Wordless Wednesday

Kemp's Ridley Sea Turtles

Photo credit: USFWS Endangered Species Program, via flickr // CC BY 2.0

I am currently taking a nature literature course. As part of my class, I'm reading The Windward Road by Archie Carr. Originally published in 1956, this engaging, scientific travelogue follows Dr. Carr as he wanders through the Caribbean islands studying sea turtles. This book drew attention to the plight of the sea turtles and their need for conservation. Today's Sea Turtle Conservancy has its origins in this book.

At the time of the book's publication, no one knew where the Kemp's Ridley sea turtle nested. People speculated that babies were born in the sea or even that it was a cross between a loggerhead and a green. Carr was puzzled by this turtle.

Reading his words, I could relate to Carr's confusion. I've always heard that the Kemp's Ridley is the rarest of all sea turtles, but I never knew why.

After publication of the book, the primary Kemp's Ridley nesting ground was finally identified by scientists - on a ten mile stretch of Mexican beach. Even today, 95% of females still nest on this beach. Imagine! No wonder they are so rare.

According to NOAA, the population of Kemp's Ridley has fluctuated but it is generally in decline. In 1947, a video recording showed 40,000 nesting females. By the mid-1980's, this number was down to 700. Thanks to conservation efforts, things were looking up for the Kemp's Ridley in the early 2000's, with almost 7,000 nests in 2003. Unfortunately, the Deepwater Horizon oil spill has further decimated the numbers of this critically endangered species. If you look at the range of where they live, you can see why. I hope and pray for their recovery.

Unlike in Carr's day, when turtles were banded with metal tags, today's turtles are monitored using satellite tracking. You can even "adopt" sea turtles! And care of injured and wounded sea turtles has greatly improved. So there is hope! Maybe I will have to take a trip over to the National Aquarium and see if I can meet some Kemp's Ridleys ...

A New Website for Rocket Lovers

During World Space Week, it seems only fitting to talk about NASA's newly launched Rocketry page. I received this blurb in an Email this week:

"NASA Education is launching a new website to get students and educators off the launch pad and on their way to becoming rocket scientists."

NASA - Rocketry has sets of articles designed for kids in grades K-4 and 5-8 on topics like What is a Rocket? (this is the K-4 version) and What is the Space Shuttle? (this is the 5-8 version). You can compare the designs of model rockets and their full-size counterparts. (I've got to admit, the interactive flash version of this article is more fun!) You can even build your own rocket, but, alas, it's only online. Through NASA Kids' Club, you can build an entire fleet of online rockets with Rocket Builder.

Thinking of a career in rocketry? Read the bios of these engineers and scientists. Learn about educational opportunities like Rocketry Workshops for grades K-12 and the Team America Rocketry Challenge.

The NASA-Rocketry website has also compiled a wonderful collection of podcasts, videos, images, and simulations at their Robotics-Multimedia page. That's where I found this:

Apollo 11 Launch from the Kennedy Space Center on July 16, 1969
Photo credit: NASA

Win big at the fair!

During the last school year, Kerm had to build a colonial ship and create a three-dimensional butterfly sculpture. What can you do with school projects once they've been graded and returned home? This year, we're going to enter them as a "model boat" and "miscellaneous model" in our local community fair.

I've written about county fairs and how they can be fun places to learn about science. But if visions of ribbons motivate you, competing at a fair can also be a great way for you to learn something new and share your knowledge with others. With categories like home-grown fruits and vegetables for green thumbs, collections of shells or rocks for budding naturalists, and educational exhibits tailored to your favorite topic, everyone can find something to fit their interests. You might even win a ribbon!


Photo credit: Benny Mazur, via flickr //CC BY 2.0

Artful Animals

This summer, my family was lucky enough to visit the Artful Animals exhibit, an accessible and friendly display of animal-themed African art at the National Museum of African Art. The engaging nature of the exhibition made me feel like creating art of my own. (Disclaimer: I actually did sit down with the kids and decorate a woven basket coloring sheet.)

