Paul, I find the notion of you as a "whisperer" of anything contrary to your basic being. As THE Duke, you're perfect! The one and only.
Thanks for the podcast. Enjoyed the whole thing and can't wait to try the cow poo mix aka "SHAD" (shit, clay, sand past plu perfect participle of something, pronounced shad)
on fruit trees (not just apple trees, right?).
However, I was surprised and disappointed that there was no mention of top bar beekeeping. I learned to keep bees this
way from Christy Hemenway, author of The Thinking Beekeeper and a teacher of the top bar method. The key difference
is that the bees get to make their own wax just the way they like it. In Nature they make not only a specific shape of comb but also
different size cells for different functions. The cells they make in their natural wisdom are all smaller than what they are forced to use in the factory
made wax. Those larger cells are part of the mite problem in that it takes the bees longer to cap those cells. This allows a window
of time for the mites that is key for their proliferation. Also, the factory made wax is recycled wax from beekeeping operations
that use very toxic chemical treatments. Then the wax becomes an even more concentrated, compounded mix of many different
chemical treatment residues. I may have missed it in the podcast, but I didn't hear mention of what style hives Jocelyn uses so I'm assuming
it's the conventional Langstroth boxes, but I definitely heard her say that's she's treatment free. Me too!!
Christy Hemenway has a kickstarter in process ending on tax day - April 15th. She's working her bum off to save the honeybee - "naturally"
and worthy of support and follow up learning. Kickstarter link
http://kck.st/1gbIO3N
I'm also very excited about Almondia, the first permaculture almond orchard. Tim Richard's 's new business thephilosophersstoneground.com
website is beautiful and full of rich info and links. The sprouted almond butters are mind blowing delicious + wicked nutritious! They were
at the PV conference promoting their new business with samples of their product. This is my first contribution to the forum! Ann