Extract from the book “Bee Wisdom: Teachings from the hive“, by Sandira Belia. “Among the strangenesses of the bee world, here is one of the most curious: parthenogenesis. This is asexual reproduction where an embryo can develop from an unfertilised female gamete. Among most species who practise this style of reproduction (like some reptiles and fish), the generated offspring is female. With the bees, however, when the queen deposits an
The original French book of Sandira Belia – La Déva des abeilles – is finally out in English!Published by Northern Bee Books, it is available on most online bookshops.You can order it directly here with free delivery worldwide. This book is not only addressed to beekeepers, far from it. It is accessible to the wider audience and may be read at different levels of depth. The passages sharing personal experiences
How to sting without Removing the Bee’s Stinger? Bee venom is a powerful medicine that can be used as an anti-inflammatory. Most techniques using bee venom implies the death of the bee, when she loses her stinger.In this video, I show you a simple way to avoid the death of the bee when using her venom. Explore more of magical properties of bee venom and other teachings of the hive,
Our last bee-friendly hive is born: we have called it the ‘CobCortiço’. Made of cork, cob and wood, this hive with thick, breathable walls should strongly support the swarm to build up a strong and powerful core. We added a ‘symbiotic floor’, an extra box below the hive body, where a symbiotic relationship can be established between the bees and micro-organisms. The size of the box is wider than the
April 2020, Alentejo, Portugal. The first part of the video describes our experiment to make a hollow olive tree suitable for bees to live in.The holes of the tree are filled with several layers of cob.The recipe of the cob mixtures will be explained in another video coming very soon.The second part of the video shows our mistakes and eventual success in bringing a swarm inside the tree cavity…
A beautiful swarm ‘walked’ into her new home, a Top Bar Hive, located one kilometre away from where the swarm landed. The cluster has been split into two parts and re-united.
Many bee colonies living in managed hives are dying this year in our area. Interestingly, we recently discovered several powerful colonies living in trees. A calling to support the rewilding of the bees…
Dear Bee lovers,The day of winter solstice is a privileged moment of the year to connect to the world from within.Wherever you are on that day, I invite you to join a synchronised collective meditation on the 21st December 2018 at 19h UTC (19h in Portugal, 20h in France, Switzerland and Germany).For those living in the Southern Hemisphere, join us for your summer solstice… 🙂 Before the meditation starts, you
During our BeeShip in Alentejo (Portugal) this autumn, we forged our own hive tools.We observed that the bees often react aggressively to the energy of conventional hive tools, made out of steel. Copper-based tools, forged with love, are much more bee-friendly. This video shows how we made them, under supervision of Gabriella, our ‘forge mistress’.Gabriella offers regular workshops to forge your own singing bowls, all over Europe. It is a
A praying mantis enjoys a bee delicacy at the entrance of the Sun Hive. Thanks to Or for the music…