The exhibit has since closed to the public, but you can still visit the animals online. We enjoyed looking for the animals in 125 pieces of art, from pottery and instruments to clothing and furniture. I loved the hands-on nature of the pieces, which included masks like the one Kerm is trying on in the photograph above.

You can listen to podcasts about some of the artwork here. Download the visually stunning Artful Animals Activity Guide (this is a .pdf file), which asks:

"What can we learn about ourselves by looking at our relationship to animals?"

"What is our place in nature and the world?"

and perhaps most importantly,

What animal would you choose to represent you?

The Artful Animals exhibit, a collaborative venture between the National Museum of African Art, the National Postal Museum, the National Zoo, and the Natural Museum of Natural History, has now closed in Washington, D.C. But the exhibit may be coming to a museum near you! Artful Animals is listed on the Smithsonian Institution's Traveling Exhibition Service, and is due to hit the road in 2012. Don't miss it!


Photo credit: Mama Joules

Cause & effect

Scientific inquiry starts early ...

This week's discoveries? You can float magnets in the dog's water bowl. When you blow into a straw that is sitting in a cup of water, you can make bubbles! And when you pull out one diaper wipe, a new one magically takes its place. (And your mom runs to take a picture before she takes the diaper wipes away!)

Meet Jupiter's Mother

Happy New Year! I'm pleased to welcome Tracy Zollinger Turner, of Tiny Mantras, to Mama Joules. In a recent issue of the Carnival of Space, she described her relationship with astronomy like this:

"[My son's] interest in space has been unyielding for as long as he's been able to talk. Therefore, I spend a lot of time reading astronomy blogs to try and become more scientifically literate, as well as riding imaginary space elevators out to Proxima Centauri and other stars in search of exoplanets. And smoothing flour and cocoa powder in a large bin so my son can throw rocks in it and make craters. Or making special trips to Big Lots to buy a bright yellow bucket for a $1 so he can keep his pretend meteor collection safe. You get the idea."

I was fascinated by her description. Reading further into her blog, I discovered that Tracy's son has a special affinity for Jupiter, and has even dressed up as the planet for Halloween.

Jupiter goes trick-or-treating
Photo credit: Tracy Zollinger Turner (used with permission)
When thinking of blog topics for Mama Joules, I often focus on how to engage a child's love of science. But Tracy's blog got me thinking: How do parents and educators sustain a child's interest in a scientific topic, especially when his or her fascination goes beyond our own? So, I invited Tracy to Mama Joules for a visit.

***

Today, we welcome Tracy Zollinger Turner, of the blog Tiny Mantras, for a chat about raising scientifically literate children. Tell us about yourself, Tracy.

I'm a longtime freelance writer and editor, technology lover, journalist, blogger, art and music appreciator, wife, mother, home-based career woman, learner.

You write in Tiny Mantras that you are "mother to a fanantical four-year-old astronomer." When did you realize that your son's interest in outer space was unusual for his age?

It's been a consistent interest for as long as he has been able to speak. When he was about a year-and-a-half old, he learned words in groups - colors, shapes, animals. Since he just seemed drawn to spheres and pictures of planets, he learned the solar system next.

I think I kind of always realized it was unusual. I do remember it really hit home for me when we went to the bookstore on his second birthday and he pointed at a big coffee table book up high on a shelf and said, "Get the 'bero galaxy book, Mommy." I pulled the thing down, looked at the inside flap, and found out that the picture on the cover was of the Sombrero Galaxy, which I wouldn't have known.

Sombrero Galaxy as seen by the Hubble Space Telescope.
Image courtesy of NASA
He either picked it up through the space documentaries we were watching ("The Universe" on the History Channel was in its first season) or one of the space books we had begun to accumulate. At the time, he was far more interested in books full of space telescope images than space books that were created for kids.

