from the website:
On January 31, family farmers will take part in the first phase of a
court case filed to protect farmers from genetic trespass by
Monsanto’s GMO seed, which contaminates organic and non-GMO farmer’s
crops and opens them up to abusive lawsuits. In the past two decades,
Monsanto’s seed monopoly has grown so powerful that they control the
genetics of nearly 90% of five major commodity crops including corn,
soybeans, cotton, canola and sugar beets.

In many cases farmers are forced to stop growing certain organic and
conventional crops to avoid genetic contamination and potential
lawsuits. Between 1997 and 2010, Monsanto admits to filing 144
lawsuits against America’s farmers, while settling another 700 out of
court for undisclosed amounts. Due to these aggressive lawsuits,
Monsanto has created an atmosphere of fear in rural America and driven
dozens of farmers into bankruptcy.

Farmers need your voice today. Please spread the word.

http://action.fooddemocracynow.org/sign/farmersvs_monsanto/

It's here!
BEEKEEPING SURVIVAL GUIDE

Click above, or below. This year’s Anarchy Apiaries Almanac is a condensed mini-zine. One side folds up to eight mini pages, some cutting required. The back is unfolded to read a timeline and extracurricular activities. To print, it's best to fit the size to the page.

I’ve attempted to include everything you might want to know to start and keep a hive of bees on ONE PAGE. Let me know how I did!

Please distribute this! The AAA is free to all. Any donations help me edit and distribute. Contact me and I’ll mail you an AAA and some bees too.

May the bees be with you!
Sam
anarchyapiaries@hotmail.com

Taking orders to prepare for the END OF TIME! For your bee needs in 2012, think of treatment-free, small cell, northern hardy packages, nucs, top bar and Warre hives. Whatever you want, we can probably shake bees into it. (I'm thinking televisions and refrigerators.) Contact us to reserve spring bugs- available for pickup in the Hudson Valley with delivery options elsewhere. Hives seem heavy - Bring on the winter! The 2012 Anarchy Apiaries Almanac will be available FOR FREE soon, so check back.

Buzz Buzz Friends of the Insects,
Here is the 2012 pricelist. All bees are small/natural cell, treatment-free (no chemicals, antibiotics, acids, essential oils, miticides of any kind, no sugar dusting, drone trapping, etc., just bees being bees, you know), northern-hardy stock I have been raising in this way since 2005. I care deeply about them, and they are the best bees I can deliver, but this of course does not guarantee their survival. I want you to be successful with your new bees; after several years of odd, global-weirding weather, I recommend you feed the new packages and nucs AT LEAST a gallon of sugar syrup or honey when you get them home.
Bees are released on first-come first-served basis, and I usually start releasing second week in May, dependant on the weather. Everything available is in a limited supply. You are welcome to offer me a fair trade for something fantastic. Contact me with your order, and 25% down will reserve your bees. Delivery, set up, and limited consultation options are available. Thank you for your support of treatment-free beekeeping!

Packages $120 - a three pound swarm of bees with a mated queen in a screen box- the most basic and affordable way to get a hive going. You must supply the home- these bees would do best going onto some established combs, foundationless frames, small cell wax foundation, or into a wacky, alternative hive type. (continued...)

Perhaps Hawaiian beekeeping is in its darkest hour. Beekeepers on the big island are getting an earful of “do this” and “do this” and “don’t do that!” I figure the last thing needed is for me to add to the pile- and besides, I run Anarchy Apiaries: anarchy does not make rules for other people, bees, or beekeepers. The best use of my energy is to BOOST MORALE. Bees have a unique resilience. The more bees die, the more they live. My bees and my story are just an example.

I’ve always done what I think the bees are telling me to do, but really that seems to come down to doing whatever I like. What I really like to do when in groups like W.A.S. is to talk about the bees that keep me, where they come from, how great I think they are, and how I am running a bee business, mostly selling top bar nucs, shaking packages, raising queens, and doing honey CSA shares, with minimal inputs and no treatments while under the pressures of varroa, nosema, hive beetles, global weirding, and whatever else is out there. This is working for me; while all bees have inherent value, my primary interest is quality of life for them and me.

I would like to say that I won my first hives in a poker game, but it wasn’t so sweet. I started out commercially working for a 1000 hive stay-at-home operation in Vermont. I got paid (not much but worth it) to get stung, and there were hard lessons that first exhausting season in 2002. I learned that all bees everywhere were not doing as well as they used to. Now that story is a national phenomenon that grows bigger every year.

Buzz!

