rules, they are very clean and will never, EVER leave their Queen. They are an admirable species.

some sweet Anatomy of the Honeybee

where we left off:
1) Honeybees are fuzzy, 2) yellow and black, 3) ruled by a monarch, 4) have really cool tongues (that we haven't talked about yet), 5) like blue, purple and yellow flowers that are flat, and 6) make sweet, golden syrup called honey 7) are VITAL to agriculture in North Carolina because of their pollination powers.




So just like humans are unique in that we have less hair than other members of the Hominidae family and are the only ones that utilize our tongues/vocal chords (resulting in speech), honeybees are unique to the Hymenoptera order. Where as we have less hair, honeybees are the opposite and have a very fuzzy thorax. That is totally different than anything else in the Hymenoptera family which includes, wasps and ants; they are fuzz-less.

Honeybees are also like us in that they use their mouths differently from everyone else. Wasps and ants use their mandibles for eating. Honeybees use theirs for moving pollen around to their back legs where they have pollen baskets, and honeybees also have an additional something: a tongue or proboscis to drink nectar and water.



Honeybees and ants, like everyone else in their family, have antennae, but use theirs slightly different. Ants are included in this feature because, like the honeybee who lives in a dark hive, ants live in dark tunnels, and the way that these highly social insects communicate is through pheremones.

Pheremones are emmited for a number of reasons like for signaling alarm, attack, mating, foraging and the ultimate Queen pheremone that keeps worker bees from laying eggs. That we'll get to in "some sweet Social Culture of the Honeybee."

These pheremones are detected and decoded by their antennae that decipher smell (pheremones), touch and taste.

some sweet History of the Honeybee

Apis mellifera; The honey-bearing bee.

(apis means bee, melli means honey, ferre means to bear)

Apis mellifera are fuzzy, black and yellow winged creatures that deliver powerful venom through barbed stingers, fix queen fights and are ruled by a stiff monarchy. Ironically they make honey, a sweet and golden syrup that is ferociously sticky and has been claimed to have magical properties.

So these stinging insects make sweet magical syrups…who are they and where did they come from?

Good question.

The classic honeybee or as already mentioned, Apis mellifera, is a pollinating insect that is necessary, and honestly VITAL, to North Carolina and its agricultural crops. Listed are some crops that are pollinated by honeybees in North Carolina and other food growing states such as California and Florida: watermelons, cantaloupes, squash, avocados, almonds, strawberries, blueberries, apples, pears, oranges, sourwood, and even buckwheat.

So now that we know WHO, WHERE is the next question.

Honeybees originated in Africa, Europe and western Asia. Some of the earliest documentation of honeybees and humans (beekeeping) comes from Egypt in a sun temple for King Ne-user-re.

Before that, honeybees evolved from pollinating insects that came about in the Cretaceous period 144 million years ago.

Honeybees, like other pollinators such as the hummingbird, moths, butterflies, and beetles, have preferences. They are attracted to blue, purple and yellow flowers that are flat or have a place for them to land and drink the nectar with their tongues (which is super cool and we'll get to that in a minute), like a sunflower. In comparison, hummingbirds like red and orange and flowers that are long and tubular to facilitate their beaks, such as a hibiscus. It's kind of creepy how these flowers seem to be perfect match for the pollinators they attract.

That has to do with the fact that flowers and insects co-evolved during the Cretaceous period and therefore shaped their selves for each other. It's kind of beautiful, almost like a love story.

Okay, so in short:

1) Honeybees are fuzzy,
2) yellow and black,
3) ruled by a monarch,
4) have really cool tongues (that we haven't talked about yet),
5) like blue, purple and yellow flowers that are flat,
and
6) make sweet, golden syrup called honey
7) are VITAL to agriculture in North Carolina because of their pollination powers.

so many avenues it's like being in a 14th century city

Okay, so after this weekend I am PUMPED to get everything online and up for y'all to see. I have been to North Wilkesboro for the NCSBA (North Carolina Beekeepers Association) convention and met some of the most generous and wickedly smart people ever. The convention was held at the Wilkesboro community college and was followed by a banquet at Brushy Mountain Bee Farm. Notice that this bee farm is on a mountain and that my friends is something Eliza here is just NOT used to driving on. I'm from the Coastal PLAINS region and lets just say it's slightly flatter than Brushy Mountain.

