G R A C I A S . . . Linda Rathburn

A special G R A C I A S column going out to all our dads . . .

Father’s Day Weekend :: June 19, 2010
Girls, Math & Science Partnership (GMSP) Explores Beekeeping with Burgh Bees

On June 19, Burgh Bees hosted a group of young women and their parents as part of the Carnegie Science Center’s Girls, Math & Science Partnership’s "Tour Your Future" program, held at Joe Zgurzynski's Country Barn Farm in O'Hara Township. The program was coordinated by Athena Aardweg, Weekend Program Manager of the GMSP, an innovative Science Center program for girls age 11-17 (read more about it below). The Burgh Bees team included Joe, Jennie Wood, Mary Anne Watson, Joan Guerin, Eva Barinas, and Linda Rathburn. After gathering near the barn and donning veils and gloves, the dads and daughters trooped up the hill to Joe's hives for a first-hand look and lecture on beekeeping basics, safety, and apiary etiquette. Jennie, Joe, Athena, Joan, and Eva fielded questions and then moved the group back to the barn for a closer look at the demo hive and a lesson in bee biology with Mary Anne. Everyone had a chance to get up close and personal with the bees - under glass in the demo hive and under glass at the microscope - and to take a break with several types of seasonal honey and a long cold drink of water. Beekeeping is hot, hard work in the summertime, and we hope that our guests at Saturday's "Tour Your Future" event left with a better understanding - and appreciation - of our stewardship of the fascinating, indispensable - and endangered - Apis mellifera.

Eva Barinas: “It was so exciting to see how interested everyone was despite some hesitation about being so close to honeybees. Once we did gather to get a closer look, fear evaporated and curiosity took over.”

Joan Guerin: “I imagined myself at that age learning about beekeeping and I think it would have been a great influence on me, whether I adopted it right away or not. I was so heartened by the parents who made the effort to expose their daughters to such interesting and unusual possibilities!”

Linda Rathburn: “I couldn’t help remembering that when I was their age – about 50 years ago :-) - I wanted to be a farmer when I grew up. But we weren’t encouraged – as girls – to be farmers. Today’s young women really have no limitations, and so my advice would be: try things on. Turn in the direction of what makes you happy – of what’s interesting and mysterious – and you’ll find a good fit.”

Like to know more about the Carnegie Science Center’s Girls, Math & Science Partnership? Log on to http://www.braincake.org/ and read more about it. Here’s the story from the website:

The Girls, Math & Science Partnership's mission is to engage, educate, and embrace girls as architects of change. Working with girls age 11 - 17 and their parents, teachers, and mentors, we draw organizations, stakeholders, and communities together in an effort to ensure that girls succeed in math and science.

If this is your first BrainCake experience, enjoy! BrainCake is one of many programs we have at the Girls, Math & Science Partnership. We are proud to have a Web site that reaches girls from around the globe who are interested in changing the world with math and science!

For many of you, you've been to BrainCake many times, or experienced one of our programs or events. You view this site as a resource - a resource for yourself, your daughter, a student in your classroom, or someone you mentor. The Girls, Math & Science Partnership is exactly that - an innovative, compelling, high-quality resource for education, information, research and advocacy on gender equality in the sciences.

We're here to help girls be confident, solve problems, and think independently. We engage girls in current science, helping them understand its relevance to their life today. We create and link girls to programs that educate and prepare them to understand and use science in their everyday lives. And, we embrace girls as architects of change - envisioning, planning, organizing, shaping, and building a better world - with math and science as their tools.

We know girls can change the world. We're just a great resource to help.

1 Mary Anne warming up before the group is ready to head out to the hives

L to R: Linda's dad, Ken Mastron; Mary Anne's dad, Clarence Ungerman; Mary Anne Watson

2 The demo hive is a safe and effective teaching tool

3 The first group of dads and daughters arrives at Joe's hives up on the hill behind the barn

4 Getting ready to open the hives

5 Up close and personal with Apis mellifera

6 Protective clothing - veil, jacket, gloves, and raised socks - is essential to maintaining a respectful relationship with the bees we steward. But on a day like Saturday it is HOT stuff as well :-)

7 Jennie stops to field some questions

8 Back upstairs at the barn, Mary Anne talks bees

9 Finding the queen is much easier with the demo hive

10 Students of all ages find the "secret life of bees" a source of endless fascination

11 View through the microscope
12 Jennie explains the differences in seasonal honey varieties common to western Pennsylvania, and guests can sample the honey (and the honey cookies on offer) for themselves. Cooking with honey - as with most things bee-related - can be both challenging and rewarding.

