Bee here now

Spider phobias aside, what is it about bugs that brings out the wish to squish?  If you want birds in your yard, you need bugs in your yard.  They say without that layer of teeming organisms in the ground, the entire food chain would collapse.   Fertilizers and insecticides strip the soil of life. The yard poison aisle at Home Depot is a depressing sight.  We have next door neighbors who still have their entire yard sprayed four times a year "just in case" the tent caterpillars decide to show up. At the same time, they keep bird feeders out.  People are funny...

Well, we can only tend our own little patch of God's Earth.   We love our summer bees and they love us.   Or rather, they love the lavender, sedums, alliums and other blooming things.   City bee-keeping is a fad right now on the West coast, just like chickens were a few years ago.

Beekeeping has come a long way.  Sunset Magazine ran a blurb this month about new, smaller bee hive designs that are supposedly easier to manage in an urban area. Like this nifty-looking top bar hive from beethinking.com in Portland.  

Of course I'd have to find "someone" to put the kit together for me.  But what a deal, apparently you can get as much as 80 pounds of honey from a single hive, and help the struggling bee population at the same time. 

The advantage of this elevated box style is the bee-keeper can peek inside and open it without disturbing the hive.  Beethinking.com sells the whole works in a nice, pricey starter kit.
I'm thinking about it.