Napa Valley Bee Company

FARM IN THE STAR

Here is a great article that ran in the St. Helena Star today. It highlights what is going on with the Saint Helena Montessori and the the College Ave. farm site.

Life on the farm in the city
Program humming along

By Carolyn Younger
STAFF WRITER
Wednesday, December 31, 2008
On a bright winter morning, St. Helena Montessori School students Amelia Hardy and Jackson Graff were in the Grace Episcopal Church kitchen whipping up frosting for a honey cake, and Julia Eyer was rolling out impossibly long lengths of paper-thin pasta for cannelloni.

A mile away, a group of Montessori School elementary students were suited up and peering into the opened hives of industrious bees — possibly the very ones that contributed to the honey cake — as apiarist Rob Keller gave hands-on instruction on beekeeping and discussed the deadly verroa mite.

Both activities are part of the Montessori school’s curriculum which relies on the farm, a key element in the school’s ambitious proposal for a new campus on 20 acres off St. Helena’s College Avenue. While plans for three single-level buildings with solar power, natural air conditioning and low water-use systems make their way through the city planning process, students and instructors have been busy at the old farm property.  (The Napa River which borders the property’s eastern edge, and recently underwent riparian restoration, serves as an outdoor “living lab” for the students.)

Although still in the early stages, the farm is already a vital part of the school’s education philosophy and has been abuzz with activity since early summer.

In August, before the official opening of school, students in the newly initiated adolescent program had staked out an area at the end of the narrow lane past aging farm buildings. They disked and amended the soil for a vegetable garden, working under the guidance of garden and viticulture instructor Lia Bettinelli and various volunteers.

Carolyn Younger photos Under a bright fall sky, St. Helena Montessori School garden and viticulture instructor Lia Bettinelli, left, joins elementary students Katie Johnson, Caroline Melancon, Baker Dill, center, Malcolm Hardy and parent volunteer Yesenia Villaseñor as they weed the school’s farm garden, carved out of a parcel off College Avenue where the school hopes to relocate.

The teens installed fence posts, strung wire, dug trenches and laid out irrigation lines — even undertook some arc welding to create a garden gate.

By the end of September they were ready to plant, and in November the whole school of 108 students (pre-kindergarten to eighth grade) took a farm-day field trip to harvest pumpkins and gourds and bright summer flowers.

During harvest they picked grapes at a local vineyard and followed the fruit to the winery. The pumpkins they harvested from the farm and apples picked from the Crull family trees went into Thanksgiving pies or jugs of cider and became lessons in chemistry, budgeting and business.

At the end of November the students took a week-long field trip to Southern California where they expanded their knowledge of California history.

In early December, the farm was humming again — not only with bees, but also with lively conversation — as students in the elementary program attacked weeds, deadheaded spent blooms, explored the mysteries of seed pods or enjoyed getting their hands dirty.

At the moment, the vegetable garden is given over to cold weather crops such as chard, broccoli and lettuces. Nearby, two cardoon plants, easily mistaken for artichokes, are thriving in a field of newly sown fava beans and other cover crops.

Every element is seen as a educational opportunity an a means of creating a lasting understanding of the region’s environmental and agricultural heritage, said Heil, instructor and adolescent program head, in addition to offering hands-on math, language and art experiences.

“Obviously our goal in time is to be as self-sufficient as possible,” Heil said. “The students in the adolescent program have made a lot of progress. Amelia has ambitions to sell the produce to local restaurants and to tailor what’s grown not only for our own table but for the local economy. The overall goal for the whole school is to connect students with reality, especially with nature, but also with community members and economic enterprises.”

Real-life experiences

Guiding the younger students in the various activities are the “student managers” from the adolescent program. Hardy is in charge of the garden and Graff works with the bees.

Back in the Grace Church kitchen, culinary arts student manager Eyer and fellow students were preparing lunch under the tutelage of instructor Grant Showley, a former chef and restaurateur.

Other students in the new program — Susan Gleason, Hanna Gleason and Alex Herman — have also taken on student manager roles.

“We’re trying to provide as many real-life experiences for the students as possible,” said  Heil.

