little bit.

Got the Mother's Day posters done. Got the Hangar corrections in and ready to roll in InDesign. Clocked down some smaller stuff like postcards, and logo investigation (kind of a little hierarchy thing). Need to do the Illustration Directory ad tomorrow along with the Hangar changes. Then, a day or two on the Yearbook as I am beginning to get twitchy about getting this stuff done and keep up with what the team throws at me. Need to get back to the bees. I have recolored one of the Bee Goddess again...and am getting into a palette groove for this grouping and need to work on queens, groups, families, and the midnight inspired "BeeBomb/ Bee Balm" idea. The concept of hives thrown at the enemy and the Monarda flower is a nice juxtaposition. Plus, there is an amazing quote from the LL. Langsroth book that I love. So, as soon as I get over this glut of volunteerism and two birthdays, I will roll back in. It was snowing yesterday and rainy today. But so nice and cool to allow the grass to green up plushy and thick. I really need to get into the flower bed and dig out the monarda as it could use some thinning and in the world of deer, more monarda is def. better. I hear R. is home. Need to fire up the Grill. Cornell chicken tonight!

In the chair

Waiting in the chair at Satori, the hairspa experience. Quiet, happy buzz and I have coffee and a bit of time for you. We are quiet as all the guests have flown-- and the play has finished-- so we can roll to the next round of plans for Kitty and Rob's birthdays, our new class on Wednesday to learn to zydeco dance (the whole crew-- kids and all) and the community build at the Tburg farmers market.

I have been asked to be interviewed by Jackie Merwin in her May 16 th "Bohemian Potluck" radio show. We are going to talk about my work that I have done with local musicians-- illustration, design and the like.Should be interesting-- about 20 minutes of talk and 20 minutes of music. I should get her the Carol Elizabeth Jones CD as she is part of the mix and connected to the bubble of old time musicians here. The Chokers are playing at Grassroots-- need to think about a possible poster--something limited edition and the "gotta steal" poster of the season. Hmmmm.

So the cast party was great on Saturday. Adorable kids who seemed to have a good time-- and ate everything but 15 baked potatoes which have been chopped and reconfigured into soup (Alton Brown has an amazing recipe that R proclaimed that you would pay for in a restaurant!). I will link later today... Here comes the beauty..... Must go!

Woodstock and Sally looking for Woodstock's girlfriend, the wormPhew. Got the Hangar Theatre work in hand. A few more hours on the posters and brochures and I think we will have it in the can. I got a sheet with their palette and logo iterations which is good (albeit after the fact) and feel that some heavy duty templating of this work will make it run more smoothly, drive a more consistent image and make a better impression which to my thinking is pretty amateur right now. There has been some tremendous work done in the past, but it hasnt been managed and those tools need to be put in place. Plus, with the amount that they ask of local businesses and individuals, the plea for valued volunteers should be part of every publication. If you get the volunteers, you will get donations and all the rest as your audience will have more skin in the game than just ticket purchase. Just a thought.

Night two of the play was good. The afterparty at the Woodland Roadhouse couldnt have worked out better. Everyone ate, had fun and took pictures of each other. Now, we are up an at em for a trip to Sauders for the Baked Potatoes and bagels tonight as well as the boys will be heading to Geneva to have Alex's new bike realigned to fit him. I must run off,but will log in later to say Hi.

Smorgasbord

Kitty Dancing by Emily Pratt, 2010The picture to the left sums up spring here in Tburg. There are plays and dances accompanied by parties and gatherings, music and food. The flowers are on the grow with the peony's red stems pushing up and exploding. The tree peonies have ripe big buds that will be the hargingers for the herbaceous ones.

We went to the Rongo to hear Toivo last night. Toivo was wonderful and the crowd was filled with all sorts of interesting and interested people that I loved catching up with. More talk on local food, local grain and local cuilinary opportunities.  Turns out that Peter Hoover has a hundred apple trees and leases bee hives for pollination and ten pounds of honey. He told me about how is managing these frosty evenings with electric fans pointed at the trees, keeping the air moving so that the buds do not freeze. He voiced some concern around the frosts and the cherry harvest this July as there may not be the quantities. He told us about his time in Venezuela engaged in the music and culture and his return trip a few years ago. It was great having a chance to visit with a local treasure.

