The entire world is made up from individual interactions. If any interaction does not take place there is less contributed to the function of the world.

The Sunday after Thanksgiving Don is holding a class on making “bee candy” at the API. Bee candy is supplemental food to keep hives alive through the winter in case they have not made enough honey. The event is sold out to members of the beekeeping group in which Don is a member.

The interaction of bees with flowering plants and the interaction of animals with the fruits of those plants is fundamental. It is a good example of concern for the needs of people and other living things leading to more contribution to system function, leading to a world more like the one in which you want to live.

Bees are under stress from agricultural poisons and viruses and mites. We want to talk to our bee keeper friends about enlisting the help of the community in making our neighborhood safe for bees. A neighborhood safe for bees will, incidentally, increase the safety of our neighborhood for humans, and increase contribution to the function of the world. We are hoping to develop a system where there are more bee hives in the neighborhood, producing more new hives every year, allowing nature to select the best genetics for this place, and maintaining the genetic diversity the bees will need to adapt to changes going forward.

We see two key elements to this project. First, we want to build inexpensive bee hives and place them in good homes (that do not use poisons). Second, we want to rally the community to locate all bee swarms and make sure that they are given a hive. I think we will need a 'swarm coordinator' who can reach out to all the existing bee organizations, identify all hives that need bees, and make that information available to those who are collecting swarms or dividing hives.

Our goal is bee hives everywhere and so many new bees every year that all the hives are always filled. We will chronicle our efforts as they produce results. This approach is to think about problems in the context of how one thing is related to another and everything is related to everything else. There is a series of blog entries called 'Start the Collaboration' addressing how thinking about the needs of other living things guides building the sustainable world we seek.