As with the school’s other programs, the adolescent program makes use of a number of community resources:

They’ve made paper with which to cover their journals with Calistoga artist and Nimbus Arts instructor Anne Pentland.

They’ve gone birding with local enthusiast George Gamble (one of those responsible for artist Herman Heinzel’s impressive “Birds of Napa County”).

They’ve learned about the valley’s terrain from Ken Stanton and Eileen Bileci, studied the early pioneers who helped shape the valley’s growth, and been given a crash course by David Garden Sr. on the history of a neighboring property now occupied by Stonebridge Apartments and the upper campus of Napa Valley College.

Planning the new campus

St. Helena Montessori School, based on Maria Montessori’s child development theories, has been part of the community for 26 years.

When parents and teachers realized the school was about to outgrow its current quarters behind the New Harvest Baptist Church — the six seventh- and eighth-graders are currently taught in Grace Church’s Bourn Hall across the street — a parent committee sat down with an architecture firm.

Together they developed a campus plan that would accommodate the school’s toddler, primary, elementary and adolescent programs in two low-slung buildings set in an outdoor “classroom” of native plantings.

In addition, a third building was included to serve as a permanent home for the arts-driven Nimbus Arts programs which incorporate science, the environment and agriculture in its classes for children and adults. The programs would be open to the public during non-school hours.

As proposed, this 7-acre portion of the property departs from the current zoning as ag land and the school is asking to have it rezoned for public and quasi-public use. The remaining 13 acres, which includes the farm, would retain its ag designation.

Plans for the relocated campus are expected to be aired at a public hearing early this year, said Lester Hardy, a parent and attorney who is shepherding the project through the planning process.

“In some ways we are really quite a ways along,” Hardy said. “We’ve spent, all told, something like a year doing the environmental studies and in refining the plans, putting together a draft initial study for the department to consider for purposes of environmental review ... There are a lot of different elements that have to be pulled together to ... incorporate all the features and address the different concerns.”

It has been a long slog requiring changes and modifications. But, Hardy added, “the most wonderful thing is to see how genuinely engaged in the ag work the children are just as soon as they get the opportunity.”

                     Here are a couple images I made that day. 

Jackson Graff, the beekeeping manager, looking into a hive.

We found the queen.

Jackson tasting fresh honey with the younger kids.

Cover Crops as Bee Forage

Cover Crops as Bee Forage

Many cover crops that are planted specifically for their soil-enriching qualities can double as bee forage. We decided that a cover crop would be beneficial in our area for the bees in spring. My experience has been that in the rural areas of Napa Valley, since it is such a monoculture, beekeepers have to be very aware of what they are offering their bees as forage ALL year round. It’s an interesting conundrum that the bees in the rural area are staving and the bees in the city limits are fairing much better, yet legislation in the Napa city limits prohibits keeping bees. Because of this we are talking with Napa City Councilmember Peter Mott about revisiting the bee ordinance to be a little more akin to the changing local landscape. Inthemeantme Peter White and I have been working very diligently towards providing the bees at the College Ave. apiary a steady yearlong varied pollen and nectar source. We planted a nitrogen rich bee friendly 2 acre crop directly around the bees including: Hairy and Common Vetch,  Field Peas, Buckwheat, and Rye surrounded by a band of Strawberry, White, Yellow, Purple Prairee Clover. The cover crop has been sewn for about a month now and it looks fabulous. Luckily we got the ground prepped and the seeds in just before the first rains and there has been a steady rainfall since. 

                                                                   Before

                                                                      After

Field Peas

Field Peas

Field Peas

Me on my knees with the bees and the peas

             

                         Peter White                                    Peter Mott

                                                A pair of Petes

   

 

 

Hanging around the house

 

Hanging around the house

Here we are Christmas day, albeit only by 7 minutes but nonetheless, Christmas day 2008. It has been raining pretty hard all day so I was sadly disappointed when I went out to my hives a few minutes ago and I didn’t hear anything. I thought it might be appropriate that if any of my colonies would be emitting a buzzing sound exactly at midnight on Christmas Eve it would be the Victorian Dollhouse hive.

