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Some sad news. Tom Ross, creator of Ross Rounds (comb honey equipment), passed away in Boulder on Saturday, May 27th. Mr. Ross moved to Colorado from Ohio in 2006. I had the pleasure of meeting him at the Boulder County Beekeepers’ Association meeting in February this year. He had a warm, intelligent and engaging presence. We made tentative plans to get together and “talk bees” later this spring – an event that never came to pass. I feel a tremendous amount of sadness and loss at the passing of this opportunity to get to know Mr. Ross better.

Beekeeping knowledge is cumulative. It increases gradually from year to year. Older beekeepers are a rich source of information and experience. It’s a sad day when one dies.

Good films about artists and artmaking are a rare treat. So I feel compelled to point them out whenever I find them.

Have you seen The Science of Sleep? It’s beautiful! Starring Gael Garcia Bernal as an aspiring disastrology calendar designer who has a hard time telling the difference between his waking life and sleep. (What’s disastrology you ask? Well, dear readers, you’ll have to check out the movie to see.)

It’s a love story. But very much about dreams, unrequited yearning and creative process too. The love interest is played by Charlotte Gainsbourg as a sculptor who crafts symbolic objects (birds, boats, trees…) of paper and felt. The art direction and stop motion animation are top notch. I loved this film. Hope you get a chance to love it too.

It’s swarm season – a relentless and exhilarating time of year. Have you ever experienced a honeybee swarm? I didn’t until I became a beekeeper. Now they’re a joyful (and exasperating) part of my spring routine. Joyful because they’re beautiful to watch. And exasperating because they never check in with me about my schedule before arriving.

To witness a honeybee swarm is to witness an exodus. The first thing you notice is an elevated buzz as thousands of bees exit the hive. They fly en masse – a living cloud – before forming a cluster around the queen. I like watching the cluster form. The queen lands on a twig or a branch or a wall (or sometimes even the ground). The bee cloud collapses around her becoming a dense mass of bees. There’s something alchemical about the process. Like watching a liquid go to gas and back to liquid again.

There’s an entertaining story about honeybees in today’s New York Times, “In Hive or Castle, Duty Without Power.” It’s extremely well written and makes an apt comparison between honeybee queens and Queen Elizabeth II of England. Duty without power indeed. Here’s a quote:

‘There is no top-down structure to honeybee society, no central command post or leaders with whips. Power is disseminated through the hive, and daily decisions about, say, whose turn it is to feed the larvae, take out the trash or fan the nectar into honey are made consensually and regionally, through a constant exchange of chemical, tactile and visual cues. “It’s a lot of local responses to local stimuli,” Dr. Robinson said. “Little things collectively give rise to decisions.”

As for the queen, she is so far from being a decisive potentate that she can seem goofily out of the loop. When a colony is ready to move to a new hive, for example, about three dozen scout bees appraise the local real estate, consult with one another and with other workers and finally, communally, settle on the best new spot. Come moving day, the queen has no idea where to go and must be shown the way.’

– Natalie Angier for the New York Times

I love the synthesis of honeybee biology with social observation. What better way to understand ourselves than by watching our sisters the bees?

Many thanks to everyone who helped pull together the SISTER BEE screening in Fort Collins, Colorado last Wednesday. This was a beautiful event. The screen was huge (verging on mammoth). The music was warm. The crowd friendly. Lots of great questions.

The hardest question right now, of course, is “What’s happening to the honeybees?” I wish a had a good answer. Alas, the jury’s still out on what’s causing this year’s massive bee deaths currently known as Colony Collapse Disorder. Folks at the Boulder County Beekeepers’ Association have done a good job updating the BCBA website with links to relevant news items. This is a great place to start your hunt for more info.

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Whoops! Andy just popped in to report that we’ve got a swarm on the way. This is happy news. More later.

KRFC radio personality Lex Krausz said some lovely things about SISTER BEE on the air last night. He’s got a fun show called Film Cuts that airs on Mondays from 8:00 to 9:00 PM. It’s a music show. Eclectic. All the music he plays is from movie soundtracks.

Lex played “Confectioner’s Town” by Diane French which is one of my favorite songs from the film. It’s loaded with longing and mystery. Thank you, Lex! I’m so used to hearing my own voice chatting on about SISTER BEE. It was nice to hear yours for a change. Great show.

Reminder. SISTER BEE screens at the Lory Student Center Auditorium in Fort Collins on Wednesday, May 2nd. The doors open at 6:30. The show starts at 7:00. Please email me if you need directions. I look forward to seeing you.