I have always been prepared for him to lose this interest or move on to something else. Other parents told me that sometimes two-year-olds get really into something then forget all of the details they once knew as they move on to other things. At times, he's gone pretty deeply into learning about other (usually science-y) things, like anatomy and weather, but now, at four and a half, space still prevails.

Do you have any tips for how to encourage children to love science, especially when their interest in a specific topic exceeds your own?

I let his questions lead me. I learn a lot of this stuff with him. Like a lot of people - and women, especially - I grew up thinking that I didn't have much of an aptitude or love for science, and one of my son's real gifts to me has been teaching me that I actually do!

With a couple of exceptions, I don't think that most of my elementary or high school teachers knew how to make science relevant to students' lives. Yet it is so relevant and so common, and can be so much less intimidating than we make it. I see a lot of parents tripped up thinking that they have to know something to teach it, when learning it together - giving them some of the power to realize that grown-ups don't have all the answers - can make it so much more memorable for the child.

When I want to set [him] up with something I don't have to help a lot with, there are so many great resources and ideas out there when it comes to creating projects and experiments. Like putting flour and cocoa powder at the bottom of a big plastic bin, smoothing it, then letting him throw rocks in there to see what happens when meteors hit the moon, or Mercury.

Thanks, Tracy, for giving us such wonderful suggestions for making science fun!

***

You can learn more about Tracy's adventures raising her mini-astronomer at her blog, Tiny Mantras. Join us next week as Tracy shares some of her family's favorite astronomy websites and places to visit!

Little Brother's Mars Rover

Not to be outdone by big brother Kerm's Mars Rover, my four-year-old just shared his new LEGO® sculpture with me. Here is Little Brother's Mars Rover:



Personally, I think it looks a lot like the robotic bug he got for Christmas. ;)

Project BudBurst

Has the dreary winter weather got you down? Let's plan for a fun way to celebrate spring! If you're in the U.S.**, join Project BudBurst and record your observations about the yearly stages, or phenophases, of select plants in your area. Choose from one of these 75 plants to study. You can track things like the earliest date you see leaves, flowers, or fruits and then report your data online. (** Not in the U.S.? You can still have fun predicting the timing of next spring's phenophases and recording your observations.)

Dr. Kayri Havens, Lead Botanist, and Dr. Paul Alaback, Lead Science Advisor, are keeping a Project BudBurst blog to accompany the website. I thought this blog snippet from Dr. Kay covered the objectives of Project BudBurst quite nicely:

"Thanks to all of you who are watching plants and submitting your observations! These data are helping us get a much clearer picture about how plants are responding to different climates around the U.S. This will help us predict how plants will respond to a changing climate."

At Project BudBurst, you can learn more about phenology, the science behind this study, download teaching materials about plants and plant identification guides, browse the map of recent observations, and more! And be sure to upload your plant photos to the Project BudBurst Flickr photo pool.

Reuse those old crayons!

Inspired by LuAnn Foty and her Crazy Crayons (more about her in a future blog post), the boys and I decided to melt down some old crayons and make our own version of reused/recycled crayons. I found a recipe for melting down crayons in the oven and we set to work.

I have a box of 64 crayons with no tips, courtesy of last year's Sunday school class. I had planned to take them home and sharpen them (ugh!), but decided to melt them down instead.

Here's what you'll need to make "new" crayons: unwanted crayons and aluminum muffin cup liners. (Don't use paper liners, we discovered that they leave a waxy residue behind in your muffin tin!)


First, we broke the crayons into small pieces and took off the wrappers. Finally, I got wise about the paper labels and scored them with a knife to make them easier to remove. (Kids, be sure to get adult help for this!)

We came up with all sort of crazy color combinations for our new crayons, like grey-black-yellow and orange-purple. Be sure to put the same number of broken crayon pieces into each muffin cup. We didn't do this and the contents of one melted after 10 minutes, while the others took considerably longer.