 
In `Folklore of the Northern Counties`, states: 

Bees are said at Christmas-time to hum a Christmas hymn. Thus 
Rev. Hugh Taylor writes: "A man of the name of Murray died at 
the age of ninety, in the parish of Earsdon, Northumberland. He 
told a sister of mine that on Christmas Eve the bees assemble to hum a Christmas hymn and that his mother had distinctly heard 
them do this on one occasion when she had gone out to listen for 
her husband's return. Murray was a shrewd man, yet he seemed to believe this implicitly!"
-    Thanks to Ettamarie Peterson

It’s funny because while I was out there earlier standing in the rain listen for a Christmas hymn I thought I heard something. It sounded a little like a hymn but all the same pitch. Perhaps …..? I thought to myself as I looked  up and saw the buzzing electric heater above the bees. I wanted so badly to believe.

Way back in the summer of 2008 I worked on a show with an art consultant name Chandra Cerrito to transform the small experimental gallery at the Sonoma County Museum into a show called BEeING. The idea was to show a whole new body of work based on the European Honeybee. As part of that show I had arranged to install a fully furnish Victorian dollhouse in which I would release a feral colony of bees. The basic idea was to offer a wild colony a place to build a home; a home inside of a home. I had done numerous other free-form  observation hives installed in gallery spaces but this piece had a few obstacles. I wasn’t sure how I could get the bees to move and build comb through-out the entire space, there are four rooms divided by two floors.  I ended up cutting three ovals about the size of a dollar bill on the backside of the house and on the adjoining wall upstairs. I hung some drawn comb on some custom made frames above and beside the openings which the bees seemed to accept pretty well. They could have done better because by leaving the upstairs they left behind some brood that I later had to remove.  The other major obstacle was that the entire front of the dollhouse was glass. Since bees are attracted to light we had to manipulate the galley lighting so the piece would be lit well but not distract the bees. Still there always seemed to be a few hardwired bees determined to get out through the glass.  As always there is the issue of positive and negative pressure in the building effecting how well the bees come and go through the vent tubes to the outdoors. Esthetically it ended up being better to have to vent tubes in the dollhouse, one on either side of the structure on both the first and second story.  During the two month duration of the exhibit the bees mostly used the port directly closest to their brood chamber on the bottom floor. I imagine this is where the queen decided to locate  because  it was the least exposed  area in the house where she could feel comfortable. Although for the first few days the bees were occupying the house directly after release they were all clustered directly opposite in the upper left of the space. Bees…..?  Queens…..?  I never second guess them.
For the first few months the colony did surprisingly well in their new environment, they built a little fresh comb, started raising babies, bringing in pollen, and storing nectar.
I was having the gallery staff feed them 50:50 so im sure that had a big part to do with the  new comb. At one point I got a call from the museum explaining that one of the staff had spilled an entire quart of sugar water into the bottom of the house. They explained it in New Orleans terms of flooding  the entire bottom floor. When I got to the museum to check on the situation the person who unleashed the sugary flood gate  told me she had forgotten to screw the perforated lid on the jar, the equated it not needing a lid like her cat’s water feeder. With that explanation how could I blame her, although it was a hellish sticky mess.
After the exhibit I brought the bees home, at the time the cluster was about the size  of a small cantaloupe and starting to prepare for winter. Initially  after insulating the glass front I put the dollhouse in my studio space which  was a mistake because there was far too much bee activity. As a seasoned beekeeper I wasn’t terrible fussed by the bees – and come to think of it I was the only one really effected as the bees vented directly next to my studio door. It was my Apis-sensitive neighbors that were the problem. I sort of have to keep the bees on the down-low round here since being reported to the city code enforcement twice this year.  I have no recollection of it but apparently when I started running the Napa Valley Bee Company out of my home I signed something saying I wouldn’t raise more than a half dozen pitbull terriers, keep roosters, welcome hobos or prostitutes, race monster trucks, manufacture methamphetamine, or keep bees. luckily the folks down at the Ag department know I’m good on most the above, I just have a little problem with the bees.
However, just between you me and this blog I still have a couple hives here that have amazing genetic stock I am watching AND the  dollhouse hive because it needs to stay dry. See, it goes to show…. whither  you live in a dollhouse or a real house, if you have bees keep em’ to yourself.

