Articles & Resources

The Effects of Using a Smoker While Working with a Colony
April 4, 2011

People are now asking whether giving the bees a few puffs of smoke is damaging them, getting them too stressed. Here is my answer... My long experience is that the smoke is not damaging, if it is done right. I just give a little puff or two when I lift the outer cover, to let them know that I am coming. It's the 'door bell' for me. Read More

Concerns about Nuclear Radiation and our Honeybees
March 23th, 2011

Spray the BD preps #500 and #501 around the hives and surrounding area; i.e. first the soil spray,#500, in the afternoon, and the silica spray #501 in the morning next day. With Chernobyl we experienced a rapid improvement of the radiation after the sprays (not completely gone, but milder). In spiritual language: we are engaging the positive elementals to help us protect from and heal damages. - Gunther Hauk

Our Honeybee Crisis
This article was written for the book "Queen of the Sun: What are the Bees Telling Us?" 2011

There is no doubt that we are in a crisis that we must immediately turn into an opportunity for change. As Scott Hoffman Black, Executive Director of the Xerces Society said, it's the pollinators that run the show on this earth. Depending on one's diet, between 40% and70% of our food supply depends on pollinating insects, the most efficient of which are the honeybees.
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Is the Queen Still a Real Queen?
This article was written for the book "Queen of the Sun: What are the Bees Telling Us?" 2011

The honeybee queen's life raises so many questions, so much wonder and awe: miracle after miracle... after miracle!
The marvel starts at the beginning of the queen bee's life. Seemingly insignificant phenomena appear that determine her royalty. An egg is laid; an egg that just as well could become a worker bee. Read More

A Colony in Crisis, Saving the Honeybee Depends on Humans
May 5, 2011

On a farm in Spring Grove Village, on a windy spring morning, a group of Baby Boomers, artists and organic farmers gather in a small structure known as the "puppet barn." They swap stories of royalty over cups of coffee sweetened with local honey. They have come to hear the teachings of a master beekeeper.

Author, biodynamic farmer and 30-year beekeeper Gunther Hauk recently visited Cincinnati for a workshop at Homeadow Song Farm and a screening of the film Queen of the Sun, directed by Taggart Siegal, at Xavier University. Read More

Responce to: Next Mass Extinction an Eyeblink Away: Scientists
March 3th, 2011

Believe it or not: it is only here on Earth that we can fulfill our goal in evolution; and the other kingdoms' evolution is tied into our own! Our materialistic, bottom-line oriented mindset is the underlying cause: get what you can out of the earth, the animals, plants and your fellow human beings whatever you can! Now it's our beloved honeybees which are under grave attack from the poisons we put into our soils and food supply, but also from the exploitive beekeeping methods developed with no regard to the honeybees' very own needs. "When will we ever learn?" What do we change while there is still time? Gunther Hauk
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What a scientist didn't tell the New York Times about his study on bee deaths
October 8, 2010

FORTUNE -- Few ecological disasters have been as confounding as the massive and devastating die-off of the world's honeybees. The phenomenon of Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) -- in which disoriented honeybees die far from their hives -- has kept scientists, beekeepers, and regulators desperately seeking the cause. After all, the honeybee, nature's ultimate utility player, pollinates a third of all the food we eat and contributes an estimated $15 billion in annual agriculture revenue to the U.S. economy. Read More

Scientists are still barking up the wrong tree, confusing symptoms with causes
October 7, 2010

DENVER - It has been one of the great murder mysteries of the garden: what is killing off the honeybees? Since 2006, 20 to 40 percent of the bee colonies in the United States alone have suffered "colony collapse." Suspected culprits ranged from pesticides to genetically modified food. Read More

The Honeybee, Sustainer of Life on Earth
September 16, 2010

Rarely are we aware of the very subtle interrelationships of life, for they are hidden by the facts that jump out at you. We all know that the bison provided meat, hides and bones for the American Indians. And yet, these gifts were almost side effects compared to the critical, yet less-seen role that the bison had of building up the deep, rich humus in the prairies, a richness in fertility creating the breadbasket of our nation. Read More

Bee Catastrophe: 1/3 of Colonies Died This Winter, Worries Grow About Terminal Decline
From The Observer UK
May 3, 2010

Disturbing evidence that honeybees are in terminal decline has emerged from the United States where, for the fourth year in a row, more than a third of colonies have failed to survive the winter. The decline of the country's estimated 2.4 million beehives began in 2006, when a phenomenon dubbed colony collapse disorder (CCD) led to the disappearance of hundreds of thousands of colonies. Since then more than three million colonies in the US and billions of honeybees worldwide have died and scientists are no nearer to knowing what is causing the catastrophic fall in numbers. Read More

On the Honeybee
From Lilipoh Magazine
Summer 2008: Honeybees as wise messengers - Issue #52, Vol. 13

We are seldom aware of the subtle interrelationships of life, for they are hidden within the facts that jump out at you. For example, we all know that the buffalo provided meat, hides and bones for the American Indians. And yet, these gifts are almost a side effect, compared to its critical role of building up the deep richness of humus in the prairies. This richness in fertility created the breadbasket of our nation, upon which conventional agriculture still relies and depletes more every year. Read More

Colony Collapse Disorder
From AcresUSA
May 2007

The crisis that we now face with the honeybee is, in this writer's opinion, of no less significance than global warming. Much more than we can imagine depends on the presence and vitality of the honeybee population. Once this insect was revered as a sacred animal, along with the cow and the scarab beetle, all of which were known to create fertility, a thriving flora and fauna, throughout the land. Not only agriculture, but our very lives depend on these animals. Read More

Raised Beds
From Stella Natura

We are not considering here the question whether you prefer to sleep on the floor or a bit higher but whether we derive any benefits from raising the soil level for our vegetable cultures in garden or field. In the last 50 years organic gardeners gave ever more attention to the idea of raised beds. Basically I would like to differentiate between two concepts: Read More

Crop Rotation
From Stella Natura

Teaming up with the art and science of fertilizing and tilling the ground, crop rotation has been one of the three pillars of horti-and agriculture for thousands of years. There is a good reason for this: In a natural biotope a variety of plants join to form an intricate and complex community always striving to build up and harmonize a given location. They complement each other in that task, dealing with the various conditions of soil type, humus level, acidity or alkalinity, climate and animal life. Read More