I suggest using a 250 degree F oven, like the online recipe suggested. Initially, I thought that sounded a tad high, but after 20 minutes at 200 degrees F, most of our crayons still hadn't melted. This is what they looked like:



After 25 minutes, though, our crayons had liquified! It was fun to see how they looked in the tray.



I stirred a few of them and then took the muffin tin outside in the snow to quickly cool them. At 32 degrees F, they cooled solid within a half-hour.

When I took them out of their wrappers, I found that they had edges, kind of like Reese's peanut butter cups, so I broke the edges off.


Little Brother agreed to test the new crayons for us. They were a lot of fun to use!




Photo credits: Mama Joules

The view from my front yard ...

delicate snowflakes
dancing down the darkened path --
winter's arrival

Photo credit: Mama Joules

Math trick for learning the nines times tables

My older son is learning his times tables. For me, this brings back painful memories of memorizing columns of data. Fortunately, Kerm has Itinerant Cryptographer for a father. My husband is something of a math junkie. He taught Kerm a little trick for multiplying by nines. It works for 9x1 through 9x10:

* The first digit of the answer is always one less than the number you are multiplying by,

and

* the digits of the answer have to add up to nine.

So, let's say that you are multiplying 9 x 3. The first digit of the answer starts with a "2". And 9 minus 2 is 7, so the answer is 27.

9 x 1? The first digit would be zero. Nine minus zero equals nine, so the answer is 9.

Isn't that neat? (Where was Itinerant Cryptographer when *I* was learning my times tables?


Photo credit: Paul Joseph, through a Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 License via Flickr.

Cicadas are LOUD!

the lone cicada
heralds summer's end
with blaring alarm

Wow! Tonight we saw a cicada up close on a tree trunk and boy, are they ever BIG! And LOUD! I had no idea. I've heard the sound of cicadas since I was a kid, and I have always thought the woods were teeming with them. Now, I realize that a single cicada can have a VERY LOUD song. And yes, this one sounded just like a car alarm. (However, it wasn't quite as big as this lovely sculpture of a cicada in Australia. It just sounded like it.)


Photo credit: Cyron Ray Macey through a Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license.

Website of the Week: FrogWatch USA™

Do you like frogs? Enjoy studying wildlife? Then join FrogWatch USA™, "a Citizen Science Monitoring Program" currently hosted through the National Wildlife Federation but soon to be part of the Association of Zoos and Aquariums.

Frogwatching season generally runs February through August. Once you learn how to frogwatch and register your study site (hey, I'm thinking maybe I could register my backyard next year!), you gather your frogwatching materials, record your data (weather conditions and frog calls) and submit it on a regular basis to FrogWatch USA™.

You will be helping scientists to figure out why amphibian populations are declining. After scientists identify some of the problems facing frogs, they can work on solutions to help save them. At the same time, you will get more in touch with nature through your study site. And you will learn to identify frogs from their calls.

I had no idea that frog calls were so diverse! eNature has a great page with frog and toad calls. I couldn't help myself - I started hitting all of the "listen" buttons at once. Soon, a whole symphony of voices filled my living room. It is amazing how the calls are so different. I can understand why it might be easier to identify a frog by sound than by sight.

If you are not in the United States, you still should be able to join a frogwatch in your area. For example, FrogWatch Saskatchewan is looking for volunteers, and check out Frog Atlas Australia.

Happy frogwatching!


Photo credit: Topato through a Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license.

S-s-s-s-something else in our backyard

Last week, during our frog-finding expedition in the backyard, Kerm and I spotted this:



and this, which is actually part of the same thing:



Do you know what it is? Yep, a snake skin. Some snake was likely hunting the little frogs that live in our backyard and, while slithering between our green garden hose and the heating & cooling unit, it shed its skin.

I took a rake and carefully peeked under all of the foliage in our backyard, but I saw no sign of the snake. Most snakes are rather shy, so that's not surprising. But I wanted to find out what kind of snake the skin came from. Was a venomous snake prowling around in my backyard?