I was told another sad piece of news. It recently surfaced that there is a hundred year law that has been put back into action that there cannot be chickens in the Village of Trumansburg. I thought that might be a fun thing to do as we have friends and family that have chickens and they have been selling me on the idea of trying it. I figured we could hide them in the back forty...but now....I wonder what they would think of llamas?

Then we went to the Pourhouse for dinner to hear the Grady Girls playing wonderful, lively irish music with friends and family of the girls dancing and beaming over their music and performance. Very happy and happy making. More wonderful people to talk to and catch up with. Its fun to have a crowd here because wherever we go, we bring the party with us and are able to introduce our friends to the wider world.

A less taxing alternative to slow dancing, Emily Pratt, 2010 (note: Alex C. is wearing the red shoes)Tonight is the first night of the HS play, "Snoopy!". Alex is very concerned about the vestiges of eye makeup so is always peering into a mirror or a dark piece of glass to see whether it is gone or not. Both Kitty and Alex were all dressed up (honoring the first day of the play) this morning with a bounce in their step and I hope a song in their heart. We will have performances today, tomorrow and Saturday. Friday night I am the mom in charge for a gathering at the Woodland Road House for after the play. And Saturday is the cast party here chez Camp which I have concluded will be baked potatoes for everyone along with drinks and maybe yogurt and granola in little cups. Simple, healthy and hot carbos for energetic people. Need to make my Sauders list immediately.

Got a zillion small things done yesterday. The iPhone art has morphed to gen2 iPad cover instead. Andy Howell, the art director cropped the illustration (which looks pretty cool) and I will re-jigger the final for him this a.m. I am hopeful that this might get noticed and sold. And, I love the idea of wrapping an iPad which is a bigger canvas for my work. Two things for the Museum iPad sketchyesterday.

Designed another series of buttons for the iPhone/Blackberry for an app. my healthcare client is doing. As an aside, if you need to do something like this or even sketch this sort of thing, I found this wonderful, wonderful template online along with this step by step article on development (complete with GUI templates in photoshop and illustrator for design) These tools made generating a series of icons a snap--as there were a series of back and forths that could have been less simple if I had not had this tool in layers to click new images into new layers and save. Easy> therefore, higher fun factor.  So, I am kind of cranked up about this. Pretty exciting. Stefan has a good idea for an app that maybe we will need to figure out when we have a spare moment after I get his work done.---

I want to send out for more postcards and a sticker for Hodge Podge Lodge for our granola bags today. i am going to use Printograph as their prices (and quality) is excellent--and if I keep going there, I will be eligible for their brokers' pricing which I can then use for my clients. That would be very sweet.

Onwards.

Potluck

Queen Contained, Q. Cassetti, 2010, pen and inkLots of active people here. Bruce is here. Gloria is here from California. Two kids in "Snoopy!". The general doings around the campus...and more ideas and thoughts than one could imagine. Lots of real estate talk. Lots of "what am I doing with my life and how do I want to live" talk. The cats keep complaining about the lack of food and the deprivations they suffer. Shady Grove is right on point about her opinions of squirrels and pine cones...and how they are interrelated in many shades of oddity. So, I am trying to keep up with the melee.

I have the Hangar brochure on the boards as well as the Mothers Day poster for the Rongo. Rumor has it that I have been invited to talk with Jackie Merwin on May 16th on her Bohemian Potluck radio interview. We will talk about my design and illustration as it relates to the local music scene. You know, as I thought about it, I have touched at least 5 CDs without really realizing that there is a small body of work there. Imagine! So, we will see. And if it does happen, I will put it out there for all of you.

Another "out of the blue" came into my email box yesterday--a request to use my "Sweetheart" valentine (got into AI), toned with red for a Speck, iPhone case. Sweet? If there are wholesale orders--I could get 8% of gross. If it is over the zazzle.com page, I get the standard markups. Might be fun to get some to sell directly (ie. Wholesale). We will see. These things get so exciting and render zero to nothing in fiscal return. We have also just started posting work to Etsy....>> and will have more in the next few days. There are holiday cards, postcards, even my tattoos. I am going to get some bee postcards printed as the ones from the "Home Sweet Home" series came out so nicely with Printograph.