To be honest, I'm not real sure that I've ever even ridden a roller coaster that had turns quite like the snakey, bendy road...it was AWESOME!!

I wont say it wasn't a little frightening but after I got the hang of it, I kind of wished there had been more roads like that back home.

Anyway, when I finally got to the banquet it was amazing and I fell in love with the people and their quirks. I documented some of the faces that were there and I feel like their pictures talk for themselves.

Beekeepers are usually very genuine and it shows in their pictures. Now, just because I said genuine it doesn't mean sweet, nice and docile. No, quite the opposite. Many are very quirky and what I mean by genuine is that they don't appologize for who they are, even if they are harsh, obnoxious or geeky; they respect themselves and don't try and manipulate who you think they are, WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get).

Anyway, visit my Flickr account to see them.

Some things that I learned about at the NCSBA convention, like apitherapy, are posts that will be coming up soon.

There are SO MANY DIFFERENT AVENUES to explore!! Everything just twists and turns together...not unlike the medieval streets of Prague, Barcelona or any other 14th century city.

It gets hard to write because they are all so interesting!! Please be excited and I'll be working hard.

Eliza

Some one's self worth and potential is more than h/is,ers circumstance

{I admire this quote}
Aerodynamically, the bumble bee shouldn't be able to fly, but the bumble bee doesn't know it so it goes on flying anyway.
--Mary Kay Ash




ps. this is a honey bee, NOT a bumble bee but I wanted to use this in a post, hehe.

INTERVIEW: Jennifer Keller II

photos by Eliza

INTERVIEW: Jennifer Keller

July 8, 2009 Bee Lab on Lake Wheeler Rd, Raleigh, NC

Driving down Lake Wheeler road, after you pass Tryon, a student from NCSU would wonder, “This is Raleigh?” From parts of Lake Wheeler road you can see the skyline of downtown, a distant and paradoxical image because there, in the viscera of the city people are sending emails, sipping espresso and working in design studios a-hum with AC units. Meanwhile fields of liquid green paint the rolling hills that add subtle finesse to the farm land, which is accessed by Lake Wheeler road.

For the Raleigh apartment dweller who goes downtown and experiences the rich culture of restaurants, businesses and artists, it’s almost unnerving in a way because these landscapes coexist minutes apart from one another, yet exude totally different lifestyles. It’s not that they aren’t similar, because they are; people in rural Raleigh send emails, sip espresso and probably design a hell of a lot better that I can, so what is it that is so revealing and shocking? I can’t quite explain it but when traveling out there to interview Jen Keller something shifts in my chest and it has to do with that paradox, with those two worlds existing with in miles of one another and being so dramatically different in their vibe.

I inhabit both "worlds" because I’m a designer, a farmer’s daughter and am interested in pursuing things of an agricultural nature in a design oriented vehicle(s, photography, videography and writing). Either way it is soothing driving out to the bee lab and a welcome relief from the headache that is Hillsboro St.

I walk into the lab and it smells sharp of wood and honey. Jen is outside, so that is where I go. She says, “Let’s find some shade,” and we do, beneath some pine trees in the bee yard. She’s quiet but not in a heavy, intimidating way, but quiet in the way that examples her knowledge and patience. I think some call it wisdom-- but again, either way it’s soothing and makes it very easy to carry on a conversation. And this is how it went.

Hey Jen, tell us who you are and what you do.
My name is Jennifer Keller and I am the apiculture technician for Dr. Tarpy’s lab.

What led you to bees? I got my bee start when I did the Peace Corp in Paraguay. I was assigned to forestry and agriculture; however, that didn’t interest the people in Paraguay. But they were interested in bees and honey. They weren’t interested in the forestry project because they weren’t able to plan ahead. “I have a tree already, why do I need another,” was a common response from the farmers.

