This is where the bees will live. 

Lusted Road Honey Co. & Humblebee Pollinator Conservatory - Sandy, Oregon

Thank you for taking a look at this fundraising effort. My name is Dena Rash Guzman. I am a published poet, essayist and work as a writer and reporter for the organic food industry. Born in Las Vegas, Nevada, I now make my home on my family's 60 acre sustainable permaculture-centered produce farm deep in the pristine old-growth coniferous wilderness of the Sandy River Gorge and the Bull Run Wilderness near Portland, Oregon. Stargazer Farms, established as the Oregon Bulb Farm in the 1930s sits on a river bluff and is filled with a variety of unsprayed and organic plant life, including heirloom flowers left over from its previous life as a flower farm. It is alive with bees, butterflies and other natural pollinators, all of which forage blooms from early spring to late fall. One cannot sit still on our property during foraging season without seeing a pollinator feeding on nectar, or without hearing a constant hum-buzz of life. Three honeybee hives are kept here by our farmers at this time. I would like to add to those hives, using time-honored holistic beekeeping methods, as well as research new ways to attract and provide homes for wild pollinators like bumblebees and orchard bees. With success, I hope eventually to produce and provide these homes and habitat plans for other farms, backyard gardens and urban environments in my bioregion and beyond. Another aim is outreach, education and establishment as a nonprofit with the aim of employing at a living wage disabled people to work the hives, package honey, and help produce wild bee homes and habitats. 

The ultimate aim of Lusted Road Honey Co. & Humblebee Pollinator Conservatory is to fill the world with honeybees, wild pollinators, and wildflowers. 

It is often said that the best sign of a healthy farm is a healthy beehive. Could the same be said of the world? If so, we are headed for some trouble. Bees are disappearing. Since 2006, beekeepers throughout North American and parts of Europe have watched helplessly as their honeybee hives are decimated by colony collapse disorder. From backyard hobbyists to major commercial operators, keepers have reported up to 90% hive losses each year since then, with an average yearly hive loss of 34% since 2006, since the disorder was first named and diagnosed. While hives can fall to many ailments, the mark of CCD is a hive from which nearly all the bees in the colony disappear, leaving behind the queen bee, her brood and a handful of sick bees. As bees cannot live without their colony, all the bees die. With the exception of the bees left behind in the hive, none of the other bees are found. They simply disappear. 

There are many theories but no real answers as to the cause of CCD, but some thoughts and research point to systemic pesticides, monoculture farming practices, soil erosion, changing weather patterns in North America, chemical treatment of beehives, pollution, water scarcity, viruses including a newly discovered one that jumps from flower to bee, premature replacement of queen bees to increase honey production, varroa mites (not all CCD cases show the presence of these mites, however) and management stressors such as some migratory beekeeping practices. 

It's not just honeybees that are in danger. Wild pollinators are seeing rapid declines as well. Feral honeybees are colonies that have swarmed, or left with their queen in order to make room in the hive for a new queen and colony. Feral honeybee colonies were a common sight in the wild for some time, but their numbers, along with native wild bees, butterflies and bats are diminishing rapidly as well. In China, there are areas where there are no bees left at all, and entire orchards are pollinated by hand. 

At Lusted Road Honey Co. & Humblebee Pollinator Conservatory, we will put into practice time-honored beekeeping methods with an eye on current scientific research. We will utilize native wildflower seed mixtures  to provide our bees, both kept and feral, with a wide variety of food beyond what they will find in our fields and forests. We will keep meticulous records and provide up-to-date information on our website, to be built with funding from this campaign. We will provide classes, hands-on community outreach and work with existing conservation societies to promote best practices for pollinator conservation. We will also harvest and sell our honey. All proceeds will go toward our establishment as a nonprofit, and toward the goals previously listed. We will also  breed queens, and intend to learn how capture unwanted swarms and adopt unwanted existing hives in our area, and to encourage beekeepers in other regions to do the same. 

                

What We Need & What You Get

• Our aim with this fundraiser is to raise $7000 to begin our effort. Your donations will cover our minimum start-up costs. We will buy brand new hives and equipment from local companies. This is important as this is a bioregional effort, and we want to support our local economy. We will visit Ruhl Bee Supply as well as Bee Thinking. We will do our best to buy locally bred bee packages and nucs to populate our hives. We will hire local experts to consult us if we run into problems. We will continue our research and education into the practice of beekeeping. We will join existing pollinator conservation efforts and beekeeping societies, establish an official website to share news and best practices for caring for bees and pollinators as well as to sell products from the hive, and we will buy electric fencing to keep predators safely away from our beehives. (We live in a forest where bears and other honey-lovers live.) We will purchase materials needed to build a better bumblebee home and to build and utilize orchard bee houses. Finally, we will be able to afford to apply for grants to further fund our effort, and establish a nonprofit so that your future donations will be tax-deductible. Currently we are in the process of establishing ourselves as an Oregon business and have filed a DBA to that effect. 
• Each donation you make will come with a perk. From $5 and under (your name on our website) on up to $1000 (stay with us at the farm for a weekend, receive many one-of-a-kind gifts, and we will name the first queen bee after you) perks include poems, artwork, a salon & cocktail reception in the historic farmhouse here at Stargazer Farms, a guided hike through the gorge and down to a black sand beach below the property, a children's day out at the farm, the chance to see your manuscript put to print and designed by a respected independent press, access to exclusive updates from Dena, a bound first year beekeeping journal, an exclusive chapbook of Dena's bee poems, one of a kind works of art and books, and a cooking lesson and dinner for four at Stargazer farm with world-renowned chef Isabel Cruz, plus of course, first-harvest honey & other products from the hive. 
• Whether we make our goal or not, we plan to put your donations to use by establishing beehives here on the farm, and to begin researching new ways to attract and host wild pollinators. The more money we raise, the more bees we can help. We will reinvest the money we make from this venture into helping more bees, and will consult with organic food company executives and farm owners as well as others to make sure we grow a financially sustainable organization. 

