7th June 2015.
From the poppy pollen pleasure domes of Chingford E4 and further afield.
I'll try and make an inspection of our beehives today. I'll be looking out for various things such as how the queen is and if the colony is preparing to swarm. Actually seeing the queen amongst the many thousands of bees - workers and drones - can be difficult. On some inspections we have not found the queen however there are various indicators to confirm her presence e.g. the presence of recently laid eggs in the brood comb.
Of course I also want the honey stores to be building up sufficiently so that there will be ample honey to share between us, the keepers and the bees, at the end of the summer. What is available as forage to the field bees is of great interest to me. I try and make connections between what is happening in the beehives with what I observe in the vicinity of the apiary. Some inspections of the hives reveal the conspicuous presence of bees coloured and patterned unlike the vast majority of the others. They might appear to be completely dusted a pale ghostly yellow or grey, their stripes obscured by the delicate floral hues of pollen produced in abundance by some plants, of which the opium poppy, Papaver somniferum, is one.
The opium poppy does not produce opium in the British Isles. It is perhaps most notably in Afghanistan where the opium poppy can be cultivated and harvested for opium. In 'Bitter Lake' (Adam Curtis, BBC) there is a theory as to how and why the opium poppy has such a profound place in the cultural and political landscape of that country, and of those countries who have intervened in that region.
My understanding of Curtis's theory, is, briefly, that the US government sponsored and engineered a sort of modernisation programme in Afghanistan in the mid 20th century. This involved hydro-electric dam building projects. The dam building also involved making nomadic tribespeople change their way of life, by becoming settled smallholders or farmers. The reservoirs would provide power and irrigation. According to my understanding of 'Bitter Lake' (and this article, here) the dams caused the water table to rise and consequently also salt to rise. The increased salinity in the soil was disastrous in that it ruined existing agricultural systems and undermined the establishment of new or 'modern' ones, except, that is, for new systems based on crops which can tolerate or thrive in saline soils. The opium poppy is a plant which can grow in saline soil. It is also a very profitable crop.
There is some irony in that my brief recollection of a part of 'Bitter Lake' is symptomatic of what I also understand (or not) is the subject or critique of the film - the deliberate distillation and reproduction of history to the extent that it is lost.
Opium poppy studies - 12th June 2015.
I found this report about Afghanis being encouraged to take up beekeeping as an alternative to opium poppy growing:
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