Check out the pictures to see how the hive built out over the past year.
Merry Christmas!

In the Contemporary Project Space

September 22, 2007 - January 13, 2008

Guest-curated by Chandra Cerrito

Napa artist Rob Keller melds bee life and human domestic life this fall with his installation entitled Be(e)ing. Highlighting the interrelationship of humans and pollinators, Keller presents a colony of live bees housed in a Victorian dollhouse. The house, which is connected by a vented tube to the outside world, is placed amidst sights and sounds in which visitors can contemplate the life of bees and their keepers.

Dollhouse installation September 20, 2007 at the Sonoma County Museum

Dollhouse October 10, 2008 at the Carnaros apiary.

Mother and father split floor view 11/07

Mother and father split floor view 10/08

Child on bench at installation

Child on bench one year later

New furniture upon release of bees

Ottoman one year later

Bees in the kitchen while still in Sonoma - they built up quickly considering they arrived at the museum in September.

The house is still fairly clean a month after the bees were released into the house. Luckily, the bees were very docile in nature. I was able to open the glass front and clean house twice while they were on exhibit.

Even to this day I am able to open the front glass to get these macro shots, really gentle bees.

I love this shot, notice how the bees propolised the candle stick holder to the table and built wax around the candle.

Check out pops..... they're ripping his cloths off!

This what it looks like on the bottom floor after the bees rip the wallpaper off and chew up the doll's coths.

This is how the hive sits today. Rope holds the insulation over the glass on the opposite side.

Bee in flight flying around the dollhouse.

 

Ant infestation I had to rectify.

 

Proplised the vents closed. I will make sure to replace and allow adequate ventilation to prevent chalk brood in the spring.

Until the next bee exhibit.....

PUTTIN' A LID ON IT

Puttin’ a lid on it.

Earlier this year I signed on with the St Helena Montessori School to work with their adolescent program teaching the occupation of beekeeping. It has been a interesting experience and rather eye opening for me as an instructor.
You see, when I first started out teaching I was disillusioned by the idea that I thought I would be only instructing at university level. As time went on and I experienced not only instruction at the university level but at the community college as well. I realized teaching at any stage be it the four year college or 13th grade it didn’t matter too much. The kids were the most important thing and I found it easy to connect at any level. I also had this notion that there was no way I’d ever teach high school either. The Montessori kids taught me otherwise, I really enjoy teaching any age.  I have met some astonishing people teaching at some pretty incredible places. 
The Montessori is really working hard to create a learning facility that will teach kids K-12 the importance of agriculture, community, and in my case beekeeping. The nice thing is that the Montessori already owns the property where the school will be so we have been keeping bees at the site for about two years with Nimbus Arts. We started off with only a handful of colonies that I was using as educational hives for the hands-on portion of the Nimbus classes but have since grown to about 15 hives. In many ways the College Ave. site has developed into an SBCA for wayward bees. Inevitably some beekeepers need a place to keep their bees and the College Ave site has turned out to be a wonderful communal apiary. As an instructor it is so much fun to meet students, past students, or anyone who is interested in bees out at the bee yard and work bees collectively. In the past 6 months since the Montessori adolescents have gotten more involved the grounds have improved immensely. This year with the help of Peter White we put in a cover crop that the bees will die for this spring. Peter also helped orchestrate putting a paved road out to the apiary and kids garden that allows us to work all year round w/o getting stuck in the mud. At the end of the roadway there is a 30x30 slab,we will eventually build a structure with an awning where we can store equipment, teach classes in an open air setting, and provide a shade area for the bees. For the last couple of weeks Peter and I have been building one of Serge Labesque’s hive storage units. We not only doubled Serge’s plans but we did some  modifications to the ceiling. It took a little more work but we made a pitched roof out of reclaimed corrugated tin that looks absolutely stunning. Today I went out in the rain and put the capping on as the finishing touch. It is so exciting to have a place to store all the hive bodies, suppers, and drawn comb. Serge’s design is very well thought-out, cheap, and incredibly easy to put together. We built a double wide version for about $2 hundie. Mind you, that was scrounging for wood and corrugated. but that’s what made it fun and look so uber-chic not blindingly shiny new. I highly suggest to anyone that has a bunch of wooden ware they need to store, especially if there is drawn comb involved, to look into this system. At some point I’d like to up-load and post Serge’s plans but I guess there is some sort of legal red tape preventing that because the plans once ran in Bee Culture magazine. You heard it here first!

