Designing With Nature. These are my projects.
If you visit Edmonton, Alberta (Canada) travel the city’s ring-road in search of giant mountains of snow. Often lasting well into Summer, some citizens have taken to betting when on when it’ll melt. What if Northern cities [Read more…]
In the Summer of 2014, Edmonton rolled out the details of a new Edmonton Beekeeping pilot. Great news for would-be urban beekeepers! Though, before going into detail, let me preface this list with a quote from the Edmonton Journal and Mayor Don Iveson:
Since many cities already permit urban beekeeping, Mayor Don Iveson characterized the program as a “pilot” for functional reasons only, not just “dipping a toe in the water.” Projects will get the green light this summer, with administrators coming back to council next year with bylaw changes.
Before we begin – if you’re in the Edmonton area and there IS a swarm of bees outside your window, call (780) two three five – zero two two three or visit Report A Swarm Or Honeybee Colony.
Swarming is a natural process that occurs when a colony of bees splits in two – swarming is how one colony produces another and often triggered by a lack of space.
Swarming is most common in the Spring and early Summer when strong hives run out of space inside the hive. When this occurs, the colony will prepare a new queen before half of the bees and the current queen search of a new location. A swarm is what we call the group of bees that have left the hive in search of a new home.
Swarms will usually settle on a branch and ball together while individual bees search for a suitable hive location; hollow tree trunks, old barn walls, etc. When the homeless colony agrees upon a site, the swarm will fly to the new location and begin constructing comb.
However, if you call someone familiar with swarm catching (local beekeeping, as an example) they can often capture the swarm and introduce it to an empty hive. More often than not, the bees find the hive suitable and decide to stay. The swarm catcher will move the hive to a preferred location.
Here’s a video of the swarm catching process. This is a swarm that my father and I captured outside of Edmonton. Notice how docile the honeybees are; completely gorged on honey (think how you feel after a Thanksgiving meal) and primarily concerned with finding a new home, the bees don’t pay much attention to us.
If you want to become an Edmonton swarm catcher, sign up for the Edmonton Swarm Catchers Remind List and receive instant notifications of swarms in the area. As beekeepers, it’s not uncommon to get calls from the public when swarms appear. The Edmonton swarm catchers list provides a way for beekeepers to coordinate with each other when unavailable to
Sign up for the Edmonton Swarm Catchers List in one of three ways:
People report swarms to the group by messaging me or Remind. Reported swarms are sent to everyone at which point it is first-come-first-serve.
Mark: Ah yes, loves goes in hand in hand with those birds and bees does it? When it comes to backyards, though, not everyone loves the idea of birds or bees. yesterday we talked about the possibility of the city approving urban chickens. Today the city comes out with a report that [Read more…]
Each summer since 2014, hundred of volunteers descend into Edmonton’s river valley to add thousands of edible, native trees and shrubs to the City’s first publically planted food forest.
Located on the South facing slope of MacKinnon Ravine, the goal of the food forest is to [Read more…]
In recent years, the Edmonton area has seen an increase in schools pursuing urban agriculture (urban ag) initiatives. Traditionally run as extra-curricular activities or horticulture classes, urban ag is rapidly gaining interest among urban youth and educators. At the same time, while there are champions in schools across the city, existing administration and school boards may not always be aware of positives impacts of urban agriculture projects in schools.
Not only do school urban ag projects exemplify the guiding principles of Alberta Education’s Inspiring Education* document, they offer hands-on, experiential, student-lead, cross-curricular, and project based learning including: [Read more…]
In 2010 99% invisible put out a podcast episode about city flag design – mostly about how bad city flags tend to be. That got me thinking about Edmonton’s city-flag. For starters, – do we have one? As it turns out, we do, and it’s pretty terrible. [Read more…]