13 Joe and Jennie address final questions from the group - and this group was "the bees' knees" when it came to questions! (DO bees sleep? Check out these two websites for an answer: http://www.oardc.ohio-state.edu/agnic/bee/faq.asp?qid=38 and http://www.britishbee.org.uk/faq.php - scroll down a ways.)
14 The Future Beekeepers of America - Thanks to each of the dads and daughters who participated for sharing your Saturday afternoon with us - G R A C I A S !

NEIGHBORHOOD BUZZ . . . Linda Rathburn

BURGH BEES COMMUNITY APIARY :: Grand Opening Picnic

Sunday afternoon at the Apiary: good neighbors and good friends joined Burgh Bees members and volunteers to celebrate the Grand Opening of the country's first community apiary. And this may have been the best bargain in Pittsburgh this weekend - for a $5 donation (to a buzzworthy cause) guests enjoyed a potluck picnic spread under the food tents, Scott Smith's inimitable East End brewski, live music and poetry readings, a raffle ticket for one of several baskets of beekeeping items, a tour of the apiary - and the best company in town.
~ click on photos for a full-screen view

1 Robert and Steve check out the truckload of plants-for-sale Barb and Randa brought along as donations from Mildreds' Daughters Urban Farm

2 Good eats!




3 Joan is always on hand to give a hand
4 Beekeeper Frank McNutt and Woody discuss the differences among seasonal honey varieties
5 Plants donated for sale by Barb Kline and Randa Shannon, our friends from Mildreds' Daughters Urban Farm, proved to be a popular and profitable fundraiser
6 Robert tends bar - a keg from good neighbor Scott Smith of East End Brewing Company (conveniently right across the street)


7 Guests arrived early and stayed late - and the rain - for once - stayed away
8 The Two Joes


9 Musicians Luci Tedesco, Valery Pinchuk, and Ken Haney made dining alfresco - delizioso!
10 Hot as it was on Sunday, Ron turned up the heat on the grill and turned out the summer's best burgers - THANKS, Ron!



11 Meredith introduces the crowd to the Burgh Bees Directors - - -
12 - - - and the Burgh Bees Apiary Committee


13 Jenny and Joe assist Little Joe in drawing one of the winning raffle tickets
14 A $5 donation bought guests a tableful of picnic food, good music (and poetry!), good company, good beer - and maybe a basketful of beekeeping goodies



15 Steve gets ready to give the apiary tour to our guests - including Pittsburgh Councilwoman Natalia Rudiak
16 Meredith and Alex trade stories with The Bee Hunter - whose goal is "to take good bees out of bad places . . . and give 'em to good people!"


17 Charmaine McDonald and family, celebrating her birthday with the bees!
Top row: Tannie, Earl, Teeahja. Bottom row: Tisha, Teeonna, and Birthday Girl Charmaine
18 Tanya Todd graced the gathering with a beautiful reading of poems by friend and local poet Joda




19 Open air poetry - only at the Apiary
20 Joda shares his poems (and we've shared a copy below)


21 Joda and local artist Lucia M. Aguirre discuss today's readings
22 Burgh Bees Directors Jennie Wood and Robert Steffes say THANKS! to everyone who made today's celebration such a success

Of Human Bonding and Trust
- a poem by Joda

Kind words and deeds are an important
part of the nucleus on Human Bonding.

Of equal importance, ingredients, such as
communication, listening, understanding,
sincerity, and consistency are the glue
and the cement that connects and combines
the love and the respect, that each one can
bring with them and share.

It will also help to improve and make stronger
the friendship, endear the trust, as well as the
spiritual belonging, and to show that we care.

Allow it to flow naturally; observe and behold;
and we will be able to see the beauty as it unfolds,
right before our very eyes. Indeed, what a pleasant
surprise! Peace. Brother Joda

POLLINATOR PERISCOPE . . . by Jeff Irwin

June: A Bee’s Place

This month, let’s focus our attention on the Susquehanna Street site.

