Permaculture as a Path to Peace

Composting workshop at UBT Camp in Lipjan

by GAIAJanuary 10, 2020January 13, 2020Leave a comment

What Permaculture is ? And how do we make good compost ? Last week of November, Bozevce team answered to this questions in front of some student of UBT Camp in Lipljan during a workshop about the compost.

It might look easy to make compost pile, just to put some material and wait, but actually there is some way to decrease the time of composting and this what we explained.

Firstly, if we want to have a quick compost, we have to respect a ratio between the materials. We 30 % of carbonic material wich are :crushed banches, leaves, herbivorus manure, ashes, cardboard and natural tissue. With 70 % of nitrate material which are kitchen waste, vegetables, fruits and gardening waste, needles, weed. We have to make a pile with the different ingredients we have. There is a other things very important for the compost, the oxygen The micro organism inside the compost need oxygen to consume the waste into compost. That’s why we need to turn the compost pile every 2 days. We also need a bit of water, and to put a nylon on the pile to keep the warm inside and avoid evaporation.

During the first days, we can reach between 50-70 degree inside the compost. We can even seen steam of water when we turn it. Then it will decrease to 40-50 degree and will be ready around 1 month.

Well it was the theory part of the workshop, the objective of this workshop was also to set up this kind of compost in Lipjan campus in order to have good soil for gardening. We didn’t had enough material to make a pile right now, but we built a place where we can put and gather the every day kitchen waste from the cafeteria. It will reduce the amount of trash of the campus. Once they will be a good quantity of material, they will be able to start . For the construction, we used some wood palette to make the compost place. Everyone took part of the construction. With the help of the student we quickly achieved it.

Thanks you a lot for having hosting us and for made this workshop as fun as it was.

Titouan, Bozevce, December 2019

Preparing for autumn, enjoying the landscape changing!

by GAIANovember 13, 2019November 13, 2019Leave a comment

In Bozevce, like everywhere in Europe, the autumn is coming.

The colors are changing and the tasks too!

Everyday on the daily meeting there are the daily tasks that are more or less the same during the year, such as:

– cooking – washing the dishes – watering the green house – fill the barrels with water for the garden– taking care of animals – turning compost – going to buy food and dairy products to us neighbors – taking the daily picture – reporting the weather on data book and taking time for collecting herbs and fruits.

And there are the autumn tasks, which for a lot of them is a lot about preparing for winter. :

Harvesting, Cooking :

The trees give us the mood of autumn and the fruits too.

We collected walnuts from our 6 walnuts trees which give us good nuts for cooking and baking, and lot of leaves that we have to deal with .

We are not the only one to eat those good walnuts, the dogs help us. When you stop by for a little break you can observe the techniques that they have developed to break the shell and eat the nut ! They don’t have hands but they are close to!

As the dogs, we try to eat as much as possible what

the nature gives us. We are still waiting for the mushrooms but we have a lot of tomatoes that remain in the garden, so we took the time to collect all of them before the first frosts, even the green ones. We are making jars of chutney with green tomatoes and also pickles of green tomatoes aromatized with the dill collected and dried from the garden as well!!

The autumn in the garden :

The garden has to be prepared for winter ; like us, it needs a good blanket and food. First of all to prevent erosion and to give it nutriments that it will need for the next spring ! The soil will slowly take the good food from the layers of mulch that we put on the bed. We mulched by altering cow manure and straw, like 5 or 6 layers, as a lasagna ! The garden is ready now, we put a bit of water to give humidity on the mulch that is important if we want that the decomposition to work well. The winter hibernation can start …

We also take care of our piles of composts, we

want to keep them warm, and even hot for the beginning in order to start the decomposition and « burn» the seeds that may be inside. So we made big piles, keep the humidity and turn it sometimes !

And in the middles of those bed you can see some little winter vegetables that begin to grow : beetroots, chard, cabbages, winter salads, carrots, celery, turnips.. !

Building :

The red House :

The special task of this autumn is PLASTERING. There is the « Red House » that has to be finished for winter. With the most energetic team of volunteers, we managed to plaster the outside of the house and the first layer inside ! The first layer inside is a plaster made of 1 measurement of clay, 1.5 sand and lots of straw , called COB.

And some other projects :

The workshop begin to looks like a true one. After building a new structure to support the 3 T of the new Rocket Mass Heater (link article), a table was designed and shaped to fit in between. For structure we RE-USE the power-pole that were replaced by new ones in the forest next to the property. And for the « old-school » look we paint the table with a strong coffee;) ! We try as much as possible to use what is available around us !

