Shame, I enjoyed reading about it. Hopefully it’s raised awareness; I might think about getting a beehive …
Hi,
Most unfortunately I had to shut down this project, I failed at building a team around it and it was just too much for a one-man show. It was fun though!
Cheers
wlf
Any news on this project @wleferrand?
Just watched a documentary on arte about 🐝 in Slovenia. Apis Carnica is the only permitted variety, and they have the highest percentage of beekeepers per capita in the world. Interestingly, Ljubljana now has too many bees and yield per hive has halved in the last decade.
wleferrand wrote:
we are experimenting with a low-cost way to detect queen failures early on: most of our queens sport a RFID tag on their back; an antenna then counts how many time per day they cross the center of the hive, and we use that data to detect disasters (that’s really a research project at this point).
wleferrand wrote:
a mobile app called “happiaries” and even a device to track a parasite called varroa
Very high-tech beekeeping.
I haven’t been posting much lately but the colonies are still alive & kicking. Some even benefit from the local supervision of the airfield firemen, such as here in LFBF – seeing people stepping in and involving themselves in the project is the best reward I could get.
Five Bizzy Honeybees by Lance Douglas is a great book for getting children interested
Unfortunately I have no idea. I used to fly there for training or getting/bringing club planes for maintenance essentially, but twice in a year is not enough. May be some people in the aeroclub, but I don’t know anyone there.
I have a backlog of airfield interested in hosting some honeybees but what we need now is more people willing to commit a bit of time to care for those bees.
We have the equipment (150 hives, one extractor for the honey) and some tools (a mobile app called “happiaries” and even a device to track a parasite called varroa (more about it on https://hivyleague.com)), so it has never been easier to get started in beekeeping. Also, it’s the perfect ultimate excuse to hang out at airfields :-)
I have not talked to AFPM specifically but we might put hives at LFIP. The problem is that these areas are challenging to most bee sub-species, so we need to be careful.
The grapes don’t produce flowers that are interesting to the bees but indeed some modern vineyards include other plants that are beneficial to grapes and that need bees for pollination. LFTF would be a great candidate indeed (and I go there quite often to visit my grandma); anyone is tempted to taking care of an apiary there?
Time is missing for me but I would be glad to do something.
Any chance to approach the AFPM? Many altisurfaces may be closed on winter, but they are some opened and accessible, and as the association is really nature-oriented beside the avgas consumption, I think you could get traction on this.
Did you get some airfield in the south east? I know that they added some hives in Cannes, and it results that the vegetal wall near the terminal entry sometimes frightens the incoming passengers, but I didn’et hear of any harm ever.
I think many terrain could get a load of hives, especially those close to vineyards (Fayence, Cuers, Le Castellet, Vinon, Aix, Eyguieres, …), the problem being that vineyards usually have tons of pesticides… some of them are Bio but unfortunately not enough.