A lot of green

A lot of grey

A lot of black

A lot of grey

 

COOL.....

 

Laying Low At The Laidlaw

Laidlaw visit

Today was an interesting bee day. Generally this time of year is slow moving for beekeepers. Our bees have been over-wintered for about a month now, and for the most part the only observations are externally or through monitoring trays. So for today there wasn’t much in the way of working bees; it's freezing out!. However, very early this morning Robert Ceballos, Christeian B. Hedberg and I drove over to the Harry H. Laidlaw Jr. Honey Bee Research Facility at UC Davis. Mostly we were there to take a look at a site that Haagen-Daz has donated $65,000 to create a “Honeybee haven” at the Laidlaw. The facility itself is pretty amazing, and we didn’t even go inside. It felt like about 50 below so we didn’t stay too long but plenty of time to make some images of the on site bees as well as get in some seri ous bee chatter. There were all kinds of bee things around to spark the dialog. All kinds of things like: functioning hives and nucs, breeding cages, queen frames, and some very detailed bee mosaics around the entrance of the building. Both R&C are super into it which makes me want get into it even more. One super smart thing I’ll take from the visit is their design for hive stands. Most of the stands held 2-3 colonies, with open frame construction. The smart thing is how they used 1 inch pipe for the legs that were drilled into pressure treated 4x6. They also fabricated these inverted cones around the legs to keep the ants out. On some of the stands I saw they even used a simple tuna/cat food cans. I’m getting pummeled by the ants right now so note to self: ask Eric Mussen about those can-cone hive stands. Another thing I noticed that was interesting is many of the hives not only had UC Davis inscribed on the hives but Mannlake as well.
Curious… Actually Mannlake has been very generous with me too. Duane from the Woodland branch once lent me a deluxe honey pump for an art exhibit I did at Napa College. I pumped honey around the space after the Joseph Buoys piece “Honey Is Flowing Is All Directions”. My piece was a little feeble in that I didn’t know that you clear the honey tubes running to the pump of air before running the pump. 35 gal lons of mixed floral from Martinez, Sonoma, and Napa got all whipped up like a honey latte. It sure tasted good but went rock hard in a day after cooling. Like making lemonade from lemons I’m using a lot of it in a homebrew project with Jason Grace.

P&P pimping it in the field.

You know they're working their bees at the Laidlaw, used smokers were everywhere.

These are the stands I spoke of earlier, check out how the galvanized
pipe legs fit into the cross boards at the bottom.

 

This skep mosaic even had a small colony that vented through it's opening, classic!

Beautiful bee mosaics lined the entrance way to the facility. I was particularly impressed with the attention to detail. It appeared that the rest of the front of the building was prepared for more mosaic work as well.

Check out our route on trailguru. TRY THE REPLAY TRACK OPTION it's awesome! The stops along the way were to get coffee at Starbucks (I had a grande 2 pump mocha and lemon poppy seed scone) in Suison, the Laidlaw, and Breakfast at one of my favorite eateries Cafe Bernardo (I had  Huevos rancheros and a large orange juice) in Davis.