To keep us warm during the winter, we will start to distillate some liters of our homemade rakija. The distillation machine is close to be finish, after one evening of good introduction about the science behind it, we are all looking forward to it…

Water versus Iphone

by GAIASeptember 21, 2019September 21, 2019Leave a comment

As we all know, water is one of the most important resource in the world. While your Iphone can cost 1000€ water is very cheap, you can survive without your phone but try without water.

2.4 billions of people do not have access to drinkable water nowadays. So yes, water is important although that in some country people use drinkable water for theirs toilets. But the world is changing and we need to change with it, there is more and more drought each years which will impact our life soon if we don’t adapt our self. No water lead to no vegetables and to no meet, no clothes, nothing in fact. We cannot live without water and as you may have seen this year, the weather start to be really really hot each summer.

This spring in Bozevce it didn’t rain for almost 3 month, consequence of it one of our well was already empty beginning of may. What is happening as you can see on the picture beside is if it doesn’t rain for a long time the level of the ground water will be very low because rain has this role to regulate the level of the water localized under the ground.

There is different sources of water, you can collect the rain or have a well and pomp the water from it. The best option is to have wells and water tank to collect and store water from your roof.

Afterthought, we decided to build our summer kitchen with on the top two water tank which can content 1000 Litters each and connected to our roof. And the miracle happened. One afternoon a big storm arrived with a lot of water to share, filling by the way 400 litters of water inside our water tank in not more than 30minutes. Did we expect that? No, we were all surprise by this big amount of water collected in only 40 minutes!

Sometime it’s easy to collect water, sometime it’s not. But instead of collecting water you can save some. How? Nothing easier, we can give you some tips!

Re-use the water you use to clean fruits or vegetable by watering your garden or your plants.
Take shorter shower.
Don’t flush every time you’re peing (except if it’s smelling bad)
-Buy second hand clothe, equipments… ( textile industry use a lot of water)
Eat less meat (1kg of meat needs more or less 20 000 litters)
Drink beers instead of water ( it’s a joke)

Here some example of the crazy amount of water we need to produce stuff that we use every day.

That why some action as buying a second hand jeans can seems not important but think about it now, ten thousands liters of water just for one pair of jeans? Yes it’s not a new one, yes it’s not perfectly clean but again, while the textile’s industry is using billions litter of water you can make a difference.

Yes it’s not a lot if you do it alone, but it doesn’t matter , the other will follow and there is already a lot of people trying everyday to save water, energy, resources..

Despite the challenges, saving water bring you something that over-using water doesn’t. The sensation to do something which make sense, something now you know important.

Max

… A seventeen day work camp of pure enrichment.

by GAIAAugust 20, 2019August 20, 2019Leave a comment

Take a moment and picture yourself in a peaceful place up in the mountains surrounded by rolling green hills and tree filled valleys where the sun rises and sets in the warmest gradient of colors. Now, lets make this image in your mind even better by adding a great purpose to bring knowledge, connect people, and engulf yourself in the surroundings and you’ve landed in Boževce, Kosovo on GAIAs permaculture estate.

I joined this workcamp to be productive with my summer time, with no expectations and ready to build; and I received so much more out of it. The workcamp was dedicated to permaculture education and focused on natural building and sustainable living.

I arrived there on the 1st of August with great excitement along with several other volunteers from diverse countries such as France, Austria, Spain, Belgium, Jordan, Czech Republic, the Netherlands, the USA and a native from Kosovo. From the nearest town we took an adventurous rocky road climbing higher and higher away from amenities until we reach this quaint, small village of Boževce with less than 100 habitants. The atmosphere was so humbling and collective from the start. All volunteers would sleep in shared tents during these 16 days and we would use a compost toilet, an outdoor shower functioning by mostly rain water and have no cell service; and we were all ready to dive right into it!

The coordinators did such an exceptional job with organizing the camp. Our schedules were clear and feasible with our days starting at 7:30-8:30 with breakfast and then followed with a briefing where our duties and roles were assigned in teams and any questions or suggestions were welcomed.

