It Takes A City: Conservation, Collaboration, Community, Celebration.
Project Description
Apiopolis, Urban Bee Sanctuary. Or how to change the world by saving bees.
Apiopolis believes that by working to address the causes of honeybee and pollinator decline we can not only improve the health of these vital creatures but also positively impact our entire urban ecology and create a more sustainable, beautiful and resilient city. We are dedicated to promoting natural beekeeping practices that support the needs and well being of the entire honeybee colony and its surrounding landscape. In the last two years, we've installed honeybee hives all over the city, on rooftops, at local farms, in the backyard of a brewery, at community gardens and at the art museum.
We’ve been selecting for resilient genetics, making hive modifications and are constantly striving to better understand and care for our brilliant bee friends. We’re focused on installing large-scale pollinator habitat, educating about appropriate land management practices and establishing sustainable apiaries. We aspire to transform the perception of maintained and desirable landscapes to also be beautiful and functional. By improving the health of pollinators and honeybees through our projects, we're also supporting our local food system and creating green jobs. We love forging unions and developing partnerships that strengthen each other's efforts. Together we can make our communities stronger, healthier and more abundant.
We are firm believers in community involvement and activism. Apiopolis is proud to be a friend of Raleigh Food Corridor. We have exciting projects underway with Triangle Land Conservancy and Sarah P. Duke Gardens. We're looking forward to developing more fantastic partnerships. And we love volunteering to care for the bees Alliance Medical Ministry, Inter-Faith Food Shuttle's Camden Street Learning Garden and Passage Home.
This year we kicked off our City as Sustainable Apiary Project at Chickadee Farms. We're following the example of successful, feral honeybee populations and how they exist in the natural environment, selecting for resilient colonies and improving the genetic diversity of our urban bees.
In May our friends at Standard Foods invited guests to a magical garden honey supper to raise funds for a unique tree hive bee project on their grounds. Chefs Eric Montagne of Standard Foods, Cheetie Kumar of Garland, Drew Maykuth of Stanbury and Sean Fowler of Mandolin prepared dishes using the first of honey harvest. Jones von Drehle Vineyards & Winery paired each course with their own wines and Big Boss Brewing Company provided beer.
Thanks to initial funding by the city's Urban Ag Micro-Grants, we're helping local schools establish pollinator gardens and love teaching their students about the importance of pollinators to our environment and our food system. We've just officially joined the Gardening Club at Wildwood Forest Elementary! We're excited about getting our hands dirty with the kids! We'll be joining Bee City USA as they begin to consider Bee Schools USA certification requirements.
We've been advocating for Raleigh's certification as a Bee City USA for a year. In June Raleigh's City Council unanimously approved the resolution. We are grateful for the hard work of the Environmental Advisory Board, the Office of Sustainability, the Urban Design Center, the Parks, Recreation and Greenway Advisory Board and all of the departments that made this happen.
Apiopolis was honored to receive a City of Raleigh Environmental Award this year for demonstrating Environmental Stewardship. We were featured in Walter Magazine in April, 2017 and were thrilled to join four amazing women as a speaker for WINnovation 2017.
INAUGURAL HOST APIARY SITES
http://www.escazuchocolates.com
http://www.oldmilburniefarm.com
Part and Parcel Farm
https://www.farmerscollectivenc.com/blogs/news/102242310-part-parcel-farm
http://www.stanburyraleigh.com
http://www.irregardless.com/garden/
SPONSORED APIARY SITES
VOLUNTEER SITES
http://www.alliancemedicalministry.org
https://www.foodshuttle.org/camden-garden/
CITY AS SUSTAINABLE APIARY PROJECT SITES
https://chickadeefarmsnc.com/about-the-farm/
A honeybee colony is a superorganism Every individual works together for the best good of the whole. This definition also includes microorganisms present in the hive, the comb and the shelter that houses it. This is such an apt metaphor for human society. If we regard our selves and our world as one big, functional, precious entity, we’ll work together to build the strongest, healthiest, most abundant and beautiful world possible for everyone and everything.
YOUR TAX-DEDUCTIBLE DONATIONS WILL SUPPORT OUR CURRENT AND ONGOING PROJECTS
Pollinator Habitat Planting Initiative
Propagation and Growing Program
Pesticide and Herbicide Awareness Campaign
City as Sustainable Apiary Project
Appropriate Shelter Project
Green Jobs Initiative
Bee Schools USA
Prison Beekeeping Training Program.
Help us make a difference.
♥
Updates
The Project FAQs
Honeybees and other pollinators are among the first organisms to show negative responses to environmental degradation. They're also a keystone species. Without them our world would be incredibly destitute. In the past 20 years, managed bee colonies have dropped from 7 million to 2 million.
