Honey Bee

Recently, I visited Christina and Erika's plot at Urban Edge Farm to help them out for the afternoon. Christina Dedora is the Director of Operations and Erika Rumbley is the Community Gardens Network Coordinator at Southside CLT. Christina is very experienced in growing flowers while Erika brings in knowledge about growing food to their farm land.

City Farm has taught me a great deal-- it was nice taking all of that knowledge to practice while harvesting in a different location as well as learning variations and additional knowledge from these other farmers. Although I have been harvesting flowers for City Farm, Christina was able to teach me when a flower should and should not be picked. Rich had explained that it is best to choose flowers that are not fully open, and that they will open while sitting in a vase, but Christina showed me when the best time is for harvesting sunflowers. Like other flowers, it is a good idea to harvest them when not quite fully open, but she also taught me how to tell by just looking at the face of the flower.


A sunflower with a puffy face will not last long once it is cut.
When you think about it, this makes sense because it is an indication that the sunflower has finished growing and is starting to focus its energy on producing seeds.



Today Than, the apprentice at City Farm last year, stopped by to open up a beehive.


The two beehives at City Farm.

He has been beekeeping for three years now, and he was explaining to me and a volunteer, Karen, how he is experimenting with natural beekeeping. This means that he does not buy frames (that have a wax border preinstalled). One problem with preinstalled was frames is the wax that is being used- Conventional beekeeping uses pesticides and antibiotics (directly in the hives) causing chemicals and toxins to build up in the wax that is used for these frames.

He explained that in conventional beekeeping, it was first thought that breeding bigger bees meant more honey, but this theory has been nullified. Natural beekeeping focuses less on the size and honey output of the bees, and more on the health of the bees.



Natural beekeeping seems to make sense-

"As long as we treat we get weaker bees who can only survive if we treat, and stronger parasites who can only survive if they breed fast enough to keep up with our treatments. No stable relationship can develop until we stop treating," Bush Farms.

Than gave us a taste of their honey too! Yum.