The first few days were dedicated to getting to know each other, becoming familiar with the property and learning about the principles and ethics of permaculture along with natural building. We learned so much in such a short amount of time; it was exhilariting to take it all in. The staff was so informative and welcomed all questions with no hesitation. I feel one successful aspect during camp, for me, was being taught something in such a condensed way and then putting it right into practice afterwards. We learned about reed beds and it’s function of filtering grey water; then proceeded with making one at site. We also learned about the making of a compost and why we have them and then created one too. The trust in the volunteers to get things done from the staff was so encouraging for the work. We watched a film on the building of a straw bale house and was given some books for further references on the subject of this project we were about to endeavor on. One activity that really stuck out to me during one of the educational sessions was when we were given the task to design a house plan with the new knowledge we had just ingested on building with natural materials. I thought this was extremely fun and even helpful for us, as volunteers, to get creative and really understand how GAIAs permaculture project is impactful.

As the days got hotter, given that it’s the middle of summer, the team agreed upon waking up earlier to get work done without heat exhaustion and dehydration getting the best of our bodies. The high energy and diligence of the volunteers to continue working on the house continued strongly. We worked long days and very hard on getting the straw bale walls up and plaster them with a mud clay mix as a sealant. One unanimous feeling we all shared was the immense gratification of seeing physical progress being done by the end of each work day.

I always considered myself to be a city kid growing up north of Boston, in the US, and before this camp I had no previous experience with real camping and being part of this project truly taught me a lot. I joined feeling eager and curious and left feeling completely empowered and equipped to take the lessons I learned there and to integrate it into my daily life. Living so minimally for the past couple of weeks really showed me how small changes can make big impacts. I’m grateful to have been a part of this experience with such a successful organization. I’m looking forward to sharing my knowledge with others I encounter and mimicking the sustainable lifestyle that this camp has set as an example for me.

Celina, August 2019

Building with nature in mind – international workcamp in Bozevce

by GAIAAugust 12, 2019August 13, 2019Leave a comment

Almost two weeks ago, 12 volunteers from 10 countries flocked together in Bozevce for a 16-day workcamp in Kosovo.

Being the first out of two workcamps in Bozevce, these weeks are dedicated to finalizing the second floor of a building on GAIA’s Permaculture estate through the means of natural materials and building techniques. This entails customizing straw bales to form solid walls, securing them with rebars and adding a layer of a cob mix (straw, sand, clay) to protect the straw walls with human power.

GAIA’s estate functions primarily on permaculture principles and ethics, one of the ethics is integral to this month’s workcamp: Fair Share – this means that you share goods and knowledge with another to improve both the collective and individual wealth of knowledge, well-being, but also that of our planet earth.

Since most of the participants were not familiar with the ethics and principles of permaculture, the first few days served to provide them with a concise, yet short introduction and how these were applied by GAIA in Bozevce. A solid understanding of permaculture is integral to the understanding why GAIA decided to follow natural building strategies and materials found within the close distance of their estate, instead of conventional tools and concrete to fill up the walls with. One way of getting participants familiar with the benefits of natural materials was by instructing them to come up with house building plans that include the new knowledge on building with natural materials. Not only did we learn about alternative heating systems and the use of thermo panels on roofs but also how participants from different cultural backgrounds came up with different solutions.

After the first few days of learning about permaculture, natural building and getting to know each other, we began our serious work on the roof on Monday. A regular day of work would start at 6:00 am when the early birds get up to rise with the sun. Others would gather around the beautifully hand-made wooden table around the tree soon afterwards to take their breakfast until 8:30 am. The work day would start at 9 am after a short briefing about the work schedule of the day. The day would be divided into 4 working sessions with coffee, water and cookie breaks as well as lunch and dinner in between of them. Given the fact, that the temperatures gradually rose to almost unbearable 40 degrees – we adjusted the hours in the second week to begin earlier in order to prevent our bodies from smoldering in the scorching midday sun.

In the first week, work mostly set up the straw walls and fixed them with nets. This entailed a sequence of different tasks ranging from setting up the scaffolding around the facade of the building, cutting straw bales and fitting them into the wall constructions, plugging wholes with extra straw and flattening out the walls with blanks and strong arms. We mostly work in different groups throughout the day’s working shifts so that every person did not feel stuck in a task that they did not enjoy. Overall, this strategy retained the enjoyment of work task but also ensured that each person was able to learn how to conduct the different working tasks. Without labeling the strategy as a way of practicing Fair Share, it also aligned with the permaculture ethics.