What types of crops did they raise? All sorts of stuff, corn, cotton, soybeans. They were interested in honey. Honey is made relatively fast and procures a near instant product (the honey) as well as money.

What is the relationship like between the Paraguay farmers and bees? They didn’t understand the relationship between pollination and their crops, bees were just there. Also they didn’t have any crops that needed bees. They just wanted the honey. It was much more common to have feral bees. Basically everybody had bees in their back yard.

What does honey mean to the folks in Paraguay? They were pretty poor and couldn’t spend money on luxuries. They couldn’t buy candy and this was a way to get some sweet… its sugar gotten cheaply. They didn’t eat dessert every night like we can here.

What intrigued you about honeybees and why do you spend your career with them? That’s easy. I knew I wanted to go back to school but I didn’t know what area. They interested me because you never learn it all. You think you know it all and then you learn something knew. It never gets old. So I figured out you could go to school for bees and I went and here I am. I am still not tired of it.

How are the NC farmers different from the Paraguay farmers? Recently, in the past 10 years, the farmers here (in North Carolina) realized the relationship between crops and bees. Before that, the attitude was much the same as it was in South America, but the change happened when the NC feral populations started dying out. Now farmers have to rent out hives to get the same kind of yields that they did before the honey bees started dying out from the wild. You know, the fact that the honey bee has started to decline has brought a lot of awareness to the public. Any time someone hears that I’m working with honeybees they always ask, “So what’s up with the honeybees? Why are they disappearing.”

So why do you think they are disappearing? (looks a bit upset) You know I don’t even want to speculate, but it’s not the cell phones, that’s for sure. And it’s probably not one big issue causing them to disappear but many small ones.

What is the watermelon pollination project about? It is a preliminary study to see how our honey bees are useful in watermelon fields and how many hives are really needed per acre. “Are more hives helpful? Do I need less?” are some questions we have. Our hopes are to show that is enough questions out there to present a proposal for a grant based research project.

What is your most memorable bee moment? When I got the first honey out of my first hives, because you spend the whole season waiting and waiting and we didn’t know what we were doing. We borrowed an extractor but we dripped it all over the floor and ended up skating in honey. Very memorable.

Do you have any bee superstitions? No I’m not a very superstitious person so, no, no special beliefs.

What’s your thoughts on local beekeepers? I think most beekeepers truly love their hobby and they are very eager to share their passion with others, which I always appreciate. You can ask them anything and they are like, “Ooh let me tell you all about it!” They love talking about bees. Also, every beekeeper thinks THEY know the best way to do something. For example, the running joke is that if you ask 10 beekeepers 1 question you get 11 answers. (laughs) It’s kinda true.

Thank you Jen for talking with me.

WHY you should compost

This is a video I made for Larry's Beans while interning for them this past summer. Working for them was great. I was able to be in an open and professional atmosphere and experience their close-knit employee family.

Their office is located inside the what I refer to as the "Bean Palace" and it always smells kind of like heaven because of the roasting beans. Larry buys all of his beans from farmers who actually care about their products and need honest money for their honest work. That seems like commonsense; however, often times these farmers get shafted and payed unfairly, hence the coined term "FAIR trade" applies to all of Larry's Beans coffee.

He even visits them once a year. How cool!

Also, one day while I was there, a typical thunderstorm blew up and started to bath the earth with its torrential rains. Larry called to me and said, "Step out here." We walked onto his balcony and he pointed at this huge black thing, the cistern. That cistern helps ease the burden of water use at the Bean Palace.

At that moment I thought, "What other internship could you stand on a balcony with your boss, THE BOSS that you get to see everyday, and watch a summer thunderstorm work its magic and fuel the Bean Palace?"

So overall, this experience was great and definitely memorable.

Eliza

Calendar of Events

[This is a calendar of events for me, here on Beeing Together]

















Up and coming this week will be...