Six years ago, the UN reported declines as high as 85% in some areas worldwide, especially in highly modernized cultures like ours. In 2015, the USDA, Apiary Inspectors of America and Bee Informed Partnership reported the 2nd highest annual losses to date with 42% average nationwide colony failures.
We believe the ongoing crisis is an opportunity for change and we've devoted ourselves to the effort. The work is sometimes heartbreaking, often hard but always amazing. And we've decided that by helping the bees, we can effect positive change in so many ways.
Join us!
Tough bees! You’re getting a sticker anyway just because we care.
Our very talented friend and Raleigh artist David Eichenberger drew our sweet Apiopolis bee. It will look so good on your window, bumper, bicycle, skateboard, notebook, laptop, cell phone case that you'll probably want to give it kisses every day! So maybe you should put it on your bathroom mirror. Love bees and yourself, yo.
You know how Raleigh was just certified as a Bee City USA and their founder Phyllis Stiles says the single most important thing you can do to help pollinators is to plant healthy habitat? Well, our native seed mix has been carefully selected for the southeast. It would be beautiful in a natural border or edge planting, or heck, if you're bored to tears and weary of the gluttonous mundanity of your lawn, you can start to transform it now! Y'know, I read about a homeowner/ecologist experiment where the dude stopped mowing his single species lawn and in just a few years had over 375 plant species including ones that were endangered! Nature loves diversity and abhors a vacuum, y'all. There's nothing more vacuous than turf. This mix is eco-region appropriate, genetically diverse and has maximum viability. It contains a mix of native, multi-seasonal flowering plant and grass species propagated from seed collected in North Carolina and Virginia. Let's get wild!
Well, unless you have five dogs to pick up after or a kitty litter box to scoop, you'd better be using canvas shopping bags. When we were deciding on the rewards, we unanimously agreed that WE LOVE CANVAS TOTES and on top of being bee ladies, we're also bag ladies to our cores because books and apples and beeswax lip balm and stuff. And yes, they've got our bee on them so you can join us in the bee and bag club and we'll even let you in if you're no lady.
These photographs were taken by our very own amazing Apiopolis photographers and members, Wendy Kanable, Cat Valand and Uli Gratzl. They're so beautiful! It was impossible to to choose just one so we chose four and that was impossible too. The packet includes 3 cards of each image. We wish we were on your address list!
You guessed it! The Apiopolis bee is hanging out on the most comfy t-shirt ever printed by our friends at Aardvark. You know you're in a quality place if somebody named Roscoe greets you with a good shoe sniffing when you enter. If you ever have occasion to swing by their shop, tuck a chicken treat in your pocket for our buddy, please.
So here's the thing. We're all about collaborating and having spent so much time with our bee friends, we believe, like them, that together we're so much better. When we were thinking about what rewards to offer, we decided they could be another opportunity to support and share some of the amazing talents of our friends in the community and because it's an iFundWomen campaign, we asked some of our favorite local ladies if they'd help us. Our beloved and beautiful in all ways Jenny is a brilliant artist, teacher and has the sweetest heart. Her work makes us weep and gasp and hold our breath and offer our sweat or souls in trade. She led the mural painting at the Big Boss Secret Bee Garden and always says yes so generously and graciously. We've already called dibs on the first of these prints so y'all better hustle to get yours.
See above. That's right. More opportunities to enjoy the talented work of women in our community and get a little piece of functional magic of your very own. And I'm happy and sorry to tell you that you have to choose between three of them. This would be terrible torture for me. The ladies that call the pottery studio at 1201 West Lenoir Street in Boylan Heights contacted me last year and said
You know that Morphine song
Sweet Jayne. The Cowboy Junkies version. The first time I walked into Jayne's studio on a First Friday and glanced at the gorgeous work hanging on the walls, I knew it was beeswax. So tactile and fragrant. We chatted for a while and then a year later she created an entire exhibit around bees. It was incredible. She called it Inter-Depend-Dance and raffled not one but two pieces to support the work of Apiopolis. Jayne joined me at two apiaries to visit with the bees. She told me one of my now favorite quotes by Gary Snyder,
Local artist hand crafted bee engraving for your pollinator garden. More details coming!
Adopt a beehive and a field of wildflowers! We are collaborating with a local preserve to establish sustainable apiaries and restore large-scale pollinator habitat. You'll get naming rights to the hive, images and monthly updates on the behind the scenes secret life of bees and the plants they forage on. And if you ever feel like visiting them in person, we'll bring an extra hat and veil.