On several days, the camp was visited by neighbours and KFOR soldiers who expressed their interest and curiosity in what we are doing in Bozevce. For most locals, building in this manner is not new to them but part of an old traditional way of resource efficient construction work. However, the fact that building this way requires more human power and stretches the duration of the building process, if one does not have enough helping hands, most of them have been opting for concrete as the main building resources in the region. Despite this trend, we all agree that using straw for wall insulation remains the single most resource efficient material in the area that respects environmental boundaries and climate stressors that come along with fossil fuel industries producing conventional house building materials.

For the participants, the workcamp has been a unique opportunity to learn beyond the beaten path of house construction but also to disconnect from their busy everyday lives. Each of them readily adapted to the surroundings of the estate and the specific living conditions of Bozevce. One might conceive of the idea to put down mobile phones and not having the possibility to escape to big city life as uncomfortable restrictions to how they usually spend their time, but actually function as enablers to become more aware of the natural and social environment by living minimally. Reducing one’s possibilities of how to spend their free time such as surfing the internet, going out for drinks or enjoying other forms entertainment has both bounded the group together and enabled each of us to reconnect with the natural environment and bodily senses. Put differently, GAIA’s workcamp teaches us in many ways of how to feel more with less.

The magic power of plants

by GAIAJuly 28, 2019Leave a comment

In late spring and summer is the time when spices and healing plants are growing literally everywhere in Bozevce. Once you go for a walk, you see mint growing on your right, you might see some Arnica on your left and chamomile between your feet.

We took a bit of time to get into the topic – and now we are collecting different plants for different reasons. Some of them are good for health, some of them taste nice and some of them have even both! So we are drying them and conserving them for winter. Here is a list of the herbs we found around here and what they are useful for. Check it out! Maybe you will find one of the plants in front of your doorstep in the next days. And you will know that you have a useful medicine there or a yummy herb to improve the taste of your next meal. Here is our list (which is definitely not complete):

Daisy (Bellis perennis): This little flower is gorgeous. It is white with a red dot in the middle and the leafs are on the ground and small, long and a bit hairy. It smells good! And the whole plant can be eaten in salad. If you make a cream with the flowers, this cream can calm down your skin after sunburn.

Dandelion (Taraxacum officiale): Dandelion grows everywhere in spring. The plant is up to 25 cm high, the flowers are yellow and the leafs are green and look a little bit like teeth. That’s where the name comes from; it means “tooth of lion”. These leafs are very tasty in salads when they are young. The roots are eatable as well, and from the flower you can make a delicious dandelion “honey”.

Ground elder (Aegopodium podagraria): This plant covers the ground in shady areas which get some water from time to time. Its leafs are always arranged in a group of three and the flower looks like elder, which means that it is white and it is arranged in a creeping with white umbels.

Marjoram (Origanum vulgare): This plant has small leafs which occur more often near the top of the plant on small branches. The flower is pinkish-purple. It gives your food a lovely Mediterranean taste.

Stinging Nettle (Urtica dioica): This is a plant almost everybody knows and most of us hate it: Because it hurts you, as soon as you touch it! The leafs are dark green and in a triangular shape and the plant is up to 1.50 m high. The young leafs which do not sting yet are very good in salads and once the plant gets older, you can use it like spinach. But nettle is not only tasty, you can also make a very good fertilizer for your garden with it: Fermented for two or three weeks in water and then sieved, it becomes a good treat for your tomatoes, beetroots and other plants.

Mint (Mentha sp.): There are many different types of mint, but all have long green leafs and all have this typical mint smell. They grow up to 70 cm high and the blossom is slightly violet. A tea from it helps against digestion problems and against a cold.

Lemon balm (Melissa officinalis): If you rub a leaf of this plant between your fingers, your fingers will smell like sweet lemon for a while. You will also feel the tiny little hears on the down face of the leaf and the “edges” which let it look like nettle a little bit. Lemon balm can grow up to 80 cm high and it prefers cool and shady places. The blossom is white-blue, small and not very spectacular. The tea of the leafs is good for treating nervous complaints of stomach, intestine and heart. It is anti-depressant and oil of lemon balm can help to heal wounds.

Mallow (Malva sylvestris): This plant has beautiful flowers; they are red-violet and they have darker stripes and five parts. The leafs are parted into five sections. This plant is marvelous as a tea against colds and it strengthens the immune system in general.

Yarrow (Achillea millefolium): Yarrow grows in abundance in grassy places. So everywhere in Bozevce! It has very small, long leafs with a lot of little “fingers” on them. That’s where the latin name comes from: “millefolium” means “thousand fingers”. The flowers are creamy white in clusters and it grows up to 1 m high. The plant has a strong smell. The leafs give your salad a slightly bitter addition. But there is something even better about this plant: A tea from the dried flowers and leafs is a pretty good pain killer. And, given to a bath, it helps to heal wounds and muscle pain.

