Journal Entries W1

5/11-Internship: My first interaction with beekeeping was building an Apiary on the Agriculture learning center in Amherst. An Apiary is an amazing place that needs very little materials to build. Within a few days we were able to build stands for the hives, and put up an electric fence. We will be adding bees to the hives when they arrive from Pennsylvania.

5/21/16-Internship: Today was the day that we installed the new Nucs to the newly built Apiary. The picture to the right shows us preparing by dismantling the hives before placing the frames that came with the nucs into the hives. It was the first time truly working with Bees. It was amazing to be within a cloud of bees thousands flying over our heads and into our bodies. The buzz of the bees was enchanting as well as frightening. I would consider this a good day considering the fact that the bees had just been driven 10 hours in a car and only getting stung twice.

5/22/16-Experiment: Today Was an exciting day. I took the time today to create a shredded version of each of the mushrooms this is to ensure that when I am infusing the substrate of the mushroom into the water I am obtaining as much nutrients that I am possibly able to. Each one of these mushrooms contain so much healing potential I feel blessed seeing everything come into place. The process was a pretty hard one for each of the mushrooms was extremely hard. The reishi I had to cut with a knife and then blend. The red belted polypore gave me a little more trouble; I even had to have the help of a saw to tear this mushroom apart. To the right you can see the substrate of each one of the mushrooms the Reishi on the right and the Red-Belted-Conk on the left.