MANOR HOUSE CHIMNEYS

The chimneys at Manor House were an amazing part of the Napa State Hospital job I did last summer. The whole reason we were going in after all the colonies in the Manor buildings was that they were both slated to get new roofs. We were working almost literally days ahead of the roofing crew. It was nice because we could do any amount of demolition to the roof or the facade of the building needed to safely remove all the comb and bees. and we did some pretty serious demo to expose the colonies. My understanding was that sme colonies have been taking up residency in the buildings for up to 12 years.  But in many ways moving so quickly ahead of the roofing crew posed a number of issues. Because we were working on such a tight deadline there was no time to properly trap out the forager bees which would have made the job go much smoother. Ideally you make a cone out of wire mesh in the shape of a dunce cap with a pencil sized hole at one end. By placing the cone over the hive entrance it enables the forager bees to leave the hive but not get back in. The strategy is to place a small hive with brood and drawn comb just next to the base of the cone so when the returning bees are unable to get back in the hive they will move into the new colony. The displaced bees will tend to the brood thus not loosing any of the adult bees from the colony you are relocating. Since we were unable to do that it became paramount that the roofing crew were working under safe conditions and not exposed to any bees. This was a problem because all the colonies in the roof we could easily expose and relocate before the roofers arrived. However, each one of the  Manor buildings had a chimney with colonies in them as well.  These bees were a little  tricky to get to as the chimney flues went down several meter without access, in fact I’m not convinced we could have removed them without doing extensive damage to the hive and killing the queen. What we decided to do was place a conventional hive with a few frames of drawn comb directly above the brood chamber on top of both chimneys. We were hoping, fingers crossed, that the bees would move up in to the new hive over winter and even if we didn’t get the queen we might be able to preserve some of the genetics.  The Napa State Hospital has an incredible support team of very talented craftsmen that were able to fabricate three custom built telescoping hive covers that had flues to relocate the flight path. The bees were essentially forced into using a new entrance about six feet above their hive putting them out of harms way and the roofers. As we placed the chimney hives late last fall we have not been able to see the results of the project. However, in recent visits to the site I can still see bees coming and going through the large silver towers we created high above the roof tops. My experience working with the Napa State Hospital this past summer was nothing short of incredible. My bee veil goes off to all the hard work of Dave, Mike, Angel, and most of all Carl the J-lift guru. I have not met a group of guys more committed to saving the bees. 

Them ripping off their roof

Us ripping off ours

Some jack-ass bee haver stuck this ol' jankey hive over the bees in the chimney with the bottom board intact. I guess they thought the bees would just move into a vacant hive.

We placed two hive bodies - one super and one deep- without bottom boards on top of the brood chamber of both colonies

Carl installing the straps that would hold the hives in place over the winter. Check out the stacks that will vent the bees, rerouting them 6 feet above the hight of the roofers.

From below the hives and the stacks looked like some sort of industrial sculpture - beautiful!

It didn't take the bees long to start using their new verticle entrance

Duct tape was needed to keep the bees from heading back to their old entrance

Equally as beautiful as the new industrial stack hives is the chimney mossy patina

Look who showed up to help.... ol' Billy G. The Oakville bee stud! Turns out Bill knew Mike. Not surprizing, Bill Knows EVERYONE.

TOO MUCH HONEY!

TOO MUCH HONEY!

About a month ago my wife Meg was nearing her thresh-hold with our house being one big fat honey pot. Im serious, for the last couple of months I have been removing 5 colonies from the Manor Houses at Napa State Hospital. They were all pretty large and well established deep inside both the walls and roof. Not only were they deeply rooted inside the architecture but they were all near the top or on the roof of these two beautiful 1926 buildings. Initially I got a call from a gentleman named Angel way back in late June about bees they were having a problem with at state hospital. Like everyone I kind of ran him around, not intentionally it’s just I’m really busy and I way over extend my bee-time. He told me he had read the article that had just come out in the Bohemian, luckily for me he hung in there and we were finally able to meet. At the time I was getting ready to leave town to go back East and pick up my airstream, but I looked at the job and thought to myself “ That’s a pretty big colony”.  I had no idea! While staying at the Lima Holiday Inn Express in Lima Ohio waiting to get the electrical done on the trailer Dave Lamoreaux, Angel’s boss,  contacted me to nail down some dates as soon as I got home. “Awww, no problem”. I told Dave. Little did I know!  July 15, 2008 will be a memorable day in beekeeping for me. With Carl the JLG operator, Angel and Mike as ground crew, and Dave making sure all my papers were signed we embarked on some of the biggest feral colonies I have ever seen. Full-on massive. The thing is not only were these guys the nicest I had met at Napa State – I had worked there before – they were 110% behind saving these bees and learning what it took to be the most help possible. They were all stellar but Karl really embraced the bees not only jibbing me around 40 feet up in a little 4x7 bucket with all my bee-stuff but taking on far more sting challenged tasks to get the job done. The beauty was Karl was eager to learn and I’m so into it I just can’t shut-up.