>History of Honey bees, ancient practices, folklore etc.
>Honey bee social structure + waggle dance
>Evolution of pollinating insects
>Reports from the Bee Keeper convention

"Goings on of the Hive"

Here my good friend Graham Ford, a senior in Forestry at NC State, talks to us about an experience he had with bees in the Duke Forest where he is interning.

The bees he found are in the base of a sugar maple tree. Bees often times will inhabit hollow trees and other such cavities including caves, unused chimneys, even broken down trucks and equipment.

The basics

WHO: Santiago Peidrafita
WHY: Graphic Design department head + my Mentor for this Independent Study




This whole idea began in Santiago's office at the beginning of May. I was in his office going over my fall schedule and I mentioned that I was going to be working in an entomology lab specializing in honey bees. I told him that I wanted to create something that would use my experience with the bee lab as an example for what I hoped to do when I graduate, which is to do scientific research but also be a messenger and a communicator to the other side, to the public (my dream job would be to work for National Geographic). I love to learn, but usually that's not good enough. After a great class or experience there is still a lingering urge to do something, to create something, with my new found knowledge. I like to think of it as my way of self-expression because I learn something, pass it through my system, letting it work through all the different brain chemicals, cogs, metaphors, images and emotions that show up, and then birth a story, a photo essay, a poem or a booklet. It's what I do.

here is an instructional drawing:














I'm extremely accurate and technical. It's intimidating, I know.

Alright, so as the idea became more solid during our talk Santiago asked, "Why don't you use this for an independent study? It sounds exactly like what you want to do and it will be an excellent way to show future employers what is is that you can do." So with that the idea hatched and we've been working on getting it to this point (the production of a blog + deliverables) for about two months through meetings and email. Our last meeting was held over Skype and it proved to be a very efficient way to communicate because he was able to log onto the blog and Flickr account and see everything I had thus far done. Our next meeting is tomorrow morning. I'll update the blog accordingly.

Eliza

The Propsal, featuring (not Sandra B) but Me and some honey bees

GD 495/Documenting Apiculture: the farmer, the bees, the lifestyle.

This class is for marrying together both science and design.

This interdisciplinary topic is one that I have great interest in and have always wanted to approach. I believe that design and science are very much related because both require patterns of thought, which are fluid and concerned with possibilities rather than limitations. With science nothing can be proven, therefore questions are all that you have. In design the better the question the better one can ideate. Good ideation leads to even better design. Thus, quality design starts with thorough question asking which considers culture, both object and social, past history, current positioning and a speculation for the future. That is the only way a designer can effectively address problems and communicate in a way that resonates with an audience. Sometimes its about bringing clarity to a complex subject matter by exposing present contradictions in a photo essay, while other times it may be about improving pesticide labels so that companies can adequately inform farmers, consumers, and the public at large. Design relates to both material usage and social human-centered issues relevant to any particular community.

The objectives of this independent study are to document local North Carolina bee farmers—their work practices and lifestyles— and the major role honeybees’ play as pollinators in agriculture in the form of photography, videography and writing. These different formats will be used singularly and in concert to support the design of a web blog and of a complementary printed information piece. Also, at the end of this investigation an awareness-building presentation will be designed and potentially delivered in a 4th grade educational classroom setting.

[-----------------------------------------]

So in a nut shell, this blog is about:

1) Science + design

-----] a. Science: will focus primarily around apiculture, the study of honeybees, in Dr. David Tarpy’s lab.

-----] b. Design: will focus primarily on the forms of photography, videography, and writing. The design aspect is most concerned with the format of delivery, such as a web blog, photogallery, printed information pieces and a presentation. It is about designing the relay of knowledge from science to designer to participant (aka the co-designer. This is the theory that the designer creates; however, the participant completes the experience with what previous experiences, exposure and preferences s/he may have).

2) There will be additional fun side topics on what ever comes up. I’m getting a dog named Scooby in mid-July, so maybe I’ll have some pieces and photos of the ecology of dog and dog parent :) Also I may touch on things like SCUBA diving. I’m in a SCUBA class so that when I go on vacations I can see the sea as if I were a crazy cool sea creature AND so that I’ll be more competitive for aquatic lab jobs or studies.