Edible Blue Ridge Summer 2022

tending; beekeepers open them about 12 times a year. ese bees are very productive; they need to consume about 50 pounds of honey to sustain the energy needed to keep the hive at 95 degrees throughout the winter. As a result, these hives yield more honey for harvesting. Sun hives are more efficient, and so well-insu lated that the bees need only about 15 pounds of honey to survive the winter. While they produce less honey for harvesting, these bees swarm a lot, creating new hives. Spikenard’s holistic approach to operating a sanctuary is also supported by the notion that the land and the bees are one. “It’s sort of like an expanding abundance,” Tuchman says. “Ev ery year that we have bees on our land, there are more dandelions, there’s more clover, and that means there’s more for everybody. Up and down the food chain, if the pollinator-plant relationship is not healthy, the rest of it comes into question, too.” is means planting Spikenard’s acres with ample bee forage to provide nectar and pollen for the honeybees and other native pollina tors. Spikenard’s bottom field is planted with carbohydrate-rich foods that can be stored and consumed in larger quantities, including hedgerows of hazelnuts, elderberries, pussywil low, fields of buckwheat, yellow mustard, and several varieties of clover. “ at’s sort of the all-you-can-eat-buffet down there. When there’s a whole acre of something in bloom, it’s just a highway from up here to down there,” Tuchman says, gestur ing from the top field to the meadows below. He describes the upper fields as a “medicine cabinet,” where the bees forage the herb gar den’s rows of sage, thyme, lavender, oregano, mint, rosemary, echinacea, boneset, and com frey, which provide micronutrients and trace minerals. Spikenard staff utilize these herbs to make a healing bee tea to support the honey bees’ immune systems. Spikenard’s landscape also includes a small pond to provide water for the bees, which is necessary to ferment their pollen. e frogs, birds and praying mantids are happy here, too (turns out that a lot of animals like to eat bees, Tuchman says). e thriving ecosystem is re flected in the up to 40 percent increase in the population of ants, who work to decompose and recycle dead bees. is diversity of macro- and micronutri ents, as well as access to water, are crucial to the honeybee’s production. “Honey is the most im portant food for the bees. So, we really reserve that for them because we know how healthy

and strong bees are that are raised on their own honey.” By comparison, conventional beekeepers maximize honey harvests by feeding their hon eybees sugar and providing plastic foundations, which forces the bees to build straight combs to speed up the honey harvest. (Tuchman points out that even honey sold at a farmers market is often made by bees that are fed sugar.) Spikenard takes a conservative approach to harvesting honey. “ e honey, the wax, the propolis—all these incredible healing gifts that the bees share with us are taken only when there’s extra,” Tuchman says. And what a gift it is. Each jar of Spike nard’s glossy, luscious honey represents nectar frommore than 400 flowers. It tastes like honey on steroids: robust, floral, and rich, with sweet caramel and honeycomb notes. Spikenard re serves some jars for tastings; others are retailed. e honey is viewed as more of a donation from the bees, centering Spikenard’s focus on pro ducing healthy, resilient bees. One measure of success is that honeybees at Spikenard have a survival rate of 88 percent, compared to the national average of 65 percent. A queen bee’s natural life expectancy is about nine months; at Spikenard, it’s six years. But Spikenard staff recognize that they can’t cel ebrate this achievement in a vacuum. Produc ing thriving, healthy bees also makes it pos sible to sell starter colonies to other sanctuaries, which helps generate income for the nonprofit to thrive. ere are currently 14 other sanctuar ies modeled after Spikenard, and around 3,000 students who attend their online or in-person workshops and lectures. (Taking a class is a pre requisite to purchasing bees from Spikenard.) “Not only can we do it here, but some body can feel authentic in their own expres sion of it in their own community,” Tuchman says. “ ey can take the similar principles, but then adapt it to whatever those local needs are. ere need to be more safe places across our earth that are consciously cultivated in service of pollinators.”

ity, is how bees construct their wax comb. Some build their combs to be straight and geomet ric, others lean toward a curvy, artistic style. e way bees build their combs also influences which of the eight types of hive the beekeepers select. Bees that build straighter combs do well in rectangular boxes called Langstroth hives, which can hold colonies of up to 60,000 bees at peak season. To protect these hives from being toppled over by bears, the boxes are strapped to a wooden platform that’s anchored to the ground. To maximize sun exposure, hive open ings are oriented to face south and east, with wind breaks behind each hive. Bees that cre ate curvier combs, by contrast, naturally cre ate pockets of warmth that allow the bees to conserve their energy. ese colonies do well in round hives, like an egg-shaped sun hive con structed from hand-made woven baskets and covered with clay and cow dung paste, which create a four-inch wall of insulation. Langstroth hives require more regular Top photo: Spikenard Director AlexTuchman, photo by Layla Khoury-Hanold

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