Weaving Wasps and Horned Hornets

Some people have asked Madame Beespeaker, "What is the difference between a wasp an a hornet?" I usually mumble something, like, "I'm the wrong person to ask. I haven't got a clue," and then change the subject to bees or breakfast. I finally found the guy who answered the question for me in the comments section of his recent post on his blog The Home Bug Garden. He lives in Edmonton and he gardens for bugs, and his wife takes photos of them! Cool. I am very excited to be going to Edmo in September to a performance art festival because I'm going to visit the Bug Room at the Royal Alberta Museum. As well as eat perogies. Yum. Anyway, here is the link: Biodiversity Gone Bad: Hornets in the Home Bug Garden.

Pulling Up Roots at the MOP Bee Garden

It's that time of year when if you really don't want something to set seed you have to cut it down or pull it out. Dragon's Head, or Dracocephalum moldavica is a member of the mint family, so it self-seeds readily. Since someone else will be taking over the garden next year, and most of the blossoms were spent, I decided it was time to pull the plants out to dry them and make tea. (I'll do a more in-depth post on that later.) The seeds on the dry parts of the plants rattle inside their individual pods, so they are just about to pop.

This sunflower was getting a lot of love on Wednesday. In this photo you can see a bumble bee, leaf-cutter, and a honey bee all feeding at the same time. That's why I love sunflowers--room for everyone!

Sharon and Jody and I cleaned and preened and watered in and around the garden beds in anticipation of our great big fall teaparty on Sunday Sept 13. Better get your plaid rags out of storage and dust off your sporran! It's a tartan and tweed dress code for this one.

This is a mystery plant I saved seeds from at UBC farm. I love the way the leaves smell.

This is nigella with its wierd and wonderful seed pods looking like internal organs from some part of the human body.

Syrphid flies and honey bees were fighting for space on the anise hyssop blossoms, even to the point of eventually chasing each other around the garden.

Agastache rogosa "Honey Bee Blue" grown from seeds I purchased from Van Dusen Gardens. I like the flavor of these leaves. They have a mellow licorice flavor without that sharp cat pee (sorry, but it's true) fragrance that some mints have.

Here is a daddy long-legs cowering in the shadows, hiding from a syrphid fly. Move it or lose it daddy!

And speaking of internal organs, here's a funny little apple growing in a corner of the garden.

Corn is in the Silk Moon

It's the month of ripe plums (Shawnee), black cherries (Assiniboine) and black berries (Wishram) staining our fingers and lips. The silk tassels on top of the corn husk are turning brown (Ponca), signalling the corn is ripe for the picking (Algonquin). While this year's geese are beginning their first migration (Cree), summer is coming to a close (Kalapuya.) The Hopi consiser this month of abundant harvest the Month of Joyful, or Month of Life at it's Height. It's the month where we all reap what we have sown, humbled by the luck of the forces of nature that helped or hindered your work along the way. For some, it is a joyful month, for others who have had a cold dry summer, it is one of the most bitter.

EYA Beekeeping Interns

A syrphid fly sips at a wabi sabi sunflower.

This year the Environmental Youth Alliance is hosting a program at the MOP community bee hive that teaches youth how to be urban beekeepers. The instructor is Brian Campbell, who is currently available to answer your beekeeping or general bee-related questions care of West Coast Seeds: info(at)westcoastseeds.com.

The interns taught us how to do the waggle dance and sent out foraging bees to find honey sticks and then tell us where they were by dancing. Then we were given a talk about the beekeeper's year, and some reasons why you might want a hive or two in your backyard.

Given that we've had such hot, sunny weather, I'm sure the bees appreciate this custom-made bee bath. (I guess technically, it's more a communal drinking cup.)

Each intern lead an activity or gave a presentation and they even put a frame into the visible hive. The colony had recently lost their queen, but re-queened themselves, so hopefully they will be strong enough to survive the winter. Now is the time of the year to treat bees for mites and do a thorough hive check to see if the bees have enough honey and pollen to survive the winter. By mid-October the weather will be cool enough that the beekeeper won't want the risk of opening the hive and chilling the bees. One thing I learned that is the beekeepers must tip up the back of the hive in the winter so that all the condensation in the hive will flow out the front and prevent mildew from forming.

Beespeaker 100

Bumblebee resting on buckwheat. It's interesting how pale her head is. She actually blends in quite well with this plant because the buckwheat seeds are quite dark in contrast with the blossoms.