In lieu of yet another incredibly fun and cheerful meeting, for June the B. A. N. D. (Beekeepers Association of Northern Hoopla) is invited to join the Hudson Valley CRAFT group for a Bee Yard Tour at the Germantown Community Farm, Tuesday, June 28, 6-8 PM. Bring some snacks if you are the hungry type. The GCF hosts Anarchy Apiaries, the Fog and Thistle CSA, the Good Fight Herb Co., and founders of WGXC Community Radio. It's a great and happening place!

Stay posted for more events (featuring even more advanced notice), such as the launching of the Backwards Beekeepers Club of NYC - proliferating wingnut insect stewardship - July 9 and 10 at Eagle Street Rooftop Farm in Brooklyn. And come to our annual Field Day Potluck at the Cedar Cliff Bee Yard, which is now also the Great Song Farm CSA, later in July. It's all gonna bee HUGE!

Bees on the Brain,

Sam
www.anarchyapiaries.org

I am humbled and in awe of this Old Family hive, which I removed in Copake, NY, in June, 2010. They wintered in Germantown and came through strong. There was three buckets of honey. A beautiful queen. I did not wear a veil. These are the bees that traverse dream and reality. I am under their tutelage.

I’ve recently finished reading Honey Bee Democracy, the new book by Tom Seeley at Cornell. In the book, he describes 60 years of swarm behavior observations, from Martin Lindauer to present. Not only are the dances of the scouts decoded, but Seeley has investigated how the hive mind furiously dance-debates potential nest sites, then reaches an accurate and timely decision, and then acts on it (10,000 bees at once), much like the three-pound human brain thinks. Seeley goes further to compare the mental capacity of the hive to decision making at New England Town meetings, what he calls, “arguably the most authentic form of human democracy in the world,” where decisions are made in regards for the community, both individuals and the whole, and leadership is restricted, if present at all. Seeley’s countless experiments together add mesmerizing depth in our understanding of hive wisdom. It is the most all-encompassing research I have seen that reinforces the fact that the hive can do anything. There are certain bees that make it possible. And it concludes that bees could even guide humanity to a more peaceful future. I hope that this book, like this epic Copake hive, makes beekeepers pause and consider our intrusions. How could we know better than the bees?

Click the title above to download the book. A life-long work in process. Really needs another edit, some second opinions and fact-checking, but Enjoy. If anyone wants to publish it, go ahead. If Derrick Jensen wants to write a prologue, that would bee awesome. Use it. Abuse it. These machines kill facists. Continued apologies for lack of pictures, drawings, grammar, decency, just hope it helps you out.
Buzz. I'm back from Arizona. check this out -http://www.vimeo.com/10159341

2010 ANARCHY APIARIES ALMANAC

Buzz, that's right! Days getting longer.. the sun will shine! Getting done 2010's version of the Anarchy Apiaries Almanac. It's not all that differnt from the 2009 Anarchy Apiaries Almanac, but there is a great new bear story.

It's FREE and will always bee free.

I've promised this to a lot of folks- the link will be here soon. (I don't know how to do it yet.)

UPCOMING GIGS:
March 5-7+, Oracle, AZ
The Southwest Treatment Free Beekeeping Conference. Yes, we are building an army.

March 14, Coral Springs, FL, 4 PM
The Broward County Beekeepers Association: Top Bar Beekeeping in Florida.

March 30, Fairfield, CT
The Backyard Beekeepers Association. Anarchy Beekeeping with the Top Bar Hive.

March 31, Bard Prison Initiative, Bard College,
Annandale, NY

April 1, Keene, NH - Monadnock Beekeepers Association. wow, Spring is coming.

April 24-25 - Outlaw Beekeeping in the Fine State of Mississippi

what would make a beeautiful world?
bee beeautiful
sam

bee it
beecause
you beelieve it.

Lots going on. Always. Upcoming gigs:

January 12-16, Orlando, FL
The American Beekeeping Federation mega-meeting. Catch me raising hell for 1.5 hours Saturday morning. You can also catch me sleeping in my bee truck.

January 30-31, Ashville, NC
The WNC Bee School. this will surely bee amazing. I'm around for the first weekend only.

February 6-7, West Palm Beach, FL
The Southeast Organic Beekeeping Conference. Buzz on!

March 5-7+, Oracle, AZ
The Southwest Treatment Free Beekeeping Conference. Yes, we are building an army.

March 30, Fairfield, CT
The Backyard Beekeepers Association. Anarchy Beekeeping with the Top Bar Hive.

April 1, Bard Prison Initiative, Bard College,
Annandale, NY

that's it for now. but is it enough? help me spread the love, honey.