TRAVELS (and more) WITH CECILIA BRAINARD: Honey Bees in Southern California This March!

Friday, March 13, 2015

Honey Bees in Southern California This March!

I've been keeping track of honey bees because they've been suffering from a die-off (Colony Collapse Disorder). I was happy to see countless bees on this bush. Here are a few pictures. These are wild bees, not domesticated. The wild bees are slimmer, with a waist.

I looked into bee keeping once, and learned that domesticated bees come from the Italian, Carniolan, or Russian lines.

Italian honey bees are gentle, adaptable, and reproduce quickly. The Carniolan are gentle, resistant to pests, and need less stored honey. The Russian honey bees are gentle, resistant to mites and hardy during winter.

Because beekeeping is encouraged where I live, there are domesticated bees as well as wild bees flying about. I am not afraid of them and can almost hold them. The honey bees do not mind me at all. Apparently they can sense fear; and I suppose they can also sense when someone likes them.

Cecilia Manguerra Brainard

Cecilia Manguerra Brainard's official website is ceciliabrainarddotcom. She is the award-winning author and editor of 22 books, including When the Rainbow Goddess Wept, The Newspaper Widow, Magdalena, Selected Stories, Vigan and Other Stories, and more. She edited Growing Up Filipino 1, 2, & 3, Fiction by Filipinos in America, Contemporary Fiction by Filipinos in America, and other books.. Her work has been translated into Finnish and Turkish; and many of her stories and articles have been widely anthologized. Cecilia has received many awards, including a California Arts Council Fellowship in Fiction, a Brody Arts Fund Award, a Special Recognition Award for her work dealing with Asian American youths, as well as a Certificate of Recognition from the California State Senate, 21st District, and the Outstanding Individual Award from her birth city, Cebu, Philippines. She has lectured and performed at UCLA, USC, University of Connecticut, University of the Philippines, PEN, Shakespeare & Company in Paris, and many others. She has served in the Board of literary arts groups such as PEN, PAWWA (Pacific Asian American Writers West), among others.