TwitCause is helping honey bees this week! For every tweet that includes #HelpHoneyBees between November 5th and November 11th, Häagen-Dazs will donate $1 to the Honey Bee Research Facility at UC Davis. This bee lab is doing amazing research into the causes of Colony Collapse Disorder in hoping to find a cure for this mysterious disease.

Bee populations are disappearing at alarming rates and since Häagen-Dazs relies on honey bees for many of the natural ingredients that go into their ice cream, they started HelpTheHoneyBees.com.

You can learn more about honey bee research from UC Davis on Twitter by following Kathy Keatley Garvey (@keatleygarvey).

Get tweeting and help keep these inestimable pollinators buzzing!

justinbeck's Flickr photostream/Creative Commons

We here at TakePart have been greatly concerned with the serious threat that Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) poses to honey bees, so I’m very excited to share the good news that scientists may have found a way to help bees fight back against the somewhat mysterious disorder that is wiping out hives worldwide.

The parasitic Varroa mite is considered to be a major contributing factor to CCD, and so scientists from the Agricultural Research Service have bred bees that exhibit a strong expression of a genetic trait common to honey bees, which allows them to remove mite infested bee broods that would otherwise be destroyed. Read the rest of this entry >>

Rosh Hashanah is the Jewish New Year and it is customary to eat lots of sweet things during this holiday to symbolize what we hope will be a sweet new year. That’s why Rosh Hashanah meals usually include apples and honey, honey cake, sweet challah with raisins and so on.  Since we are a little bee obsessed here on the TakePart blog, I thought it would be a good time to round up some news on these inestimable pollinators:

The 41st world apiculture congress, Apimondia, is currently in session in Montpellier, France. Ten thousand beekeepers, entomologists and other scientists are all asking the same question: What is killing our bees? Colony Collapse Disorder is still a mystery but this phenomenon continues to be a cause for great concern. From the AFP:

By some estimates, this unseen, unsung work is worth more than 200 billion dollars a year, often through hives that are trucked to monoculture farms to do pollinating magic at specific times of the year. Wild bees, bats and other pollinators are simply not numerous enough to do the trick.

Read more about Apimondia from the  AFP article, “Bee Deaths Set Apiculture Congress Abuzz”

UC Davis’ Department of Entomology just launched a website that is a one stop hive for everything you need to know about honeybees and native bees. Have a look around: Harry H. Laidlaw Jr. Honey Bee Research Facility

Read the rest of this entry >>

neotint's photostream (CC)

As urban farming grows in popularity, a British design company has made it even easier for city dwellers to raise chickens and keep bees in their backyard by designing ready-made coops and hives. I may only be a few home projects away from keeping bees and chickens myself, and while I think I’d prefer to build them myself, I must admit that the cleverly designed, ready-to-go structures are certainly appealing.

Omlet, the amusingly named company started by two graduates of the Royal College of Art in London, sells the Eglu (another great name), a plastic igloo that keeps out neighborhood predators, makes egg retrieval easy and is available in brilliant colors.  The team’s latest product, the Beehaus (apparently only available in the UK for now), simplifies the process of setting up a backyard or rooftop hive and streamlines honey collection.  Read the rest of this entry >>

Editor’s note: I had the pleasure of interviewing 12-year old Orren Fox of Newburyport, MA who happens to keep 25 backyard chickens. In this interview, you’ll learn about how this aspiring NBA player is also an inspiring, eloquent kid who is a notable leader in sustainable agriculture on the ground and online on Twitter and through his blog. You’ll meet Snowcap, Macaroni, Butterscotch, Blueberry and all of the other animals he takes care of. Orren can be found on Twitter @happychickens and @happyhoneybees.

Sarah Newman: How old are you and where do you live?
Orren Fox: My name is Orren Fox (there is a fox in the hen house) and I live North of Boston in the littlest city in Massachusetts, Newburyport.
I am 12 years old and will be 13 at the end of December.

What grade will you be in this fall and where do you go to school and camp?
I will be in the 7th grade this fall at Glen Urquhart School in Beverly Farms, Ma. It is a great school, we have a huge greenhouse (I think it is 7,000 feet!) where we work with The Food Project to grow food for food pantries, and we also now have bees. You can see some blog entries here - http://bit.ly/19uPwp

My camp is named Kieve, in Darmiscotta, Maine. We don’t have chickens, but I am hoping that I have convinced them to start a garden for next year. I love it there because we are outside the whole time.

