Living the secret life of bees at Sunset

Our girls are busy this beautiful October week of Indian summer. They’re working the wild blooming ivy hedge behind our nursery and Mexican bush sage in the test garden.

Today we set some frames outside to dry; they had honey left on them after our last harvest and we thought we had washed them pretty well. But within the hour bees had come to the frames and were slurping up the honey flavored water. They were so excited they were vibrating. Very fun to watch. The girl in this photo is really happy (click on the photo below  to make it a larger size.)

Photo by Kimberley Burch, Sunset imaging specialistWe are excited about the new movie, The Secret Life of Bees. The beekeeping world seems all abuzz; in the October 2008 issue of the American Bee Journal, beekeeper Julian Wooten describes teaching the cast of the movie how to work with bees. He said Queen Latifah was nervous at first, but “came through with flying colors.”

Here is a cute clip of Dakota Fanning and Tristan Wilds learning to keep bees. I love it when Dakota says, “I think I want to be a beekeeper.” Hopefully they’ll get the beekeeping part of the movie right, because a badly done movie metaphor just doesn’t fly.

Ulee’s Gold (1997) is a another movie about beekeeping. Well, it’s about a family of humans, really, but Henry Fonda plays a beekeeper, an occupation that informs his life. And the movie gets the beekeeping right.

I expect there will be a lot more interest in beekeeping after The Secret Life of Bees opens. If you’re curious about our project, you can Download OneBlock_Bee.pdf

about how we got started beekeeping. There are also other pdfs about our One Block Diet Projects. And add a comment to our blog! We’ll do our best to find an answer your questions.