Probably not. I gathered up all of the skin that I could find, about 18 to 24 inches of it, and put it in a box. It was all in a single piece, but it was so fragile that it tore when I picked it up.



One thing I do know: this didn't come from a venomous snake. I researched snakes and found that there are only two venomous snakes near where I live. Both of these snakes have highly patterned markings on their skins. You can tell that this snake does not, although it might have lateral stripes. See how the skin is darker along the sides?

I'd like to take this snake skin to a nature center near where I live and see if they can tell me more about its former owner. Do you know what kind of snake has been living in my backyard?


Photo credits: Mama Joules

Friday Fun: Find the frogs

Here are two photographs from my recent backyard frog-spotting expeditions with Kerm. Can you find the frogs? They like to hide!

(Note: You can zoom in on the second image and get a pretty good look at the frog. See its striped legs? I wonder if it really is a Spring Peeper? I can't find pictures of any frogs common to my region that look quite like that.)

A new neighbor?

Years ago, Itinerant Cryptographer purchased this birdhouse for me on one of his many trips to California. For the past several years, we had placed it on a low-hanging branch in front of our house. One year, a bird finally showed interest and filled it with twigs. Unfortunately, said bird also spotted our dog, loud and barking, and fled soon after. I emptied out the twigs, but the birdhouse remained vacant.

After we moved, I hung the birdhouse out back. We don't have any trees in our yard, so a wooden slat was the closest thing that I could find. After hanging outside for a year, I finally noticed a medium-sized songbird taking an interest in the birdhouse. I called to Kerm excitedly.

"Look! Look at that bird! He's checking out our birdhouse."

Kerm and I watched the bird for some time. He went inside the birdhouse and poked his head out, scanning this way and that.

"He's checking out the house, just like we did!" said Kerm.

The bird climbed on top of the birdhouse.

"Look, he climbed the stairs," announced Kerm.

On the roof of the birdhouse, the bird craned its neck to take a good look around and poked his head through the slats of the fence.

"He's checking out the neighbors!" said Kerm, laughing.

I'm not sure if our visitor will be back. I walked back to the birdhouse tonight and peeked inside. The house is still vacant. Like so many other homes today, this one may require several "walk-throughs" before we get a permanent resident. But if we do, I'll follow up with another picture. Next time, I might even manage to identify the type of bird!


Photo credit: Mama Joules

Reduce comes first for a reason

reduce*reuse*recycle*reduce*reuse*recycle*reduce*reuse*recycle*reduce

Earlier this week, I was telling Itinerant Cryptographer how impressed I was with his most recent purchase.

"You bought reusable water bottles for the boys. That's great!" I enthused. "You don't normally buy stuff like that."

"It wasn't my idea," he responded. "The boys made me do it. They wanted their own water bottles. And they wanted to write their names on them."

I've been recycling water bottles for years -- lots and lots of water bottles -- generating lots and lots of material to be recycled. During those same years, I've recited "reduce, reuse, recycle" without giving much thought to the order of the words.

"Reduce" is first for a reason. Reduction of waste -- reducing our footprint upon the earth -- should be the first step. Once we reduce what we use, we don't need to reuse or recycle nearly as much. And I have an 8-year-old and a 4-year-old to thank for that realization.

reduce*reuse*recycle*reduce*reuse*recycle*reduce*reuse*recycle*reduce



reduce*reuse*recycle*reduce*reuse*recycle*reduce*reuse*recycle*reduce

Interestingly enough, as I was posting this, I found this in my in-box from my friends at Celebrate Green:

... We've been asked "What is the biggest money saving green tip you can give us when celebrating during the summer?" The answer is, tah dah ... do not buy beverages bottled in plastic. Filtered tap water anyone? Fresh, homemade lemonade?

