Tag: rewild

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The Journey Towards Becoming a Beekeeping

I have always been amazed by pollinators and now that we have a great place to house some bees, I put the call out to my friend who has been sharing his honey and wax with me for years. This Spring my buddy Stefano, from Azure Bee Apiaries, helped me catch my first swarm of honey bees.

First thing we did was set a bait hive up on the chimney of the new Ancestral Knowledge Museum and Primitive Skills Research Center. The bait hive we used was a box with 6 frames with a few with old natural comb from some other hives. He also put some queen bee pheromones on a Q-tip that he place in the box. the box was strapped up to the chimney so it couldn’t fall. Stefano was downloading all sorts of information through the whole process, I wish i had a note pad.

The day after we set up the bait hive I had to go to the Mid Atlantic Primitive Skills Gathering site to start setting up. When I came back to the cabin, to my delight, i noticed the box was covered in bees!!! We attracted a swarm!

Now that we have a swarm of bees, we needed to move them from the chimney to the ground. The bees have been in their new home for over a week so this was a very slow process. We had to move it off the chimney to the roof first, allowing the bees to find its new position, then to the edge of the roof, then to the ground, then across the yard. After about 6 weeks and 6 moves, it was finally in its final resting place.

Meanwhile I visited my other buddy Tony at Red Sun Tea company in Asheville NC. He has an amazing apiary that pollinates his tea plants. I went there to tell him about my exciting new hobby, and absorb any tidbits of knowledge he wanted to drop for my. While I was there, one of his colonies split and swarmed, so I was able to help catch a swarm and put it into a new hive. What a crazy experience, to be completely engulfed in bees flying all around us, landing on our faces and bodies, and not stinging us.

The bees swarmed and gathered on a branch about 12 feet off the ground in a small tree that we could bend down over a large trash can. With one big, jolting shake the swarm fell in a big clump into the large trash can below it. One of the neatest things about this, besides standing in the midst of 1000’s of bees going absolutely crazy, was the transfer from the can to the hive box. As Tony lifted the trash can and slowly dumped it over the hive box, the bees poured out of the trash can like a liquid, flowing in waves as they rolled out of the can into the hive box. It was mesmerizing. I was so excited to go home to visit with my new bee friends.

I came back to my new swarm, fired up to become their buddy. Every couple days I would go out and open the hive, let the bees land on me, letting them get a feel for who I am and that I was not a threat. Over the next couple of months I would randomly go out and watch their vigorous activity, leaving and returning with pollen packed legs, observing their different dances they did and trying to learn from their behaviors. One of my favorite things to do was put my face near the entrance and just breath in the sweet earthy smell that emanated from the hive. One day, my son and I opened the hive and pulled out the individual frames to see if we could find the queen. Early on Stefano and I couldn’t locate here, so I had yet to meet her. As we pulled frames and carefully observed, Nick spotted her. I couldn’t have been any happier about this journey that I had set out on.

After a while Stefano told me that I should start feeding the bees to help prepare them for the winter. He talked me through how to do that and I set up a feeding bag in the top of the hive. The bees took to it immediately. a couple weeks went by and I added more food, it was all natural honey from Stefano. I went out one day to check on its supply and I immediately noticed that there wasn’t as much activity, as I approached the hive I could smell this odd, fermentation like smell. When I opened up the hive there were no bees, no honey, just larvae and beetles. All of the honeycomb was dry and half gone.

The hive had been raided by other bees and infested with wax moths and hive beetles. I was at a complete loss of words, the feelings I was experiencing were like none I had felt before, anger and sadness jumbled together stirring in my head. I called Stefano and he said, yeah, welcome to the beekeeping journey. He shared that the way to be a successful beekeeper is to have many hives as invasions, collapse, and other things contribute to the failure of a hive and the more you have the more successful you will be.

I found something in common between Stefano and Tony, that commonality is that they both focus on capturing and raising wild bees that are untreated with strong genetics. Neither of them where the classic Bee Suits, and Stefano doesn’t use smoke to subdue them. They both stay very calm and move very slowly and deliberately. Watching them work on hives is pretty amazing to see.