Other news includes a publication that was a surprise yesterday from the Cornell Veterinary School on the practice and training of vets in shelter medicine. Shelter Medicine is fascinating as it addresses dogs/cats as a herd so keeping the herd healthy and viable translates to adoptable pets which then make happy families (the last part is my putting a bow on top...but hey, its to raise money so a bit of schmatz is what is needed here). I am looking forward to this.  Queen Schmatz, thats, me.

Plans are afoot to make granola and sell it at the Tburg Farmers Market this season under the "Hodge Podge Lodge" brand. Its is so easy and the kids need to raise some money so I am working on a label and coffee bags to have a nice presentation...and we will go for it. I'm excited. Who knows if the kinder are.

Gotta go. I have been wild in bone management--making more chicken stock (almost obsessively) than we can consume. But, everytime I go to the store, I somehow hit the bone jackpot (at $.29 a pound) and feel the need to load up on backs and wingtips to roast and boil to make soup for lunch. And dang, the soup is really really good these days. Guess a winter locked in the house with a mountain of bird carcasses has really added up to something beyond a grim mortuary pile.

TED Happiness

"George Washington" So-called 'fraktur' drawing. Done by Pennsylvania German artists in a style reminiscent of medieval illuminated manuscript art. The name, "fraktur", actually means "fractured writing" and is a reference to the pointedness of Gothic German script. The painter who created this portrait of Washington is not known by name; art historians refer to him as the "Washington-Sussel Artist" because his work was first studied by a collector of that name. Ink,watercolor on paper, H 20, W 16 cm Independence National Historical Park, INDE 2678Spring morning with a cold start.

Some of my poor daffodils are lying on the ground frozen in place, though the grape hyacinths and frittilaria seem to flourish in the frosty bite. I socked the two hellebore I just bought right next to the one that was a legacy plant. The new hellebore are a blue green on one side, and  a ruby/ivory color on the other. I was surprised at the depth and heartiness of the roots on these plants and am excited already for next spring and these beauties' debut Chez Camp.

Our little birthday celebration was very nice. All the food was consumed and the menu turned out to be paced so easily, that we actually had time to relax a bit prior to showtime. It seemed everyone had a nice time and hung out after the dinner to continue the various conversations that were in place from geneology, local food, real estate, education, learning approaches.  Now, we can get on the business of work and living until Friday's after school play event and Saturday's cast party that I am on for.

Did I talk and point you all to one of my new favorite inspirations? Probably not. As we have been watching TV (we just got one and we watch it tout en famille these days) and can get a link to YouTube, we have been watching various presentations that are made at the TED conference. Are you familiar with TED? Here's what TED says about TED;

TED is a small nonprofit devoted to Ideas Worth Spreading. It started out (in 1984) as a conference bringing together people from three worlds: Technology, Entertainment, Design. Since then its scope has become ever broader. Along with the annual TED Conference in Long Beach, California, and the TEDGlobal conference in Oxford UK, TED includes the award-winning TEDTalks video site, the Open Translation Program, the new TEDx community program, this year's TEDIndia Conference and the annual TED Prize.

The annual conferences in Long Beach and Oxford bring together the world's most fascinating thinkers and doers, who are challenged to give the talk of their lives (in 18 minutes).

These are riveting, brief and thoughtful presentations that can really jar your thinking and perceptions. I have learned so much from these talks which we have right in our living room.  I encourage you to go and seek TED out. Anyway, the TED talks are on the TED site but also on YouTube.  My most recent, "Oh my Goodness" moment was with Temple Grandin's talk, "The world needs all kinds of minds"

What was startling and inspiring was Grandin talking about visual learners which I truly am. No wonder math never worked for me. Grandin is remarkable in her straight-forward, Mid-Western, matter of factness---talking about different learners, different people, the odd ones that are often in a group--explaining their oddity (and the wonderfulness of different people's approach to learning and information). Her speech is now something I deliver to all my friends and particularly to those that will hear in in my involvement with the Committee for Special Education (CPSE) at school. I wish I could tell you the story of one of my experiences but it's inappropriate to go there. However, it has helped me to get beyond the stigmas of autism, and all the other isms as everyone learns...and may learn differently from the methodology that is in place for the "norm" at school. And who is to say that the "norm" is right. I am thankful that my crash and burn in algebra was replaced with art history and mythology as this is a place that fueled my fire and was additive for my life. I thank goodness that Chemistry wasn't pushed down my throat, but extra English and Latin.

