Sweet Summer Solstice - June 19, 2009

For the past two years Slow Food Chicago has sponsored a Summer Solstice potluck fundraiser for us at the apiary. It will be happening this year on June 19th and should be the best one yet. Only $15 per person ($10 for Co-op and Slow Food members). Bring a dish to share and a chair to sit on. We'll also be holding a raffle with great prizes including a private tour of the City Hall rooftop garden and beehives, a dinner for 2 at Brasserie Jo, a Joe Breezer Itzy folding bicycle, organic/biodynamic wine from Candid wines and more. Reservations are required. Find out more here - Slow Food Chicago

The Sweet Summer Solstice event is part of our effort to raise $10,000.00 to begin raising our own honey bee queens. Every beekeeper loses a portion of their hives each year and must replace those bees with ones purchased from Southern or Western beekeepers who have a longer beekeeping season. We don't believe it is a sustainable way to continue in beekeeping.

We want to reduce our dependence on this supply by raising our own queens. Doing this will allow us to reduce the yearly expense of buying package bees and allow us to derive extra income from sale of queens and nucleus hives to other local beekeepers. The start-up costs and labor for this are considerable so we are trying to raise the $10,000.00 to get the program up and running.

If everyone who sees this donated just $5.00, we would be well on our way to our goal.