Carl and Mike helping me my first day to get the safety rigging on properly

The not talked much about village person, the construction workers brother, the beekeeper

The most massive feral colony I heve ever seen is in the eve of this building - The Manor House Napa State Hospital

The bees could see us through a small hole in the corner of the fascia

We could see them too

This is what we saw when we first pulled the fascia off

Massive sheets of brood that felt like they were going on forever, we probably split this colony into thirds and spread the genetics up and down the Napa Valley.

Close-up of the bees that ended up being very docile but had very little resistance to the Varroa. Of the three splits that came from this colony we let one raise a new queen, one we combined to another smaller hive, and used the strongest of the three splits in a two queen colony.

Part of the reason the bees had such easy access to the beautifully ornate 1900's fascia was that the local Red Headed Woodpeckers bore 1000's of holes in the building to store their acorns. Years and years of acorn storage and bee debris had settled on the sill of the facade.

Carl all gowned up

Angel all gowned up

One morning I even wore a gown

Looking for hiding bees with a mirror

Stung by a hiding bee while looking with a mirror.

                                                          

A LONG BUMPY EMoViTO ROAD

 
Back in late December of 2007 I acquired, through eBay, a 1963, 22-foot Airstream Safari. I won the eBay auction on December 30th, 2007. It took me nearly six months to get back to Lima, Ohio, to pick it up. I purchased the trailer as part of a grant project through the Creative Work Fund that I am working on.  The grant is to convert a vintage traveler trailer into the world's largest mobile honeybee observatory.  The problem is, once a guy gets a little money and vintage trailers are involved, one starts thinking "Airstream". This particular trailer wasn't just any Airstream. It was one that went around the world in 1963-64, with the Round the World Caravan. I'm sure you are thinking "Yeah, so..." but in Airstream culture that particular trip was a MAJOR event. In some ways a little bit more of an Airstream event than I had ever ima gined. It was said (by Airstreamers?) that “A flying saucer landing in Earth could not have generated greater interest than that Airstream caravan”.  I kind of just stumbled upon the trailer because that year at Christmas my wife gave me a book about Airstreams, Airstream: The History of the Land Yacht. It was a very interesting book for me because one of the authors of the book, David Hunt, had also written a number of essays about my early natural history work as an artist.  More interesting than the David Hunt connection was that the book introduced me to the Round the World Caravan. The last quarter of the book is dedicated to the caravan with in-depth coverage and amazing images. Between the Grant funds being released a week before, the book, Jamie Graff's *PMA, and the mis-listing of the trailer on eBay, I apparently sneaked under the radar and won the auction for Airstream #8671.  I paid only 37 hundie for trailer, which at the time felt really cheap.  *PMA= positive mental attitude
Almost immediately I was confronted with what my intentions were for the trailer. especially when the extreme Airstream enthusiasts found out about my grant. Crazy rumors started flying around, like I was going release a feral colony of bees loose in the trailer uncontained and I was going to cut it apa rt unrecognizably. At first, there wasn’t much for me comment on because I hadn’t even been in an a 22-foot Safari, let alone have any idea of what the design was going to be. I truly believed at the time that I was going to use the #8671 “as-is,” set up as a travel trailer. After towing the trailer back home from Ohio last summer and starting the interior work, however, I found big issues with the rear right floor panel. I felt from all of my research of antique campers that I had a firm understanding of potential problems with vintage Airstreams. My knowledge on the subject was about as firm as all the 45-year-old wood rot under the shower of  my newly acquired #8671 vintage Airstream. After discovering the rot  I decided to remove the entire interior of the trailer to see if there were any other sub-floor issues. Also, from the beginning I knew I wanted hardwood floors so everything would have had to been taken out anyway. Bad move, on two fronts. Turns out that removing the interior of a vintage Airstream drastically reduces the value of the trailer, even though repairing the sub-floor required everything coming out. More detrimental to maintaining the original trailer intact was that once I saw trailer’s open floor plan without all the amenities there was no turning back. At least not for me. One night I had my friend Rhue over to look at the empty trailer. Minus all the "amenities" or clutter, we discovered eleven conventional beehives stacked up vertically fit nicely directly under the rear ceiling vent. With that it was a done deal!  thinking someone would want all the cabinetry from my vintage Airstream #8671. In retrospect, I probably I listed the removed interior on Craigslist. I probably shouldn't have done that...

