I'm reposting and updating this from last year, for the top of the gardening season for most folks.

Our good friend MadSat, is still in Iraq, and still safe, and thankfully, he still has access to blogs.

MadSat is a rather remarkable beekeeper and bee remover (among a host of other amazing skills and talents). He sent along a great recipe to encourage and feed bees in a very healthful way.

It was so good ( posted my experiences with it last year), I want to share it here, with better measurements from MadSat:

New York Times article gives an overview, appears that a vir

but no honeybees at all. Any gardeners out there experiencing the same?

sheepishly looks around

Hey, Y'all.

Sorry I've been away, I feel guilty about it. I'm trying, really trying, to find things to write about that don't start and end with "kill them all" and "we're doomed, muthafuckers." But I am compelled to write a little about this minor thing I've noticed.
If you care to read about it, I'd really love to hear what you have to say. Be angry, relieved or disinteresed, but it's not about "politics."

[UPDATE Welcome, organic gardeners!]

Surprise! Most commercial beekeeping is just as bad as the beef industry or any other form of petroleum-based farming.

Not, of course, that this aspect of Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) is getting covered in our famously free press.

Via Information Liberation:

Sharon Labchuk is a longtime environmental activist and part-time organic beekeeper from Prince Edward Island. She has twice run for a seat in Ottawa's House of Commons, making strong showings around 5% for Canada's fledgling Green Party. She is also leader of the provincial wing of her party. In a widely circulated email, she wrote:

I'm on an organic beekeeping list of about 1,000 people, mostly Americans, and no one in the organic beekeeping world, including commercial beekeepers, is reporting colony collapse on this list. The problem with the big commercial guys is that they put pesticides in their hives to fumigate for varroa mites, and they feed antibiotics to the bees. They also haul the hives by truck all over the place to make more money with pollination services, which stresses the colonies.

Her email recommends a visit to the Bush Bees Web site. Here, Michael Bush felt compelled to put a message to the beekeeping world right on the top page:

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[Another organic question here.]

Wow. This sucks:

It seems like the plot of a particularly far-fetched horror film. But some scientists suggest that our love of the mobile phone could cause massive food shortages, as the world's harvests fail.

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