What do you suppose people did before we had plastic? They used jugs, often of glass or glass bottles. Before you purchase anything in plastic for your picnic or barbecue, think about this: Every year Americans buy 50 billion single-serving plastic beverage containers. Most plastic bottles (approximately 77%), end up in landfills. Add to this the expense as opposed to making your beverage or filling jugs with filtered tap water and this is an eco-idea that's a no brainer ...

For more eco-friendly tips, head on over to Celebrate Green. You can enter your own "wee green tip" in their Wee Glee gum contest. You could win eight boxes of "all-natural, gluten-free chewing gum."


Image adapted from a photo taken by Kristen Holden, through a Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic License

Learning to keep bees: Meet a beekeeper! Part 4

Today, we close our interview with beekeeper Michele Bennett Decoteau, of Blue Hive Journals. (If you're just joining us, here are the links to part 1, part 2, and part 3 of this interview.)

Welcome back, Michele. If someone wants to start keeping bees, what's the best way to begin? Do you have any organizations that you'd recommend for a novice beekeeper?

If you are interested in becoming a beekeeper, the best thing you can do is find a mentor. Check out your local beekeeping organization and start attending classes and meetings. If you are not sure where to find one, call your local bee inspector. Every state has at least one bee inspector in the state agriculture department.

[Note from Mama Joules: Other countries have their own beekeeping organizations, too, like The National Bee Unit in the U.K. Be sure to check your local laws first. Some locations, like New York City, prohibit beekeeping -- not that it stops the New York City Beekeepers Association!]

I also suggest [that] you read a lot. There are many books for beginners on beekeeping. Look for a book written locally because every region has its own variations. I really like Backyard Beekeeping [by C. N. Smithers].

Once you've started keeping bees as a hobby, how much work does it take to care for the bees? How often do you spend working with them? Are you afraid of being stung?

I check my hives weekly from about the end of March through October. Sometimes it is a bit more frequent if I need to do something like change frames around or add medications in the fall. Each check takes anywhere from a half hour to a couple of hours. In addition to checking my bees, I go to the monthly meetings of my local beekeeper's organization so I can learn new stuff.

I love my bees and the time flies. Most of the time I have to remind myself not to go bug them too much! I'd be in the hive every day! Unfortunately, it takes about three days for the hive to settle back down each time I bug them so I try not to disturb the hives if I don't have to.

I am not afraid of getting stung. Getting stung does happen, but it is a reminder to me that I am not doing something right. You don't get in the way of bees doing their job, you move slowly, you take your time, and you don't often get stung. It can be very zen like.

It still hurts to get stung. When you get stung, the first thing you need to do is scrape out the stinger. I find that chewing up English Plantain, a common weed, and putting that on the sting, takes the bite out. Many people say that getting stung from time to time helps their joints stay supple. I have not found that to be the case for me - I tend to swell up where I get stung!

What are the benefits of beekeeping?

Honestly, I just love being with my bees. Working the bees forces you to calm down - it can be quite meditative.

I feel like I am more in tune with my local environment. For example, when the bees were coming into the hive with white pollen all along their backs in March, it took some detective work to figure out that the skunk cabbage was blooming. I tend to be more aware of what is in bloom and for how long.

Of course, honey is a nice bonus along with beeswax. I made beeswax hand cream last year that was great for winter-chapped hands. My goal this year is to try to make lip balm too. Our honey tends to be very light, which is my taste preference.

Thanks for taking the time to share your thoughts and experiences of beekeeping with us, Michele! If you'd like to learn more about backyard beekeeping, please visit Michele and her bees online at Blue Hive Journals.


* * *

If you liked this post, you might also like:

Meet a beekeeper!

Meet a beekeeper! Part 2: The intelligence of bees

Meet a beekeeper! Part 3: Colony Collapse Disorder

National Pollinator Week 2009


Photo credits: Jon Mitchell (top) and Nigel Wedge (bottom), through a Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license.