The Airstream community got a little upset, well a lot upset. Some called, some e-mailed, one even contacted Frances at the Creative Work Fund urging her to revoke funds for my grant, based on my destroying history. I can respect their position of wanting to keep a very special part of their history. However, the reactionary comments towards my project were less than congenial and fairly narrow-minded. I was surprised at the reaction at first. The way I saw it, at the very least, I would be giving new life to piece of Airstream culture, presenting it to an audience that might not otherwise be have access to it. The 47 trailers in 1963-64 were sent abroad as ambassadors of good will, according to the mission of Wally Byams, creator of Airstream. The same way the Bee-mobile will be the ambassador of  goodwill for the beleaguered European Honeybee. And lest we forget Cecil and Mary Tolle, from Elwood, Indiana who originally took the Vintage Airstream #8671 around the world. It is thoroughly documented that Mary Tolle was a grade school teacher who passionately embraced the idea of education. A very popular story from the Round the World Caravan is that Mary would invite all the village kids, wherever they landed, into #8671, and was enamored by their amazement.  Having heard that, I felt that whatever I decided to do with the trailer must honor the heritage and spirit of #8671. Weirdly enough, at times, when I was alone in the trailer, I felt an overwhelming sense of relief as if the spirit of the trailer begged for another life. What concerns me about ol’ #8671 is that as passionate as Airstreamers might be about "their" trailers and "their" history, they are only really preserving it for themselves. The only people who will experience the history and beauty of  #8671 are the people who know the most about her. Will she ever return to a place where thousands of people get to go through her, fascinated, either by her beauty in 1963, or marvel at the wonder of having the trailer filled to capacity with a living pillar of European Honeybees, visible in the round next spring. But you know what? I’m a sucker for history so I gave her up.  I spoke with Joe Peplinski, #5533, who wrote an amazing article on the complete history of #8671 last year for a publication called Vintage Airstream. Through his contacts Joe was able to arrange a trade20for me and a gentleman named Scott Goranson, from Yakima, Washington. Scott had a 1966, 26-foot Airstream Overlander, which he offered as a straight-across trade for #8671, in her current state. His had been nearly completely restored, including the sub-floor, and it was two feet longer than #8671, so I felt it was fair trade, considering all the work and money I would not have to spend on a full interior restoration.  Scott must have wanted #8671 pretty badly. He drove straight down from Yackima the day after Thanksgiving. He stayed  just long enough to make the switch, and drove straight back. So, long story short, I am now the proud owner of a new Overlander. It’s pretty amazing because I now feel like I'm starting with a blank slate. Today I started laying the second layer of sub-floor before the actual oak flooring can be installed. It went relatively quickly, so I am excited to perhaps get the floor done over the winter break. Rhue said he would come over and help install the flooring – he used to install hardwood floors back east.  Stay tuned.

Two views of the Aljoa I used for the Creative Work Fund application.

Exterior of Work Fund mockette for EMoViTo proposal

Interior of Work Fund mockette for EMoViTo proposal

 

Three Ebay screen saves from the auction.

Two pictures of #8671 before I owned it.

#8671 with a lot of the interior removed

The door was the main reason I wanted #8671 - it was painted with all the countries the trailer had visited in 1963-64


Wally Byam international

  The extensive wood rot in the sub-floor of #8671

Pulling away with ol' 8671.

My new 1966 Overlander

The interior of the new Overlander - pretty raw.

The daul axel wells will serve as much nicer benches then the single axeled #8671

iphone self portrait in new Overlander

hole in the interior shell with fiberglass

Guy pulling an Airstream with a mission

Toy Airstream in the window on Mission