Thyme (Thymus vulgaris): This plant you probably know from pizza. The Italian kitchen is famous for using it which is not astounding since this plant prefers the hot Mediterranean climate. It often grows on rocky places and dry grassland. Thyme basically has tiny leafs and tiny flowers which can appear in different colors. It can be recognized by its characteristic smell. In tea, it helps against colds and in oil it is antibacterial. So if you plan to make your own toothpaste, thyme gives you a good smell and a good outcome in the same time. And of course, it tastes very good on pizza!

Rue (Ruta graveolens): This perennial plant grows up to 50 cm high. It has yellow flowers in a kind of little “crown” at the top of the plant and it has small and long leafs which are arranged to little “hands”. Rue prefers a rocky and sunny surrounding. It helps against blood pressure and vein problems as well as against epilepsy. Furthermore it is good to have one in your property if you have animals since fleas don’t like its smell and so your animals will be free from them.

Chamomile (Matricaria chamomilla): This little flower is actually a wonder-healer. The blossom is white with a pretty big and outstanding yellow “ball” in the middle, the leafs look like tiny little feathers. The plant is little itself, it can grow up to 40 cm high, but most of the time it covers the soil on the corner of paths. So watch out, maybe you are stepping on a treasure! The smell is strong and aromatically, and the tea out of the flowers as well. It helps against multiple diseases, first cold, but also womanlike diseases, it brightens up your mood in general and it helps your digestion system. You can also make oil or crèmes for the skin from it and this will calm down irritated skin.

Plantain (Plantago sp.): This is another plant we are often stepping on and we should pay more attention to: Planatain has either big or thin and long leafs, depending on the type of planatain, but they have in common that each leaf has some strong little strings crossing it in a distance of 2-5 mm. The leafs cover the ground, while the blossom grows up on a long steel and looks cylindrical, up to 7 cm long and covered with little pink or white flowers. Tea of the leafs and the flowers helps against cold, chewing the flowers helps against toothache. If you have a stitch of a bee, you rub a leaf between your fingers until the juice comes out and you put the juice on the stitch. The swelling will disappear.

That’s it for now! But before you now start to collect plants and eat them: Check several times if you really have the plant you want! Some of those plants have brothers or sisters which look very similar, but are not good or even poisonous.

Antonia, July 2019

Urban Permaculture Garden in Mitrovica

by GAIAJuly 28, 2019July 28, 2019Leave a comment

When I was looking for a volunteering opportunity, I wanted to do something in relation with nature.

One can say that by getting involved in GAIA, I have found this opportunity. And this is true. But my mission takes place in a city, with its labyrinth of concrete and macadam … so I had to find a way to bring some nature closer to me.

A garden is obviously the best option. As I moved into our new house with my fellow volunteers, we were told that the small patches of grass that bear the name “garden” (“yard” would be more appropriate since we can find concrete paths between the patches of grass) should not be planted with anything. Disappointing! But we were resilient in our requests, and after a bunch of times going to our landlord’s to drink tea, eat pite and advocate our desire for nature, we won our case. Now we can plant the grass!

So, I began to think about an intelligent way to set up our small corner of nature. I had just attended some brief lessons about permaculture and I had been watching a substantial number of videos on the subject, so I wanted to apply some of these principles. As our house is not necessarily intended for volunteers to stay on the long run, and also because my permaculture knowledge is still quite limited, I would not dare saying I’m doing permaculture here. Rather, I tried to design the garden in an intelligent fashion, so that it looks nice, gives us a yield, and be, as much as it could, a mini-ecosystem.

I started to observe how the garden is lit by the sun throughout the day, determine the hottest and coldest zones as well as the sunniest and darkest. I ended up with the following sketch.

Screenshot_20190724_174210 (1) — Zoning of the permaculture garden

While I was drawing this sketch, we started growing seedlings. Thanks to the cooperation of my grand-parents, we could get non-hybrid organic seeds delivered from France. We built shelves that were put in the house behind the big patio window – this turned out to be a perfect greenhouse. To facilitate the transition of the plants between inside and outside, we built a small greenhouse that was put outside and hosted the seedlings before being transplanted in the garden.