The Impact & Possible Risks 

• Bees and other pollinators are important not only to human survival and our food chain, but to the ecology of forests, deserts and everything in between. Where plants grow, pollinators are present. Most of us know that bees are in danger. This is a chance to help do something about it. 
• I am an active member of my literary community. I donate time and energy, as well as money, to its well-being. My work is widely published, I live and work on a farm in the wilderness and am supported by those who also live on my family farm, which is dedicated to sustainable agriculture. I work and have valuable contacts in the organic food industry, and have worked for political leaders in all sorts of advocacy, including disability rights. My heart is set on helping my world community save the bees, and I have a track record of dedication to the causes I believe in. I live on a sustainable farm and my bees will help it thrive, as it will help my bees thrive. 
• Risks are obvious. Sadly, first year and even established beehives stand a good chance of dying. So many things can and are going wrong right now. That's the reason I am taking action. While the bees I raise have a good chance of never encountering pesticides, there is the chance that it could happen as they forage. They have a lot of pristine foraging ground here, but there is no way to keep them from finding a sprayed flower. I will alert my neighbors, far off as they live from me (one mile is about the closest,) of my project and ask them to only spray at night if they must spray at all. It is common for a first year hive to produce only enough honey to sustain a colony over winter. Your honey sample perks might take more than one year to produce. The health of the bees will come first. 

Other Ways You Can Help Us

If you can't contribute financially, we are happy for other kinds of support. 

• Share the link to this campaign far and wide. You can use the social media buttons here or just copy and paste the link into emails, onto your website, or your social media page. 
• Contact us to sign up as a volunteer - denargbee@gmail.com
• If you would like to donate beekeeping goods such as smokers, veils, native wildflower seed mix, or wood for us to use for construction of feral bee habitats, we are happy to accept such donations. At this time we are unable to give you a tax deduction form, but our aim is to become a nonprofit. 
• Research best practices for helping pollinators thrive and put them to use. 
• Do not use systemic pesticides.
• Plant a garden of organic & native plants that flower at various times during pollinator foraging season (spring, summer and even fall)
  
• Support your local sustainable family farms. Eat local honey. 
• Support permaculture. 
• Buy organic whenever possible. 
• Tell your representatives to label GMOs and ban neonicotinoid pesticides. 
  
• Tell your local hardware stores not to sell bee-harming pesticides. 
• Consider interviewing us about this effort for your publication. We would love any press or promotion we can get. 
• Alert us to any grants to which you think we should apply. 
• Offer to donate your time in helping us apply for those grants.
• Like our Facebook page.  
• Visit our forthcoming website for forms and tips regarding how to care for and advocate for pollinator safety. 

With thanks, 

Dena Rash Guzman

Founder 
Lusted Road Honey Co. & Humblebee Pollinator Conservatory
Sandy, Oregon 

(Note: Not all perks are accumulative. Some of our perks will be fulfilled as soon as we have a website, some won't be fulfilled until after summer or later due to the nature of this project. The perk date listed is the approximate latest delivery date of one of the incentives in your donation bracket. Some of your rewards will come sooner than others. If there is no honey harvest the first year, honey perks will be received upon the next year's honey harvest. We cannot ship hive products outside of the United States due to laws and regulations. We will gladly ship any hive product you qualify for to someone within the United States as a gift. Our perks include shipping only within the United States. Shipping overseas may require your financial cooperation. Please email us with any questions at denargbee@gmail.com) 

We are grateful to all who have graciously offered these perks, their support, their art for our logo, and the filmmaking abilities of  Under Oath Productions.

Thanks to many of our sponsors and supporters. You are here in no particular order. We hope to name you all.

Billy Tosheff 

Stargazer Farms (including Jamie Farmmaiden, Farmer John, Billy, Edgar, Tim the Woodsman, Erik, Jackson and others for the support they have given or surely will give because they are my family and my people.)
Ron & Joanna Rash
Unchaste Readers—Women Reading Their Minds
KMA Sullivan, YesYes Books
Cari Luna, author The Revolution of Every Day, Tin House Books
The Portland Collage Collective (Lesley Harper, Reuben Nisenfeld, Kevin Sampsell, B Frayn Masters, Kerry Cohen, James Bernard Frost, Mark Russell and more)
Jerimiah Whitlock, Under Oath Productions (maker of our video)
HAL Publishing & Far Enough East
Back Fence PDX
Isabel Pearl, Portland OR 
Various beekeepers I have befriended already so soon into this journey.
Dave Wright
W.M. Butler (logo design)
Artistically Declined Press
Finally, Francis Lutz of Fox River Farms in Illinois. He raises grass fed beef and has 
been of incredible inspiration to me, and Carrie Brown, my dear friend who left us far too soon. One of my queen bees will be named for Carrie.