Since the loss of my first swarm, Stefano has brought me 3 more hives to tend over through the fall and winter. I am looking forward to more learning experiences and adventures with the bees.

If you or a friend has been wanting to explore the world of beekeeping, Stefano is teaching a workshop in October here at the Ancestral Knowledge. You can join me and we can journey together as he shows us how he works his magic and shares what he knows about the art of beekeeping.

This post was submitted by our Executive Director, Bill Kaczor

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Great Cordage Materials in the Mid-Atlantic Region

As we move into the cooler months, we’re all looking to spend more time outdoors. Increasingly, one of my favorite ways to connect with nature is by making cordage with natural materials. Cordage or rope making has been one of humanity’s fundamental skills since prehistory. Outside of survival uses like shelter building, fishing line, and bowstrings, simple rope has been instrumental in seafaring, construction, and even mathematical calculations.

I find hand twisting simple 2-ply cord to be incredibly relaxing, it clears my head and keeps my hands busy. It truly feels like what your hands are meant to do. By learning the local plants to use this skill with, I have been able to develop a tactile connection with nature that I wish to share.

Below is my guide to some of my favorite materials cordage I’ve found around the DC-Maryland area:

Wisteria:
You either know this vine for its large purple drooping flower or being one of the most destructive, tree-killing invasives on the east coast. What you might not know is that the vines hold an incredibly strong inner fiber.

Where to find it: ANYWHERE. Roadsides, forests, suburban parks, your backyard. This stuff is incredibly invasive. I find that the ground runners work best but whenever I can I try to cut wisteria off from trees.

How to process it: After cutting down the vine,I find that the easiest and fastest way to process the fibers is by making two shallow cuts at the cut end with a pair of clippers in an X pattern. This allows you to get your fingernail under the bark and start peeling. Once you’ve finished peeling, you can scrape away the outer bark with a knife and then separate the fibers lengthwise.

Dogbane:
If you were a Native American living here 1000 years ago, this would be your fiber of choice. Dogbane( also called Indian hemp due to its use in ropemaking) is an incredibly widespread perennial plant native to North America. Due to this and the high tensile of its fiber, dogbane was used for everything from bowstrings to nets to bags on this continent. All parts of the plant are highly toxic when ingested to most animals including humans by way of the cardiac glycoside, apocynamarine, which can cause cardiac arrest. But unless you plan on eating your rope, this is not a concern.

Where to find it: Dogbane likes wet soil and direct sunlight. Look in open fields, hillsides, and weedy roadsides. Dogbane is best harvested dead in the fall. I like to clip off any branches off the stem for easier transport, I always leave the seed pods in tree branches to help the seed better disperse.

How to process it: Take the woody stem and crush it flat using either your hands or a hard surface/rock depending on the strength of the stem. Afterwards, split the stem down the middle, you will now have four segments. You then break the woody stem away from the fibers in one direction and peel away in the opposite direction. For a finer cordage you can remove the outer red bark from the inner fibers, the easier way to do this is just by rubbing the fiber in your hands.

Pawpaw:
The pawpaw may be the ultimate survival tree. This small understory tree is native to most of the southeast and has become increasingly popular with foragers and gardeners The pawpaw fruit is high calorie and packed with nutrients, the wood makes for an amazing friction kit, and the inner bark makes for an incredible cord.

Where to find it:
Pawpaws grow in rich moist soil, I commonly find them on the slopes of floodplains, creeks, and marshlands. Something to note is that pawpaws grow in a type of grove called a clonal colony; meaning you can usually find dead standing trees among the living ones.

How to process it:
I look for dry standing dead pawpaw trees, ideally the bark should peel right off the wood. You can then simply peel the inner fiber away from the bark. Another possibility is collecting the bark green and retting it in water. Retting is the process of separating fibers by way of a controlled rot. This should be done for at least a day but your results may vary.

Now those were just a few plants I have experience with in the area but there are dozens more! Some that I would also look out for include: Evening Primrose, Stinging nettle, marsh mallow, and Milkweed. So get out, explore, learn a new plant and twist some cord!

BLOG Post was submitted by our field instructor Ben Kamm