If you're new to our blog, take a moment to catch up with previous posts on all the activities that have taken place in the past month: bee curious neighbors came together for a honey tasting party, Westinghouse HS students energized the site with their enthusiastic volunteering, community and city leaders officially inaugurated the site, and the first open apiary at the new location was well attended. Lots of great activity and plenty of buzz!

Not to mention that several hives and many plants are becoming established in the apiary and pollinator garden. While there’s still much work to be done, it’s shaping up to be a great place for bees.

Even in these initial stages we can note several important features that you can use to create your own great bee place. First off, and most noticeably as you approach the site, there’s a solid fence surrounding the apiary that serves multiple functions. It protects the hives from wind and predators. It also forces bees to adjust their flight path upwards to a height where they hopefully won’t be a nuisance to anyone. Such a fence just might be the most important tool for good beekeeping in dense urban areas.

Inside the fence, we can see the hives arranged so that the entrances face south. This helps maximize exposure to the sun’s warmth, particularly in the morning, and revs the bees up for a full day’s work. There’s a water source inside the fence. In our case, it’s a simple large container of water that gets refreshed regularly. Bees generally don’t hover to drink, so it’s important to provide surfaces that they can land on. In this case, we’ve used old wine bottle corks.

There’s also an unintended water source for bees. After heavy rains, the water flows down the slope and onto the asphalt where it forms very shallow pools. It’s pretty cool to watch the bees walk along the ground sipping.

A good water source is perhaps the second most important feature for good urban beekeeping. Around your home, you could also place some rocks in a shallow birdbath or let bees crawl into a spigot set to drip very slowly.

Outside of the fence is the pollinator garden portion of the site. It’s very much a work in progress, more potential than finished product. We’re still building soil to support our castles in the air, and finding out which plants take to the site and which don’t. In other words, we’re learning and the adventure continues.

Hopefully you’ll consider helping bees in your garden by planting some pollinator plants or even just letting the “weeds” flower for a bit. Offer sources of pollen, nectar or water—without using any pesticides—and the bees will come, along with many other beneficial insects.

The last element in our site tour sums up the attitude needed to establish a great place for bees, for pollinator plants, and for visitors:

We’re having this Party, Please Come

…the flowering garden is a place you immediately sense is thick with information, thick as a metropolis, in fact. It’s an oddly sociable, public sort of place, in which species seem eager to give one another the time of day; they dress up, flirt, flit, visit ~

--- Michael Pollan - The Botany of Desire

Help us celebrate the grand opening of our place for bees on Susquehanna Street! Potluck dish and $5 donation requested, folding chair or blanket recommended. Click on the invite image for a larger view.

Not sure what to say to that social butterfly or shrinking violet at the party that you’d like to meet? Recently flowering plants are always a surefire conversation starter.

Buttercups: I didn’t know that these were good pollinator plants, but a wise elder beek said so. Who am I to go against the word?

Canadian Thistle: Perhaps best appreciated along roadsides or in fictional “rather boggy and sad” places. This is a pretty good pollinator plant, but it sure does take over if you let it. Somewhere, though, I’m sure there’s a hardcore pollinator protector who lets this into the yard on purpose.

Clover (white and red): A life in clover with a field full of bees - can anything be better?

Comfrey: Beloved by permaculturists for its roots that dive deep into the lower soil horizons, and by bumblebees that love its flowers.

Hyacinth: Another great bumblebee plant with lots of bell-shaped flowers. Be careful tossing Frisbees around them, though.

Chives, Raspberries: The edibles mentioned last month have flowered and, in the case of the raspberries, fruited.

Sage: For a couple of days, it seemed like I couldn’t go anywhere without seeing another flowering sage. We live in an abundantly beautiful place.

Lamb’s Ear: This is a fun, tactile plant with tiny purple flowers that bees really go for.

Angelica: While only mildly interesting to bees, angelica nourishes a ton of beneficial insects. Not to mention it’s an ingredient in gin. Cheers!

Catmint: A favorite bee plant in public gardens, these purple flowers last well into the summer.
Coreopsis: Great yellow flowers on top of all that spiky green!

Cornflower or Batchelor’s Button: Vibrant blue flowers that bees like, a perfect boutonniere for the beekeeping prom
~ or apiary grand opening . . . Jeff Irwin

Post your comments to Jeff - and observations on what's UP in your neck of the woods - directly below.
And watch for Jeff's column on the First Sunday of every month.