The day begins. My phone is ringing.

Busy busy

Gorgon, Q. Cassetti, 2009, digitalThere was cooking yesterday. Big cooking. I made granola, gingersquares (from King Arthur), bagels (from King Arthur) and a big jackpot pot of chicken stock (managed to score a few packages of backbones from the Shur Savior) and skittled home to get them into the bone processing I love to do. Today, there is more cooking....we are making a chocolate cake; turning the stock into soup; sesame crackers (from King Arthur) and a torta (a friend's recipe) along with prepping vegetables and a tenderloin for another celebratory dinner for our guests.

Bring on the fatted calf.

Sixteen for dinner....It is totally clear how people get on a roll entertaining. You just keep moving the plates from the dishwasher to the table to the dishwasher and never put them away. I cannot multitask on the level to do this and hold down a full time job...but at least the logistics make sense.

Snow Ball/ Spring Fling was fun for K and A. They got in late but from all reports this morning, there was lots of dancing with all sorts of people.

John C. from Elmira visited yesterday and told us all about the 200 apple trees he just put in on his property last week. Made me pause and think about how fun that would be and also, what would the tax consequences be if one were to do such a thing? I would like to understand more about this agricultural piece as apples and bees in some scale or another is in our future. The trees I bought are happy in the brisk weather we are having...perky leaves and rosy buds. What promise. I can see a tempietto farm stand on Camp Street. I really can. We need to start dreaming about architectural follies.

Need to go and put the crackers in the oven...But just wanted to say hi.

Dark morning.

Good thing I havent put all the sweaters away. Its dreadfully cold...even some minor whispers of SNOW on the horizon...Cold, grey spring morning. Need to make some lists and then get to the store to make two desserts, a side dish and Barbara's torta for the dinner for 14 tomorrow night. I am making some ginger squares using a whole cup of crystallized ginger and a very dense chocolate cake (using up lots of things from the larder). Who needs boxes upon boxes of crystallized ginger in the pantry? I don't anymore! Lets hope it  tastes like something. 

We have a full house with Gloria, my sister-in-law coming in today from Los Angeles for a week. We also have Mr. Blackburn visiting and working with the Museum. Alex is delighted as its far more social and there are people who have opinions and knowledge about things that thrill him...including cars and driving. Much gathering chez Camp.

Today is also the revisited Snow Ball as the original Snow Ball (a winter party at the High School) was snowed out. So Snow has become Spring and the party renamed, Spring Fling. We have all sorts of planning around what to where and who to hang out with. It's Kitty's last one, so I hope its extra fun for her this year. She will be wearing her "Princess Unicorn" shoes (gold with a ruffle with a unicorn's horn for the heel). Can you say "over the top"? And there is the gold dress from Trader K's. More on Trader K's>>

Barb was making foccacia using the clothes drier as a rising box...which really worked. I am going to try that this weekend. I love it that Barb uses any household tool in the house to move the cooking along. She will make pumpkin pie on the grill, or in this case, the drier for bread rising. Inspired.

I have been asked to create an image for the Mothers Day for Peace concert being held on Mothers' Day at the Rongo. This is a good idea shepherded by Heather Christ to celebrate the idea of the original victorian Mothers Day which was to raise consciousness about peace during the Civil War. So, Heather is doing the same--recruiting women musicians, musician mothers to play for this event. Heather has big plans...but I need to focus on the poster once she has more content/names to add to the piece. I think I am going fraktur ladies with this one. A central mother with two daughters...The Virgin Mary is the perfect Mother for this piece on Peace but it might not strike the right chords with everyone.

I am busy looking at the Milton Glaser book, Art is Work (which I agree wholehearted in the message and delight in every moment of it). His reach and flexibilty along with his visual problem-solving strikes a deep chord with me--goading me to try new styles and approaches and not to be shy, but bold. Have humor and yet have reverence. He is an amazing artist, designer and illustrator combined with skill and brains that rarely come together in such an inspired package. I am also bee-ing...thinking about their hardwired (Kitty's word) dna to communicate, congregate and work. The apiary life indeed should be held sacred for all of us....(and as a feminist side, its run and operated by GIRLS).