When did you develop an interest in chickens and why?
I’m not really sure. One day I went to my babysitter’s Lisa, nephew’s house and I saw his chickens. I was immediately interested in them. So we got every book available about chickens, I read them all! Then my neighbor Dorothy, who loves animals as much as I do, mentioned Julie and her farm, Oak Valley Farm. I went and met Julie then started working with her on her farm. She had many many chickens and I took care of them on the weekends. I loved it. I loved being at the barn. I loved hearing them talk. Actually I felt like I knew what each bird was talking about. I know this sounds odd. She has hens, roosters, ducks, turkeys, goats, and horses. She lives right next to a big beautiful hay field and peach trees. Then that spring of 2007 she said to me one weekend “I think you should have your own chickens”. I think it might have been one of the best days of my life. I was so excited to go pick out my baby chicks. I couldn’t stand being at school because I wanted to be with them. That year I also joined the American Poultry Association and I earned my Coop Tender Certificate and am trying now to earn my Flock Tender Certificate.

Read the rest of this entry >>

Here at TakePart we love bees, beekeeping and local honey!  I love them too but I’ve always been a bit curious about how the beekeepers harvest the wonderful local honey from the bees.  Luckily there is the awesome video below from LA’s Backwards Beekeepers and Kirk Anderson to tell me how!

So cool! Although now I have to go find some honey to eat - honey is so good!

And if you want to try some of Kirk’s honey you can go HERE.

Cities offer bountiful rooftop space for beekeeping, but beekeepers in New York have had to keep their hives under wraps because beekeeping is currently illegal in the city.  Despite the fact that the bees are likely to only sting the beekeepers (and rarely at that), and pose no real threat to the general public, they are still considered wild animals by the city.  Bees offer a variety of benefits to city dwellers including fresh, local honey, and contribute to productive harvests in community gardens, public parks and nature centers.  As Colony Collapse Disorder continues to threaten hives all over, bees need all the help they can get.

Check out this short video about a few outlaw beekeepers in New York, and find out below what you can do to help legalize beekeeping in New York:

Read the rest of this entry >>

Bees need all the help they can get these days, as concerns about Colony Collapse Disorder continue, and a new study reveals how important native plants are for honeybees and other pollinators.  So I encourage all of you gardeners out there to grow as many native plants as you can fit in your garden this year, and that goes for all first-timers, green veterans, and Michelle Obama, too!  There are lots of tasty edible plants that are great for attracting bees and other pollinators, including berries, melons, squash, cucumbers and basil, and plenty of beautiful flowers that can brighten up the borders of your garden.  Douglas W. Tallamy, an ecologist at the University of Delaware, and the author of “Bringing Nature Home: How Native Plants Sustain Wildlife in our Gardens” told the New York Times:

If we gave them food — flowering native plants — and a place to build their nests, they would be able to take up the slack from decreasing honeybee populations.

And if you have a lawn, let it grow long and flower, bees will love it and your yard will be more colorful than those boring, labor- intensive manicured ones your neighbors have.  Read the rest of this entry >>

Earth Day is a wonderful opportunity to make a difference for the planet, and we’ve found ten amazing Earth Day campaigns to help you TakePart in this years activities.  And be sure to check out the awesome Earth Day programming on Hulu, which Gina mentioned earlier.

1.  Anthropologie

For Earth Day, Anthropologie has designed a beautiful site devoted to the plight of the honey bee, offering you ways to learn more about Colony Collapse Disorder and why bees are mysteriously disappearing.  Here at TakePart we are extremely concerned about the ongoing problem of CCD, which threatens to wipe out one third of our food supply and we are thrilled that companies like Anthropologie are helping educate the public and helping to  find a solution.  Check out their cool storefronts on Flickr and takepart through their website.

2.  Greenpeace

If you’re looking to head to the front lines of the fight to protect our planet, Greenpeace wants you to become a climate activist this Earth Day. Their new video is like of those inspirational military commercials, only they’re looking for a few good environmentalists:

Even if you’re not ready to rappel from the Jesus statue in Rio yet, you can still takepart by asking world leaders to personally attend the upcoming UN climate summit.

3. National Resources Defense Council

Read the rest of this entry >>

Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) has plagued bee keepers worldwide for years and threatens to devastate one third of our food supply, but the cure, let alone the cause for entire hives disappearing has remained a mystery, until now.  Spanish researchers have identified one possible cause for the devastating blight as a parasitic fungus, Nosema ceranae, and what’s even exciting is that they were able to successfully treat and cure the hives with the antifungal fumagillin.  The treatment clearly won’t serve as a complete panacea for CCD, as there are likely other causes and relying on a magic bullet for nature is never wise, but the results are encouraging.  Hopefully the discovery will lead to a great understanding to the other factors contributing to CCD, and more significantly encourage industrial bee keepers to practice healthier hive hygiene.

Happy Spring! Read the rest of this entry >>