Skokie Beekeeping - Save Our Bees!

8pm @ Village Hall 5127 Oakton, in Skokie

  It is mportant to have local beekeepers to help save honeybees--who are disappearing at an average rate of 30.5% per year.  That's unsustainable!  Imagine if 30% of dairy cows or chickens didn't come back to their barns each year and just vanished.  Commercial beekeeping, while necessary for our food needs, may be part of the problem because of the way they breed bees from a small genetic pool and feed them corn syrup and drugs and chemicals to help them survive their tough life of being transported all over the country to pollinate whatever crop is in bloom at the time.  We need local beekeepers to help breed survivor bees who can survive the challenges of diseases and pests without drugs and chemicals. Urban and suburban environments are actually good for honeybees.
Honeybees tend to look for large sources of one kind of flower, so you're likely to find them in places like commercial or municipal plantings, rather than in your back yard. It's bumble bees that fly from squash plant to daisy to petunia.  Honeybees work one variety of  plant all day long.  Look for them on the purple Russian Sage plants all over town.  Honeybees only do two things outside the hive: fly out and collect nectar and pollen, then fly back to the hive to deposit it so the workers in the hive can make honey and food for the baby bees out of it.  Young bees, who aren't ready to go out and forage, do all the work in the hive: attending the Queen as she lays eggs for future generations (honeybees only live 4-6 weeks!), cleaning house, building honeycomb, tending the developing bees.

Other than the foragers flying in and out of the hive, honeybees  don't "loiter" around the yard.  If your neighbor is a beekeeper, and you cannot see the hive directly, you  probably would not have any idea that bees are kept next door.  Honeybees die when they sting, so they do it very judiciously--usually only to protect the hive against danger.  You can stand right next to a hive and even pick up bees by hand and the bees will not bother you.  They will generally let you know if they are in a bad mood (like it's been raining for most of the last week, and they haven't been able to go outside) by buzzing loudly in front of your face or bouncing off you.  They don't want to sting you. There are many public hives out in the open at places like nature centers, Wagner Farm in Glenview, the Chicago Botanic Garden, and the Shedd Aquarium.  In other words, beekeeping is safe for children to be around.

Please come out and speak at the Monday night meeting - we need you!

YOU CAN ALSO WRITE A SHORT NOTE TO THE BOARD OF TRUSTEES and the Skokie Mayor who WILL VOTE ON WHETHER OR NOT TO BAN BACKYARD BEEKEEPING IN SKOKIE THIS MONDAY.
 http://www.skokie.org/mayorandboard.cfm

I will be there Monday supporting my right as a Skokie resident to keep bees in my yard to make our planet a better place.