Ah well. There is ginger to grind and chocolate to measure....and treasure.

Flax Barn Sale this week. For more information>> (check the tab called Barn Sale at the top of the site).


IF: [dancing] detective

Bee Dance, Q. Cassetti, 2010, mixed mediaFrom Wikipedia on "Waggle Dance":
Waggle dance is a term used in beekeeping and ethology for a particular figure-eight dance of the honey bee. By performing this dance, successful foragers can share with their hive mates information about the direction and distance to patches of flowers yielding nectar and pollen, to water sources, or to new housing locations.[1][2] Thus the waggle dance is a mechanism whereby successful foragers can recruit other bees in their colony to good locations for collecting various resources. It was once thought that bees had two distinct recruitment dances — round dances and waggle dances — the former for indicating nearby targets and the latter for indicating distant targets, but it is now known that a round dance is simply a waggle dance with a very short waggle run (see below). Austrian ethologist and Nobel laureate Karl von Frisch was one of the first who translated the meaning of the waggle dance.[3]

American Illustration (A129) accepted work:

Just got these three images into American Illustration 29. The top is Krampus from my advent calendar project, and the other two were part of Hartford MFA thesis project on valentines.

From AI 29's Facebook page:
Congratulations to our AI29 Selected winners ! From an impressive 8.033 pictures, the jury selected only 388 images by a majority vote or better to appear in American Illustration 29, representing the best images from 2009. A slide presentation announcing the winning images will be sent to all entrants and our member list of over 30.000 creative professionals in May.

Gotta love it.

Hive Alive, Q.Cassetti, 2010, mixed mediaIt looked like it was going to be a dark, cloudy day...but an hour into the day and we have a perfect Spring moment. The yellow willow wands are coming in complementing the little patches of daffodils and the brilliant forsythia which has popped. The muscari have come up. Shady Grove was busy sniffing up all the promising scents while I gazed skyward to our dear turkey vultures, silent silhouettes pirouetting overhead.

I did this illustration in black and white pen and ink. The plan was to reverse it out like the  silhouette inspired illustrations I did earlier this year...and the effort I put into it made it look like poop. But, I brought it up and reworked it yesterday after the fun conversation I had with my mentor, Murray Tinkelman--who was pleased with these new pictures. So, with that push, I revisited this...and color seemed to emerge. The vector work was done in illustrator on a high res reversed out jpg. Then I brought it back into photoshop for more work. You can see the black and white and the color here>>

I just reordered a mess of buttons from Busy Beaver>> as I have depleted my supply with friends, family and clients. New ones are a bee goddess, a fraktur angel, a rooster. More gimmes.

Trumansburg is doing a community build for our new farmer's market shelters. Our farmer's market has been al fresco for the last few years, but Deirdre Cunningham, the clever and stylish manager of the market wrote a grant and got a chunk of money to start us on the way to having some structures. Alex and Rob were involved in cement work last weekend...and now every weekend from now  through May will have building projects both days. Here is a bit from Dierdre's report:

Community-build pavilion project update:
First week: 42 steel plates were welded at Durand's Forge and driven up to Elderlee's in Oak Corners to be galvinized; 10 - 12 volunteers installed 42 footers (backhoe donated by Carson Excavating) and made concrete stools and table pedestals (checkers, anyone?)  -
great job!  thank you all!  

To feed the troops during the upcoming work days, Suse Thomas has pulled together donated baked goods (home bakers, Ithaca Bakery) and lunch (Hazelnut Kitchen, T-burg Rotary Chicken BBQ, Maxie's Supper Club, The Pourhouse, Dragon Village, Subway, Stone Cat Cafe, Falls Restaurant) for each of the nine work days (stellar job, Suse!) Gimme! is donating coffee on the three Saturdays. She asks that everyone bring their own beverage containers.  

Gotta love this community!!

 

 

Green Day

Sweet Summers Day, Q. Casstti, 2010, mixed mediaGoodness, it's beautiful here. The grass defines green, and the early morning peachy gold light made me catch my breath. School is back in session but time is short between now and the end of the school year. There is the Spring Fling dance, the play, the prom, endless parties and trips for our girl graduate. There are track meets (around 5 in the next week or so), and cast parties, exams and reevaluation for next year. 

