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There’s a delightful slide show of D.C. area figurative sculpture in today’s Washington Post. Lyrical, beautiful stuff. I love it when the Post covers art. They do a good job presenting complex works in an appealing, accessible way.

… In the form of a list of HAS events:

Welcome and announcements
CCD update
The cell punch method of queen rearing
Insurance for beekeepers
Nosema Cerane and Nosema Apis
A model bee breeding plan for sideline beekeepers
Living with the African honeybee
American Foulbrood: identification, eradication and control
Scrapbooking for beekeepers
Laying workers in the hive
Basic hive inspection
Factors affecting drone production
Raising your own queens
Reading the frames for better hive management
Using Apiguard for mite control
Cooking with honey
Making beekeeping equipment
The art of making beeswax candles
Bee beard – how to do one and why
How to move bees safely
Bee friendly insect control in the home landscape
What Brushy Moutain has to offer in equipment and supplies
Building a honey house from the floor up
Starting a master beekeeping program in your state
The Lost Mountain Honey Project
Beekeeping in South Africa
IPM for varroa mite control
Swarm control and splits
Using bricks to mark your hive’s condition
More on CCD problems
The classroom questions and answers
Beekeeping 101
Allegany protocol for saving the bees
Adding wax to plastic brood foundation – bees will pull it out fast and perfect
How to use everyday or inexpensive items in beekeeping
Hive scale to check honey build-up and the change in the calendar date
Greeting and gift cards and tags
Over-wintering nucs
What’s in your comb?
Dinner meeting HAS executive board
We Are Marshall movie
Where are the African bees now?
Sister Bee movie
Overview of instrumental insemination
Scrapbooking for beekeepers
Finding the queen
Learn the ins and outs of making Sister Bee movie
Making beekeepingi equipment
Autoclave: the best treatment for AFB equipment
Getting bees ready for pollination
Using small hive beetle traps
Selection & breeding of hardy queen stock
Teaching bees to school students
Queen banking
What’s new with the Walter Kelley Company
Keeping the Buckfast queens on the market
Weighing the hive day to day
Building a good bee club
Homemade honey ice cream social with bluegrass band
Queen quality
Pollen Nation movie
How to market your honey and wax
Quick snacks made with honey
Laying workers in the hive
Why nucs?
Information and help for the beginning beekeeper
Making splits to increase your numbers
Back care for beekeepers
Grand prize drawing

A few of these would make great novel titles. Can you guess which ones I mean?

Sister Bee was just one of sixty-plus events offered at HAS this year. I wish I could have attended all of them! Alas… time and space limited me to the few. Thought you’d enjoy hearing about these standout honeybee projects.

LOST MOUNTAIN HONEY PROJECT
Tammy Horn who authored “Bees in America” has begun an ambitious new project. The Lost Mountain Honey Project is opening new space for forests and honeybees by linking beekeepers with coal companies and private donors. They’re turning defunct mining sites into productive apiary forests and training grounds for new beekeepers. Beautiful, eh?

BEEKEEPING SAFARI
Second generation beekeeper and Ntaba Tours owner & guide Robin Mountain is offering a Beekeeping Safari to South Africa this December. Robin is one one of the first people I met a HAS. He’s a great storyteller. The itinerary looks fantastical. (I love the idea of a tour that makes time for picnics, penguin colonies, leopard gazing and honeybees.)

A STUDY ON CLIMATE CHANGE AND HONEYBEES
Curious about climate change and honeybees? NASA scientist and beekeeper Dr. Wayne Esaias is gathering information about “how climate change is affecting flowering plants and their pollinators” by observing honey flows. He’s actively seeking volunteers. A big ol’ scale and honeybees required. Get involved at HoneyBeeNet.

Big thanks to Dan O’Hanlon and Gabe Blatt of the Cabell Wayne Beekeepers Association in West Virginia for inviting me to screen Sister Bee at HAS last week. What a wonderful experience! The people, the setting, the workshops… all beautiful. I feel blessed to have participated. Will write more later this week…

Thanks to Mary Holt for sending these photos that tell the story of a heart shaped swarm that landed near her Cotswold Cottage in England a few weeks back. Splendid, eh? I love everything about them… the storybook cottage, the garden, Mr. Crabtree, the captions…

“the first photo I sent you shows the dormer window beside which the bees entered the roof. Unlike most dormer windows that have solid sides, ours have glass in the east-facing side because the view is so extensive and beautiful. (The bees must have agreed when they chose that spot to live for a while). That is how I came to observe them at such close quarters while they lived up in the attic.”

Bees, down from the roof to the rose tree.

Bee swarm in the rose tree.

“The garden is my absolute joy.”

Mr. Crabtree gathering the bee swarm at Oatleyhill Farm.

“You could not wish for a more gentle mentor. I was up at his place recently where he was inspecting a brood box and transferring some bees to another hive. He had told me that bees love goose feathers as a ‘brush’ to persuade them to move, and there I saw him use these enormously long white feathers bound together into a perfect tool. It looked as if they had come from part of a wing. He gently stroked the bees off the frames with them and they were extremely calm.”

Bees safely into the skep.

Something opens our wings. Something
makes boredom and hurt disappear.
Someone fills the cup in front of us.
We taste only sacredness.

-Rumi

One of my favorite art blogs is actually a politics blog. It’s Andrew Sullivan’s The Daily Dish published by the Atlantic. He has an eye for the striking & offbeat and regularly posts art-related stuff under the heading “mental health break.”

Today’s treasure is about grass art.

Enjoy!

Sleeve 22″ x 15″ encaustic and cyanotype on panel

One of the biggest pleasures of the Montserrat Encaustic Conference was taking in the conference’s three encaustic shows.

ON THE EDGE – NEW WORK IN ENCAUSTIC
It was an honor to have a piece (above) in this thoughtfully curated show. Check out Laura Moriarty’s Juror’s Statement for more info.

HUE AGAIN: PAINTINGS BY JOANNE MATTERA
As beautiful as encaustic work looks in books, it’s always, always better in person. There’s something about the wax medium, the way it holds light and shows depth, that’s difficult to capture with still photography. So although I’ve long been an admirer of Joanne Mattera’s colorful paintings I didn’t experience them in a real way until I saw them in person. They have an expansive, emotional quality that reminds me of sound or singing. I’d have loved to look at them longer & hope to see them again soon.

The photos I’ve seen of Joanne’s work are great, by the way… as good as encaustic photos can be. They’re just not as spirited as the actual objects are. I wonder if movement, subtle movements made by the viewer when encountering a painting (breathing, shifting) have a role to play in how encaustic is perceived.

THE DIPTYCH PROJECT
Presenting work born of a long-distance collaboration between members of New England Wax and the International Encaustic Association. You can read more about their process here. Interesting to note… each of the participating artists I talked with at the conference told me how hard it was to collaborate with another artist on a single painting. Some beautiful artwork resulted.