Guest: Adam Weisberg

Our guest Adam Weisberg is Executive Director of Urban Adamah, located on the west side of Berkeley on 6th Street. It’s located in a neighborhood that contains a Whole Foods, car mechanics, a skate park, a Kosher winery, and UC Berkeley’s family housing all within three blocks of Urban Adamah and its welcoming gates and well-tended paths that lead through edible plantings, chickens, goats, and beehives. It is a fitting location for the intersectional approach of Urban Adamah’s function as a farm and community center that does outreach in myriad ways to support and sustain the world. 

I also have to say it is one of the most beautiful urban farms I’ve ever visited, one filled with peace and a feeling of balance. As one of their missions, Urban Adamah produces and donates over two hundred fifty pounds of produce each month for those who are food insecure. They put on educational programming now available online. And more to the point, Urban Adamah is being thoughtful about how to better the world in the midst of a pandemic. 

In this episode, Adam and I discuss Urban Adamah’s values and missions surrounding Jewish traditions, social action, sustainable agriculture, and mindfulness. We segued, too, into Biblical stories pertaining to gardens and new beginnings in the context of COVID, and the ways in which the responsibility of nurturing plants sustains both the world and our own bodies. I could have talked with Adam for hours--and I learned so much about the forms of agency urban farms and gardening provide. We’re also both literature majors, so you get to see us geeking out on metaphors, too, as we discussed slowing down and the archetype of new beginnings that gardens provide.

I hope you enjoy his story and if and when you do, go check out Urban Adamah. 

Adam Weisberg is the Executive Director at Urban Adamah. Prior to this Adam was the Diller Teen Initiatives Director and served as Camp Tawonga’s Executive Director from 2008-2011 and as Berkeley Hillel’s Executive Director from 2000-2008. Additionally, Adam has worked in a variety of roles in the Jewish community including work with the Council of Jewish Federations in New York, the Jewish Agency in Israel, and two years working with the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee in Bulgaria. Adam has served as a coach/mentor for young professionals through Hillel, Repair the World, the iCenter, BBYO, and the REALITY Check program, a project of the Charles and Lynn Schusterman Philanthropic Network.

Guest: Anna Mudd
I met Anna Mudd via Instagram and forged a friendship before I realized she was grafting the very queens that end up in my hive. Eventually, I got to meet her in real life at the apiary where she works, from where I bought my hive. 

Anna Mudd is a queen bee grafter. 

The queen bee of a hive is essentially the mother. And there can only be one mother. If two queen bees hatch simultaneously, they will fight to the death until one remains. 

Every bee colony is as dependent on the queen as much as the queen is dependent on the colony. But if she fails, the colony becomes fragile. And sometimes, a beekeeper finds themselves needing a new queen. Or not able to wait until the colony raises a new one.

And here is where people like Anna Mudd step in--people whose job it is to raise queen bees. Multiple queen bees. Hundreds of queen bees, in a process that manipulates the colony into raising more queen bees than they would otherwise make. 

Using special frames--and I’ll segue here. A frame is a reproduction of a natural bee colony structure where under natural circumstances they draw out honeycomb and beekeepers use this natural process and map it onto a structural element made out of wood or plastic that can can fit into a man-made hive box. This is called a frame and bees draw out honeycomb on it. The frame can then be removed for inspection or honey extraction. 

These special frames have multiple pre-manufactured cells that resemble the shape of a queen cell. When they are filled with young larvae and moved into a hive, the shape of the cells signal to the worker bees that the larvae within are meant to be queens. And the workers, in turn, will feed the larvae royal jelly throughout development so that they mature into queen bees instead of worker bees. And then they cap the cells with beeswax. About one week later, the queen bees will emerge. 

Raising queen bees requires not only a steady hand but an acute awareness of time, making sure to remove the frame of multiple queen cells before hatching so that they can then be nurtured separately for sale. 

Anna works for Golden West Bees, run by Eric Oliver. Their queen bees are sold all over California and beyond.

Her work is, to say the least, detailed. She identifies and then moves tiny 3-day old larvae, smaller than a grain of rice by hand and, as you’ll learn, by mouth, into these manufactured queen cups. Her job too, is seasonal--queen bees are not raised year-round, they’re raised mostly during Spring due to the limits of what constitutes good mating weather: temperatures in the 70s and 80s. And we talk a little about what it means to be a seasonal worker and why Anna chooses to do what she calls “gig work.”

You’ll also hear Anna mention Randy Oliver--Eric’s father, who founded the business and now does full-time bee research. Randy Oliver is a respected bee researcher who publishes monthly articles in American Bee Journaland is a popular speaker when it comes to bee biology and how to help bee colonies fight varroa mites. 

Read more show notes at christinehlee.com/frontyardpolitics. 

Bio:
Anna Mudd (she/her) lives on unceded Nisenan land, known as Grass Valley, CA. She is pursuing licensure as an electrician and filling her pantry with local and foraged home-canned foods, herbs, and spices. Find her art and anti-capitalist living on Instagram @muddhands.

Guest: Jeffrey Hickey
Jeffrey Hickey is a medical cannabis grower and cannabis educator whose blog My 2020 Isolation Grow is featured on Oaksterdam University’s website. Jeffrey is also a terrific gardener. In this episode, we talk about medical cannabis, the horror of chronic illness, the health system, and overcoming helplessness. Because in the end, growing medical cannabis not only helped Jeffrey’s wife but helped him overcome helplessness.

This is Jeffrey’s story.

Learn more:
Jeffrey Hickey’s My 2020 Isolation Grow Blog
Oaksterdam University