We have two added guests next week, so I am roasting bones for stock and a "big pot of sauce" will be brewed up tonight in anticipation of more eaters around here. I am hoping to get back into the garden this afternoon after work or early tomorrow to rake a bit more, and get those new hellebore into the ground. Maybe mulch this weekend. And of course, the trees are coming too!

I had the opportunity to download a big pdf file of the L.L. Langstroth book, Hive and the Honeybee from this remarkable resource at Cornell, The Hive and the Honeybee Collection, a selection from The Everett F. Phillips' Beekeeping Collection  at the Mann Library. "Look and ye shall find"....and in my case, abundantly. The Langstroth book is a classic which I was worrying about how to get a copy to peruse --and now I have it. The Mann has a beta test to provide the file for a Kindle (!)..but I couldn't make it go. The engravings are inspiring...and the copy the same. More on bees from reading this tome. The ladies, as you can see, got painted in (via photoshop) and are  getting ready to dive into their matching skeps (like the The Cholmondeley Ladies  circa 1600-10, Tate Britiain). I like the big bees that say Apiary-- and how they would never, ever fit in the skeps.

And now I dive into my world of words and pictures to see what I can do today.

Agricultural me

Got to Agway this afternoon and bought 2 cortland apple trees along with a gala apple espaliered tree. Also bought two lovely greyish/mauve hellebore to sock next to the one that was planted many many years ago by the former owner of this house. Now there will be a nice group of three. Agway will deliver the group which will make it more seamless....and then there will be the planting. I really hope that the place I have picked for these trees will work. I need to do a bit of reading before I leap. But it will be great...and add some gravitas to the putzing I am doing.

We tried to leave some clothes at Salvo, but silly me, I forgot it was Sunday, and Sunday is a day for rest for the Army. Later this week, def.

End or Beginning of the Week?

Sweet Summers Day, Q. Cassetti, 2010, pen and inkSince Wednesday, I have been on spring break with Kitty, Alex and Rob. There has been a lot of gathering with friends for Kitty, and driving and shopping with Alex. Alex and I have been raking and planting--cleaning up beds and chopping apart the iris and moving it to another place. And, there was a lot of that to do. I am planning on splitting many of my sedum plants and moving them around too. Oh, and before I forget about it, the great making and staking of the Irish Spring soap display must occur.

We were at Agway, our local farm store, for me to oogle the apple trees, and I just said it. I want apple trees. So, I am going to get them.. a few now, and a few once the old orchard space on the property is cleared this spring of ratty honeysuckle, the damned raspberries and general weedage. There may be a few sour cherry trees too... Why not grow them? They had a lovely epaliered apple as well that I am sorely tempted to get to train to the back of the house where we already have wooden verticals in place to train it to. The hellebore beckoned. We have a few here.. but they are such happy harbingers of spring... even before the daffodils, that I may have to throw a few in the ground as I am thinking of them.

This week is the beginning of the last push for the school play, "Snoopy". Kitty and Alex are both in the play and enjoying it, though the next two weeks is a bit trying with schoolwork, athletic practice and trying to live a little too. I guess the living a little goes to the wayside. I am a bit pleased that I "did mine" earlier and got the poster, small poster and tickets done, called the local restaurant for the gathering on the second night and created the flier for that, and have the planning in place for the cast party. So, all all that's left is  some baking as every night is play practice until 9, and lots of baked goods are required per the "food mom". We have two guests coming in for the week of the play--and there will be a small dinner Saturday, and a larger one (12) that I am hosting with everything from the larder. So, some planning around that. We will have bunches of daffodils for the table which should be nice.

Really must go as the day is slipping by.

Hidden weapon

From ibiblio.com:
"...honey bees have been used in warfare,dating as far back as Roman times.  There are for example, references to the Romans loading bee hives on catapults and firing them at their enemies. Other records can be found from the Middle Ages, where various armies threw bee hives at their attackers - especially off of castle walls, and on up through World War I and Vietnam.  A good reference for for this topic is "Insects in Warfare" by John Ambrose (published in Army 24(12):33-38.)

