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We are here in New Zealand and the country is big in honey, especially the famous manuka honey. The talk around is only about the honey production and very little about integrating bees in our garden ecosystem so everybody benefits.  

What do I mean?

Manuka honey is a very good natural healer and not easy to make the bees produce it. I happen to have all my neighbours having a few or more beehives on their properties so I heard all kind of stories along the years we lived here.

Manuka honey is produced by the bees visiting the flowers of manuka tree which is a New Zealand native tree. The country had large areas covered with manuka trees in the past but they were cleared to make room for pasture. Even these days, manuka trees are not welcomed on many properties. They grow fast and they have a nice conifer smell around them. I, personally, love them and I planted probably close to one hundred if not more on our property.

What I understand from bee keepers is that bees are not very happy with manuka flowers because they are small and do not have much nectar so if the bees have other choices they will go for them. Manuka bee keepers look for manuka forest and place their beehives there. It happens a lot the beehives are stolen because they are in remote locations. There is register of beehives in New Zealand but that does not stop the thieves.  

What are the benefits of manuka honey:

• antibacterial and bacterial resistant ( bacteria do not build up tolerance) so clearing infections 
• boosts the immune system 
• provides energy 
• improves digestion 

In New Zealand it is used in hospital to help burns healing.

But about manuka honey in another post in detail.

Now about bees in ecosystems. It is researched that usually there are around 25 000 bees on an acre.

Bees live anywhere there are insect-pollinated flowers. What do they do in the flowers? They gather nectar and pollen from flowers. Nectar as energy source and pollen to feed they larvae.   

They are most efficient pollinating insects because they have adaptations enhancing pollination. There is a distinction between bees that associate in beehives and live as colonies and the solitary bees that make their own nest and every female is fertile. These solitary bees are the most important pollinators. They are commonly known for their nesting preference: carpenter bees, sweat bees, mason bees, squash bees, leafcutter bees, digger bees. Most solitary bees nest in the ground in a variety of soil textures and conditions while others create nests in hollow reeds or twigs, holes in wood. The female typically creates a compartment (a "cell") with an egg and some provisions for the resulting larva, then seals it off. A nest may consist of numerous cells. When the nest is in wood, usually the last (those closer to the entrance) contain eggs that will become males. The adult does not provide care for the brood once the egg is laid, and usually dies after making one or more nests. The males typically emerge first and are ready for mating when the females emerge. Solitary bees are either stingless or very unlikely to sting (only in self-defense, if ever).(Wikipedia)

Bees are responsible of the pollination of one third of human kind food supply. The solitary bees are in decline everywhere around the globe largely because pesticides and the decrease of wild flowers.

New Zealand has 28 species of native solitary bees. They live in nests in the ground, under bare, undisturbed soils. They are not aggressive. They like pohutukawa, ti tree and native mistletoe. Their range of foraging is 100 m.

We have two choices if we need pollinators. First and the environmentally friendly choice is to establish places on property with bunch of straws and hollow sticks to attract solitary bees to make nests. Do not be too tidy in your gardens! Second choice is to put a beehive in your garden basically anywhere as they have kilometers in foraging range with a family of bees with a queen.

Spreading seeds of wild flowers will help as well attract the solitary bees.

We can always buy insect houses that we can place by kitchen window to observe nature show at all times.  

Open yourselves to nature.

We make heat in different ways every day as a byproduct of work of different equipment.

The biggest heat waste occurs in the operation of power plants on carbon and other fuels. On small scale the oven will release waste heat, the dishwasher, the washing machine, refrigerators and even the humble iron.

This waste heat accounts for only1% of climate change so we should think more that we lose that heat instead of make use of it.

Every day humans create huge amount of heat and they we use only 30% of it. There is 70% left of potential useful heat we disregard.

Heat loss can be classified into high, medium and low temperature heat loss. There are Waste Heat Recovery systems (WHR) for each of the ranges to allow highest degree of recovery.

What is done and what is still to be done?

1. Remember coal range with the water heating wall at the back? That can be called WHR system.

2. Power plants already redesigned their operational processes so they recover heat sometimes even approaching 90% efficiency.

3. Klina and Rankin cycles use working fluids different than water to produce electricity. Those fluids work at lower temperatures of waste heat.

4. We can install a ground source heating pump(GSHP). They can heat or they can cool your home. And some of them can heat the water. Only by extracting heat from your home in summer and redirecting it to heat your water.

5. There are coolers that use the air-conditioners waste heat to condense refrigerants. And cool your home not on energy but waste heat.

Sweden has a seasonal thermal energy storage system (STES) at a foundry. The heat is store in the bedrock around a cluster of heat exchangers equipped boreholes, and is used for heating spaces in a factory sometime later, sometime even months.

In the future the waste heat will be actually considered a more sustainable alternative to electricity especially if produced with fossil fuels.

There will be direct electrical conversion devices and thermoelectric generation, piezoelectric power generation, thermionic generator and thermo photovoltaic generator (TPV) many at industrial level but promising for home level.

Look for them in the future. They could be a game changer in your house.

• Fermentation was a method for preserving food for thousands of years. There are some artefacts showing that people were fermenting food as far back as 10 000 BC. The first type of fermented food was dairy, milk having natural microflora in it. As most bacteria thrive at 34 degrees, tropical  and subtropical zones were probably the first to notice and use it.
• The first scientist who explained the process of fermentation was French chemist Louis Pasteur. He defined fermentation as ‘respiration without air’.
• First scientist to notice the benefits of fermented foods was a Russian bacteriologist in 1920, Elie Metchnikoff. He started from studying the Bulgarian population that had in those days a very long average life span of 87 years.  Bulgarians consumed much more fermented milk products than people in other cultures. 
• The bacteria of the fermented foods remain in out digestive system and are very active  improving digestion, absorption of minerals and detoxification.
• Probiotics are simply food that contain friendly bacteria.
• Before refrigeration fermenting the food was a way of preserving mainly cheese, bread, beer and vinegar.

What is fermentation?

    An anaerobic process (no air environment)where bacteria digest sugars, starches, and carbohydrates and release alcohols, carbon dioxide, and organic acids. The organic acids are the ones that actually preserve the food.             Fermented food it is not rotten food. There are other bacteria creating that.

The process creates enzymes that together with bacteria pre-digest the food making it easy to digest. This is the reason the kefir and the yogurt are known as easy digestible foods for the lactose intolerant people.  

Fermented foods stimulate immune system and can reduce inflammation.

Some fermented foods

Yoghourt  

Classic probiotic, lowers risk of diabetes and keeps the sensation of full for slimming diets.

Kefir

Full of calcium and probiotics and very tasty

Kombucha

Fermented tea, full of probiotics and some alcohol. Good to recover the intestinal flora.

Miso

Used as base for many Asian soups, it is a fermented paste from a combination of barley, rice or soy. Adds a pleasant taste to dishes and has high content of probiotics. Pay attention to high salt content.

Sauerkraut and kimchi

Cabbage and salt make a nice pickle full of healthy probiotics. Kimchi has more spices. They improve gut bacteria and help control the sugar in the blood.

Tempeh

Naturally fermented soy beans with high content of probiotics and plant proteins. Helps improve cholesterol levels.

There are other fermented foods mostly as pickles, dairy, sauces. Make sure when you introduce them in your diet you introduce them slowly and drink plenty of water.