20190516_084505 — Greenhouse and seedlings

I priviliged tomatoes in the most sunny area, of course. We also planted pumpkins, zucchini, butternuts, bush beans, leeks and chards. In terms of herbs and flowers, we have parsley, basil, savory, dill, rucola, chamomille, sage, lovage, morning glory, snapdragon, everlasting, scabiosa, marigold, dahlia, cornflower, sweet peas… We did some well-know companion planting: tomatoes with basil and marigold ; pumpkin, butternut and zucchini with beans.

Of course we are not using any artificial product to fertilize, fight pests or intempestive weeds… we do everything by hand and we use black soap and nettle manure.
Now we are waiting for the harvest of vegetables, enjoying herbs in our dishes, the view of our flowers and looking eagerly at the ripening tomatoes …

20190724_075412 — Morning glory and vertical herbal garden

written by Hugo, a member of GAIA’s Mitrovica Team.

Visit to a local beekeeper

by GAIAJune 24, 2019June 23, 2019Leave a comment

Normally nobody of our group gets up at six o’clock on a Sunday. But today everybody did it – some of us with pleasure, some others needed a bit more effort – because all of us wanted to see actual bees after two days of just talking about them. At eight in the morning we had an appointment with a local bee keeper in Kamenica and we went there by foot which meant to get started at seven.

Bajram Bajrami welcomed us at his place and showed us his bees and his equipment. We saw the hives, the transport boxes and a lot of other stuff. In his place in Kamenica he doesn’t have actual hives, but he is breeding queens there. Since he has a quite big bee business in Kosovo with 800 hives, he needs a lot of them. So he could show us how he especially prepares combs for the breeding, with drones but still some worker bees. We were lucky that the bees were very young – like this they were not aggressive and did not sting a lot. It was very interesting!

Our bee teacher Yasemin from Turkey used the opportunity to explain us what she is doing differently than him since she does natural beekeeping and he doesn’t. For example, she doesn’t use any pesticides or other chemical treatments for her bees while Bajram is using some. He told us that he needs to exchange his pesticide every year because the vermins are developing an immunity against it. Besides that, he is also harvesting way more honey from the single hive than Yasemin. But all of that is your individual choice – every beekeeper has to find his or her way, what is best for him or her as a person and what is best for the bees.

When we came back, we had some time for reflection and further questions on bees. Yasemin was able to answer to most of them – thank you a lot for sharing your knowledge!

Bozevce team is ready to get started with bees. Next week we will receive three bee hives, let’s see if the future brings more! Because: The more bees we have around us, the more they can support the nature of our permaculture system and around it. Without bees, one third of the crops worldwide cannot be produced anymore. And the number of bees is decreasing in an alarming speed.

THE TIME TO DO SOMETHING IS NOW and the big question of our time is: TO BEE OR NOT TO BEE.

Diving deep into natural beekeeping…

by GAIAJune 23, 2019Leave a comment

As the number of bees is drastically declining every year, we need to become aware of the root causes and, most importantly, on how we can save the bees. The “Living with Bees” workshop organized by GAIA has taught the participants to strive more towards natural beekeeping. Natural beekeeping, sometimes referred to as “biodynamic” or “ecological” beekeeping, involves taking care of the bees with minimum manipulation. Natural beekeeping at its core is about respecting the nature and the bees!

Yasemin, an expert beekeeper from Turkey, has elaborated on how beekeepers should take care of bees in a sustainable way as not to harm the bees and the environment. Yasemin concluded that synthetic chemical treatment is not the right way to save the bees; it is the opposite. It is one of the reasons that is causing the decline in the number of bees throughout the world.

If we start to think about the essential needs of bees more and less about our need to profit from them, the bees will live a more prosperous life.

Did you know that a drone can be considered as important as queen bees?

by GAIAJune 22, 2019Leave a comment

Drone is the male bee that does not sting and plays an important role on the process of nectar and pollen collection and has a life spam that can be a few days longer than the worker bees.

This and many more interesting things we are learning in this workshop of more than 20 people from different countries with Yasemin from Turkey as our teacher who is feeding us endless information on how the old bee kingdom is and how it functions and the importance it plays in various ways that are connected to or daily life. Not to forget to mention that they are that old that could have been here with the dinosaurs and the circle of what they do is a never-changing one.

We have two more days to continue bee-dancing and learning more interesting things in the stunning green Bozevce with a very nice weather this weekend.

This is one of the first workshops on this topic organized by GAIA who will continue workshops on this and different other topics connected to permaculture.