 
With regard to toxic honey, there is also a long history.  One of theearliest references comes from the writings of the Greek Xenophon (approx.  400 B.C.) who described the effects of soldiers eating a toxic honey.  The incident occurred in what is now Turkey.  The soldiers were returning to Greece from a campaign in the Persian Empire, encountered the hives and robbed them of their honey.  Xenophon indicated that the soldiers who consumed the honey lost thier senses, and were inflicted with "vomiting and purging".  A later reference indicates that the honey of that region was also used against soldiers of the Roman army under Pompey.  The Heptakometes left jars of the honey along the roadside as a "tribute" to some of the advancing army.  The soldiers who ate the honey lost their senses and were easily defeated by the Heptakometes.  The source of this toxic honey in the Middle East is probably Rhondodendron ponticum, although R. luteum could also be a source.  A good reference to the toxic honey of this region is Sutlupinar et al. 1993. Poisoning by toxic honey in Turkey, Arch. Toxicol. 67:148-150.There are several references to toxic honeys in the US.  The earliest record of which I am aware dates back to Philadelphia in 1790, when a child died from eating honey.

There are also references from the Civil War and from the 1940's and 1960's.  The most recent report is the one we found here in Virginia.  A beekeeper became violently ill after comsuming some honey from his hives and ended up spending 6 days in the local hospital.  We were contacted about the possibility of the honey causing the problems and subsequently analyzed the honey.  We found two grayanotoxins (primarily nerve toxins that lead to a prolongeddepolarization of the nerve)  in the honey in sufficient levels to cause very serious medical problems.  Based on the time of year, the area in which the honey was made, and the toxins, we believe the source was Kalmia latifolia (Mountain laurel).  This type of toxic honey is not common butseems to be reported once about every 20 or 30 years.There are a number of other plants that produce nectars with various toxins.  Some of these include Yellow jassamine, tansy ragwort, and Egyptian henbane. "

Rick Fell
Professor
Department of Entomology
Virginia Tech
Blacksburg,Virginia 24061

 

 Virgil’s The Georgics Book IV: On Bee-keeping.

In lines 10 through 15, Virgil gives advice to the beginning beekeeper:

First find your bees a settled sure abode, 
Where neither winds can enter (winds blow back 
The foragers with food returning home)
Nor sheep and butting kids tread down the flowers,
Nor heifer wandering wide upon the plain
Dash off the dew, and bruise the springing blades.

Gorgeous bee brooch from ebay>>

Beebrain

Queen ensconced, Q. Cassetti, 2010, pen and inkRobbing the Bees by Holley Bailey introduces the concept of Bees as munitions which is very exciting and thought provoking.  Apparently, in the times of Charlemagne and forward--the soldiers had small vessels (clay, straw etc) filled with colonies of bees. These babies were launched and you can imagine the results. Skeps were catapulted ...swarms of pissed off, stinging insects projected at one's enemy. Simple, and yet so perfect. She does go on to talk about bees (the nice and friendly Italian ones) as only stinging unless provoked (being catapulted might do just that) and that being stung to death or even dying of a bee sting (even with those who need an epipen) is an insignificant number even lower than being struck by lightening. However, with the progression of the Africanized bees, "the killer bee"  (an invasive and very surly breed), they will sting unprovoked as well as swarms will move in to kill.

Bailey also suggests that the bee is very circumspect about the people they live near. It is said that a man who is cheating on his wife, needs to sneak around the beehive as the bees do not cotton well to adultery, uncleanliness or otherwise unseemly behavior. Poor Tiger Woods on the golf course...imagine the bees. And what about Jesse James' antics. No wonder the bees are fleeing...swarming and sensitive.

The turkey vultures are sweeping our sky. They are back in force. The peepers are loud and reminding us that they are there. Shady confronted a rather odd and scary milk snake (dun colored on one side and then when they rise up, they shake their tails, and bend their head in a true serpentine line...with the color expressed as white with dark spot--totally different to the quiet camouflage that they hide in the leaves with). We are looking for spots to dig a pond...to take care of the deep wetness in our back forty...which is fun to anticipate. And of course, there is lots of talk of garden follies. If I were the Queen of the World, I would have some delightful Paul Manship sculptures sprinkled about. Most particularly, Paul Manship's Bears (Adore).

Making some good progress with work. Designing and amending like crazy. Seem to be hitting a bunch of base hits, but if I just keep hitting consistently, I will get there. Baked some more bagels and some granola last night on the brand new stove. How elegant to have such a miraculous power tool. What a lucky girl I am.