The Community Hive Network- A Chat Room for Calgary Beekeepers

 www.thecommunityhive.org 

So, please go to http://www.thecommunityhive.org to join the community and choose to participate in your community! You don’t have to be a beekeeper to join, you can simply join the community, share information, and learn more about what is going on here in Calgary.

Over the past few months, I have been concerned at the rate of A.B.C’s growth and its long term viability! My concern lay in the fact that I, Eliese Watson, was primarily responsible for answering all questions about urban beekeeping. And as questions began to flood my e-mail, an average of 40 e-mails a day (this is the winter, not the summer months!), my ability to continue A.B.C educational projects, catch swarms, and respond to e-mails, would be too much! A self-sustaining community must be sustained by the community! Therefore, I began looking online for tools to help with the Q & A, and engage the public to researching and supporting one another. My friend, Rene Michalak, from Red Deer mentioned Associcom and the programs they offer. After a quick e-mail to Associcom, they offered to create the chat room site for me for FREE! They were so excited to help out our community and eager to see how well the tool would work for community development!

This site,www.thecommunityhive.org, is a place for individuals to connect with other beekeepers, meet a mentor, ask questions, and most importantly, feel a sense of belonging and responsibility for the sustainable and resilient developments of bee care within the city! Without participation, all actions are in vain! The strongest impact you can make on this world is choosing to participate in the world you live; by choosing to keep bees you are choosing to challenge the values of the industrial system of food commoditization and the view that a citizen is none but a consumer. This choice allows you to feel the liberation, even in the simplest sense, from your ties to the invisible international system of dependence, and start taking care of your own needs.