Brigit Strawbridge will be remembered by many from the TV series 'It's Not Easy Being Green'. More recently, she has spent much of her time writing and talking about wild bees, especially bumblebees.

This year, she is moving back to Cornwall, to the farm that was her family home and the hub of the TV series, with the aim of turning it into an educational centre, where people will be able to learn not only about bees, but also other country crafts and skills. 

I visited Brigit at her farm and she spoke to me about her plans.

Bumblebee Farm web site - http://bumblebeefarm.co.uk

Brigit's blog - http://beestrawbridge.blogspot.co.uk

It is the last day of January 2013 and my resolution to do more recordings has again been overtaken by other priorities - but here we are again with another Barefoot Beekeeper podcast.

It's been an exciting couple of days, with two of the UK's biggest retailers - B&Q and Wickes - announcing that they would be removing garden products from their shelves that contain neonicotinoids - and then a third big company - Homebase - announced that they were following suit.

UK supermarkets are now under seige by campaigners eager to press home their advantage and persuade them to take more garden pesticides off their shelves, so I think we have more good news to look forward to.

There was a session yesterday of the House of Commons Environmental Audit Committee on pesticides, in which Bayer's representatives gave a rather lame performance, I thought. They looked dazed and confused by questions they seemed ill-prepared for - and then Professor Vyvyan Howard of Ulster University followed up with a calm dismissal of most of their arguments, leaving MPs - at least it seemed to me - in a position of little doubt when it comes to deciding which way to go on the neonicotinoids issue.

So, today's podcast is an interview I recorded in Denver, Colorado, last November with Valerie Solheim, who has some very interesting experiments running with bees.

This interview will be of particular interest to people who have considered the possiblility that there is more to hive location than just choosing a level piece of ground. Valerie suggests that we may need to take account of 'geopathic stress', as her findings suggest that the health of bees may be influenced by forces of which we currently have little knowledge.

I think there is still a lot of work to be done in testing her theories, and I hope some of you will be inspired to carry this forward. Valerie has just published a book about her work called The Beehive Effect, and you can read part of the first chapter at her web site - healingbees.org 

Please bear in mind that when I made this recording, I had already been speaking for over 2 hours and the ultra-dry air had given me a sore throat and an attack of the sniffles, which I have tried to suppress in this recording - but not entirely successfully.

Right at the end is a little more all-female close-harmony singing, recorded immediately after the interview in the hotel bar. 

An end-of-year musical treat by friends of mine, who go by the names of Pixie and Laura. They will be releasing their first album soon, so this is a preview, recently recorded in the street in our home town of Totnes. There is a fair bit of background noise, as this was market day...

This podcast was recorded in Denver, Colorado, and features a round table discussion with Tom Theobald and Miles McGaughey of Boulder County and Christy Hemenway, who was visiting from Maine. 

We focused on the current situation in the USA regarding agriculture in general and beekeeping in particular, looking at what we feel needs to be done to put right the damage caused by the use of toxic insecticides and herbicides.

The 2012 Natural Beekeeping Conference was held at Emerson College, East Sussex over the second weekend in August. 

This is the first podcast from the conference, featuring the opening keynote address by Phil Chandler. This blog http://beesontoast.blogspot.co.uk/2012/08/the-importance-of-being-drone.html supports the content of the speech with a more detailed argument.

David Heaf is well known as the translator - together with his wife, Patricia - of the Abbé Warré's book about 'The People's Hive' into English. He gave the keynote speech at the First UK Natural Beekeeping Conference, which was warmly received and which generated much friendly discussion. 

David's new book, 'The Bee-Friendly Beekeeper' is available form Amazon and other outlets.

The music on this podcast is 'The Bee Song' by Lara Conley.

Italian beekeepers Renato Bologna and Marisa Valente have vowed to 'eat like bees' in protest against the use of neonicotinoids. They say that they now have scientific proof that pesticides are killing their bees, and they want the Italian govenment to take action to ban neonicotinoids on all crops. At present, their use is only banned on maize.

I spoke to Renato, whose English is a lot better than my Italian, and you can hear the result in today's podcast.

PLEASE SUPPORT Renato and Marisa by going to their web site and signing their petition - http://www.rfb.it/bastaveleni/adesioni.htm

The front page of their site is here - http://www.rfb.it/bastaveleni  If you do not speak Italian, I suggest using Google Chrome to view it and click the 'translate' button at the top.

Lara Conley has written a song that I think you will enjoy - and you can hear it for the first time here on the Barefoot Beekeeper Podcast. 

Lara has a web site on MySpace - - see www.myspace.com/laraconleymusic - and I hope you will listen to and buy some of her music. I think you will agree that with a song-writing talent and a voice like hers, she deserves a wider audience.

You can also see Lara on YouTube here - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8AvA1k4obO0

This podcast is based on a recording I made at Welcombe, North Devon earlier in July 2011 with a group of people on an 'Intermediate' level natural beekeeping course. We discussed the various ways to set up a top bar hive, including different entrance arrangements, top bar widths and the options for swarm management. 

The first UK Natural Beekeeping Conference will be held near Worcester in August, and we have decided to offer reduced rate tickets for students ad some day tickets for the Saturday. Please download a newe booking form from www.naturalbeekeepingalliance.com for details.

I have been working on a distance learning course for natural beekeeping, which will be offered by MyGardenSchool starting later this month. Details here - http://www.my-garden-school.com/course/introduction-to-natural-beekeeping/

We had another successful weekend event at Embercombe (see www.embercombe.co.uk) recently and you can hear some feedback from students - including a mystery TV presenter!

This episode closes with a recording I made recently of bees at the entrance to one of my hives. I hope you enjoy the mix of bee sounds and birdsong.

If you wish to be a part of this podcast, you can leave me a voicemail on +44 (0)203 239 1643 or email me - phil@biobees.com