Colony Collapse Disorder: Meet a beekeeper! Part 3

Continuing our interview with Michele Bennett Decoteau, of Blue Hive Journals, today's topic is Colony Collapse Disorder, or CCD, a serious condition that is severely impacting honeybees in the United States. (If you're just joining us, here's part 1 and part 2 of the interview.)

I read recently that nearly one-third of the honeybee population died last year due to CCD. What is Colony Collapse Disorder and how can we help save the honeybees?

CCD is a scary new thing beekeepers are facing. What happens is that beekeeper will open a hive and find healthy larvae and honey but essentially no adult bees. Under typical disease circumstances [only a few adult bees leave and don't return and] there is a decline in bees that is reflected in the larvae and honey. Most diseases show their influence in the larvae [not the adult bees]. The question is where the [adult] bees are and why are they not returning to their hive.

I don’t think a single cause will be found. Some suspects are pesticides, pollution, transporting bees, and disease.

Some pesticides disrupt a bee’s ability to navigate home. One potential culprit is Imidacloprid. When bees get a good dose of this pesticide they act drunk – they cannot fly well, they don’t orient to home, and they get lost easily. This pesticide is banned in other countries but can be purchased [commercially] here in the US. (Mama Joules' sidenote: "Imidacloprid and nicotine have similar activity in the nervous system," according to a 2001 "Insecticide Factsheet" in the Journal of Pesticide Reform.)

Bees are also transported around the country to pollinate large crops. First bees pollinate almonds in California, then they go to Texas to pollinate squash, then maybe over to Georgia for peaches and head up to Maine for blueberries. Bees are eating one single crop at a time and are fed sugar water in transit. This doesn’t sound like a good life for a bee to me. For one thing, the queen and larvae get chilled during transport. I think that all this moving around and single crop feeding is a challenge to the bee’s immune system.

Pollution may affect bees in an unexpected way. Bees use pheromones to communicate within the hive and even to some extent between hives. Pollution can disrupt a bee’s ability to smell and [the bee] may get lost [due to] high levels of pollution.

Disease and bugs that bite bees are an ever increasing issue. Many of these pests come from other countries and were introduced into US bee populations from unmonitored imports of bees. Today, beekeepers use a number of pesticides to deal with these bee-pests.

I am a hobbyist beekeeper and generally we are not affected by CCD. Since we don't know what the cause of CCD is, it is unclear why hobby beekeepers don't see it often. Perhaps it is because we don't transport our hives and feed them a single nectar source or stress them other ways. Stress decreases every being's immune system and a weakened immune system might allow some disease to attack bees. Until we know more about what CCD is, we won't know for sure.

Nonetheless, even hobbyists do keep a close watch on diseases and pests in the hive. Essentially we are just big worker bees taking care of the colony!

Michele's top five things we can do to help the honeybees:

1. Become a beekeeper
2. Buy local honey – Check out farmer’s markets and beekeeper’s organizations
3. Plant native plants for pollinators – Check with your local nursery for ideas
4. Grow organically – Stop using chemical pesticides in your flower and veggie garden
5. Buy organic – The fewer pesticides in use in the environment, the better for bees!

Thanks so much for the insight and advice, Michele! Join us next time as we conclude our interview by learning how to start beekeeping (read the next part of this interview here). Be sure to check out Michele's blog, Blue Hive Journals for more ideas and tips about keeping bees.

Michele says, "Take time to try different honey. It’s OK to have more than one jar of honey! Every honey tastes different. I love lavender honey made from lavender nectar."

If you liked this post, you might like:

Meet a beekeeper!

Meet a beekeeper! Part 2: The intelligence of bees

Meet a beekeeper! Part 4: Learning to keep bees

National Pollinator Week 2009


Photo credits: Michele Bennett Decoteau (top photo); Ryan Wick (bottom photo, through a Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license)

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[10/2/09: Updated to include links to the rest of the interview. Deleted phrase "native honeybees" because it is factually inaccurate. Honeybees were imported to the United States.]