Buzz: Urban Beekeeping and the Power of the Bee

Notes

>> 221 Notes Chapter 1 1. What measures are planned to help contain or control the bees? If plans do not include containment (e.g., within screening), what safety measures would be utilized? There will be no permanent structure to control the bees. We are specifically not asking for funding to build beehives due to the lack of ability to tend to the hives by student/faculty members throughout the year. Rather we choose a plot as a means to attract bees and enable them to have a source of native pollination. However, we believe there are already bees in the area, though we have not conducted a census; in particular bees are drawn to dandelions, which are abundant on our campus. As far as safety measures, the native pollinator project is part of the Center for Biodiversity and Conservation and the Greenbelt Native Plant Center: see http://greatpollinatorproject .org/aboutus.html. This suggests that planting native plants does not create any greater risk from bees—in fact there is some evidence to suggest that a native habitat would concentrate bees in an area as a food/pollen source. We will clearly label the plot as a bee pollinator project plot so that individuals are aware of the probable presence of bees. —Estimate of the amount of bees expected? Since we have not conducted a census it is difficult to get an accurate sense of the size of the bee population or the diversity of species of bees on the Purchase campus. Based on evidence from the Brooklyn Botanic Garden’s pollinator project, it is possible that there could be anywhere between forty thousand and eighty thousand bees living near or around the garden plot. It is unclear if the native pollinator plot would increase this population. We are not aware of the bees’ relative health at Purchase and if they are in any way suffering from Colony Collapse Disorder. —What training is planned (initially and ongoing) for those who will be “beekeepers ” or otherwise work with the bees? The great pollinator project has all its materials and helpful videos and tracking sheets, and identification illustrations available online. Interested students and faculty will be asked to print and download instructions from the website. Individuals can set up independent accounts with the pollinator project and provide their data to the group directly. Furthermore, we will have an organizational meeting at the beginning of each semester to explain the garden to interested Purchase community 222 > 223 14. Freya Mathews, “Planet Beehive,” Australian Humanities Review 50 (May 2011), http://www.australianhumanitiesreview.org/archive/Issue-May-2011/home.html (accessed October 22, 2011). 15. See Monica J. Casper and Lisa Jean Moore, Missing Bodies: The Politics of Visibility (New York: NYU Press, 2009), for an exploration into how missing human bodies require new ways of seeing. 16. Agricultural Marketing Resource Center website, http://www.agmrc.org/commodities__products /livestock/bees_profile.cfm (accessed August 14, 2011). 17. “The Global Silk Industry: Perception of European Operators toward Thai Natural and Organic Silk Fabric and Final Products,” http://www.fibre2fashion.com/ industry-article/38/3793/the-global-silk-industry1.asp (accessed December 8, 2011). 18. Agricultural Marketing Resource Center website, http://www.agmrc.org/commodities__products /livestock/bees_profile.cfm (accessed August 14, 2011). 19. Holly Bishop, Robbing the Bees: A Biography of Honey, the Sweet Liquid Gold That Seduced the World (New York: Free Press, 2005), 238. 20. Ibid., 239–240. 21. Donna Haraway, When Species Meet (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2008). 22. Ibid., 235. 23. Jen Wrye, “Beyond Pets: Exploring Relational Perspectives of Petness,” Canadian Journal of Sociology 34, no. 4 (2009): 1037. 24. Peter Singer, Animal Liberation (New York: HarperCollins, 1975). 25. The behaviors of certain animals, in particular, elephants, dolphins, octopi, and starfish, have been used as evidence to assert that these species exhibit intelligence . The logic goes that if they are intelligent then they are sentient and in effect closer to humans. Thus, they have rights as a species. Some argue that this perspective is problematic because intelligence is a human construct and very difficult to measure. 26. Joel S. Savishinsky, “Pet Ideas: The Domestication of Animals, Human Behavior, and Human Emotions,” in New Perspectives on Our Lives with Companion Animals, ed. Alan M. Beck (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1983), 112–131. 27. Judith Siegal, “Companion Animals: In Sickness and in Health,” Journal of Social Issues 49, no. 1 (1993): 157–167. 28. Lisa Wood, Billie Giles-Corti, and Max Bulsara, “The Pet Connection...