Hey, it's time to celebrate Madame Beespeaker's 1ooth post for this blog! Woot! I am so happy to have this seasonal diary as a template for future adventures in beespeaking and urban beekeeping. Using this diary, I'll be able to write a more in-depth blog in the next couple of years. I am planning to continue working as Madame Beespeaker, creating some more community art projects and art education projects while expanding my use of materials and performance methods. At the same time I will branch off into a who new shoot of work involving moths. I've turned into such an insect nerd! (My child hood was all about rocks, but that's another story.)

An unidentified smaller bee covered in pollen on the corepsis. The blanket flower head was in the way of my camera lens!

Creating this bee garden at MOP with my helpers has been such as incredible privilege. I just picked up a lovely book by Jim Nollman called Why We Garden: Cultivating a Sense of Place. (Yes, it's the guy who talks to whales--we must be kindred spirits.) Why garden? This about sums it up: "With a lot of tender loving care, good landscaping design, and savvy plant knowledge, most everything a human being needs in this world--including food, comfort, museum, university, social clubhouse--will be there for foraging." (pg. 58) It's this sense of self-containment that I find so satisfying. I enjoy the garden as gesamtkunstwerk. I like the semi-privacy of my back yard garden, but also the social nature of the MOP as a community garden. As a transplant from the prairies, gardening in both private and shared spaces helps me feel anchored and rooted, and gives me the sense of belonging I pine for.

In some ways this blog is just the tip of the ice berg--just me jotting down some basic thoughts and impressions so I can go in and create something new from this diary. I will use the photographs and my experience with growing to help create an artist book or a set of cards on how to create your own bee garden. Even though I don't get many written comments. (Ahem.) People do chat with me about what they read on the blog, which is another reason for its existence.

In the meantime, I am losing myself in the experience of summer while it lasts.

It's not over yet, but I want to thank my colleagues in the art collective MOPARRC (Means of Production Artists' Raw Resource Collective): Sharon Kallis, Lois Klassen, and Jody Macdonald. I also want to thank the staff at the Environmental Youth Alliance, especially Samantha and Rhianna, whose feedback and advice has been an integral part of the project. A big thanks to bee garden designer Jean Kindratsky and bee consultant Brian Campbell. Thanks to the volunteers and to all the people who invited me into their gardens, for those little glimpses into their visions of paradise.

The Opening of the Sedum

This year my father-in law put up several mason bee houses in his back yard and did they ever do a great job pollinating the crab apple tree! He showed me that up inside the tree bunches of apples hanging down. I counted ten in one bunch. I've never seen a tree so loaded down with so much of the rosy fruit.

Right now these apples are quite tart. My mother-in-law makes a fantastic crab apple sauce every year that we have at Thanksgiving.

And now as the nights grow cooler and longer, the last flowers of summer begin to bloom. A tiny bee rests on the petal of a brown-eyed Susan.

I read once that bees see flowers like bright stars against a night sky.

These sedum are not open yet, but they seem to drive the bees a bit mad. Honey bees search frantically for one open floret and even knock competitors out of the way like a pollinator's roller-derby contestant. Bumble bees too must smell something out of range of the human's olfactory senses. What else do they sense that still remains beyond our capacity to measure, study, and wax poetic about? As I feel the anxiety of the expectations of fall and the loss of summer in my heart I project those feelings onto the bees. So much to do before we lose the sun. So many crab apples to pick and cut and put into jars. Protest letters to write to conservative politicians. (Did you know that farmers in Alberta are going to grow GM sugar beets?!) That sort of thing. It feels overwhelming, but there will be inspired days in the winter too, and jars of spicy crab apple sauce.

Growing Home

I've been telling everyone I know about this fabulous new grocery store in our neighborhood at Columbia and 18th. It's called The Home Grow-in Grocer. (No, that is not a typo btw.)

It's a little corner store that has had a few previous incarnations, such as a gallery and a yoga studio. What piqued my interest was an e-mail that let me know I could buy UBC Farm produce at this grocer. Well, I hopped on my bike and checked it out. Now I buy produce there as well as milk and gifts for my friends. Besides food products the owner sells locally made gifts such as cloth bags and soap with as much money as possible going right into the maker's pocket.

They also sell ice cream and the mango flavour is totally addictive. Last night it seemed every family I met on the way to the store was carrying a cup or cone of ice cream from the shop.

I mean look at this lovely garlic. What's not to like?

I heard a rumor that the owner might have a café here in the winter time. I hope it's true!

I will ask about their hours and post them here, but I think they're open until 8 pm most evenings. We are so lucky to have this place in our neighborhood. I wish them all the best.