Whenever it's your time, you will go to a breezy, blue sky summer day heaven filled with sunshine and wildflowers and flitting butterflies and buzzing bees and birdsong and the gold will be honey and there will be milk but maybe from milkweed because monarchs and Jesus and the angels and we will love you forever and tell the bees stories about you and your giant, generous heart.
Rewards
Tough bees! You’re getting a sticker anyway just because we care.
Our very talented friend and Raleigh artist David Eichenberger drew our sweet Apiopolis bee. It will look so good on your window, bumper, bicycle, skateboard, notebook, laptop, cell phone case that you'll probably want to give it kisses every day! So maybe you should put it on your bathroom mirror. Love bees and yourself, yo.
You know how Raleigh was just certified as a Bee City USA and their founder Phyllis Stiles says the single most important thing you can do to help pollinators is to plant healthy habitat? Well, our native seed mix has been carefully selected for the southeast. It would be beautiful in a natural border or edge planting, or heck, if you're bored to tears and weary of the gluttonous mundanity of your lawn, you can start to transform it now! Y'know, I read about a homeowner/ecologist experiment where the dude stopped mowing his single species lawn and in just a few years had over 375 plant species including ones that were endangered! Nature loves diversity and abhors a vacuum, y'all. There's nothing more vacuous than turf. This mix is eco-region appropriate, genetically diverse and has maximum viability. It contains a mix of native, multi-seasonal flowering plant and grass species propagated from seed collected in North Carolina and Virginia. Let's get wild!
Well, unless you have five dogs to pick up after or a kitty litter box to scoop, you'd better be using canvas shopping bags. When we were deciding on the rewards, we unanimously agreed that WE LOVE CANVAS TOTES and on top of being bee ladies, we're also bag ladies to our cores because books and apples and beeswax lip balm and stuff. And yes, they've got our bee on them so you can join us in the bee and bag club and we'll even let you in if you're no lady.
These photographs were taken by our very own amazing Apiopolis photographers and members, Wendy Kanable, Cat Valand and Uli Gratzl. They're so beautiful! It was impossible to to choose just one so we chose four and that was impossible too. The packet includes 3 cards of each image. We wish we were on your address list!
You guessed it! The Apiopolis bee is hanging out on the most comfy t-shirt ever printed by our friends at Aardvark. You know you're in a quality place if somebody named Roscoe greets you with a good shoe sniffing when you enter. If you ever have occasion to swing by their shop, tuck a chicken treat in your pocket for our buddy, please.
So here's the thing. We're all about collaborating and having spent so much time with our bee friends, we believe, like them, that together we're so much better. When we were thinking about what rewards to offer, we decided they could be another opportunity to support and share some of the amazing talents of our friends in the community and because it's an iFundWomen campaign, we asked some of our favorite local ladies if they'd help us. Our beloved and beautiful in all ways Jenny is a brilliant artist, teacher and has the sweetest heart. Her work makes us weep and gasp and hold our breath and offer our sweat or souls in trade. She led the mural painting at the Big Boss Secret Bee Garden and always says yes so generously and graciously. We've already called dibs on the first of these prints so y'all better hustle to get yours.
See above. That's right. More opportunities to enjoy the talented work of women in our community and get a little piece of functional magic of your very own. And I'm happy and sorry to tell you that you have to choose between three of them. This would be terrible torture for me. The ladies that call the pottery studio at 1201 West Lenoir Street in Boylan Heights contacted me last year and said
You know that Morphine song
Sweet Jayne. The Cowboy Junkies version. The first time I walked into Jayne's studio on a First Friday and glanced at the gorgeous work hanging on the walls, I knew it was beeswax. So tactile and fragrant. We chatted for a while and then a year later she created an entire exhibit around bees. It was incredible. She called it Inter-Depend-Dance and raffled not one but two pieces to support the work of Apiopolis. Jayne joined me at two apiaries to visit with the bees. She told me one of my now favorite quotes by Gary Snyder,
Local artist hand crafted bee engraving for your pollinator garden. More details coming!
Adopt a beehive and a field of wildflowers! We are collaborating with a local preserve to establish sustainable apiaries and restore large-scale pollinator habitat. You'll get naming rights to the hive, images and monthly updates on the behind the scenes secret life of bees and the plants they forage on. And if you ever feel like visiting them in person, we'll bring an extra hat and veil.
Whenever it's your time, you will go to a breezy, blue sky summer day heaven filled with sunshine and wildflowers and flitting butterflies and buzzing bees and birdsong and the gold will be honey and there will be milk but maybe from milkweed because monarchs and Jesus and the angels and we will love you forever and tell the bees stories about you and your giant, generous heart.