Today's ramble is about bees, bears, birches, fungi and life. It may be hard to see how these relate to each other, but hopefully, if you follow the bouncing ball, it will make sense at the end. Lets start with trees. In particular birches and tamaracks. They both grow in abundance on Camphill land. On these trees grow fungi. Tinder polypore, chaga and Red belted Polypore. As you may know from other writings, most of fungi is not the part that shows, but is underground, within the tree, spread out in a much larger area than the mushroom itself. Those connecting parts are called the mycelium. So we have the trees and the fungi. But what about the bears? Well, bears scratch trees. They like to lick the sweet sap. The same sap that contains mycelium.

But on an aside, we must talk about men and bears. Lumbermen did not like that the bears scratch trees. It detracted from the value of the lumber. So they had bounties on bears. Well, as it turns out the bears also bring salmon out of the water, adding nutrients to the soil so trees grew bigger. So without the balance bears brought, the lumber industry suffers. Now back to the main point.

If you are familiar with chaga, you know that it has some very interesting medicinal properties. The Tinder polypore was also discovered in the 1960's to contain antivirals (Hippocrates said that in 450 BCE, but who's counting?). The red belted polypore has been proven to break down all kinds of toxins, such as pesticides, herbicides, and fungicides. So we have three fungi, growing on particular trees, connected by mycelium (which shares these properties) just sitting out there in the woods. The bears scratch them, causing wounds, where the fungi grow. Now for the bees.

Bees are in trouble in our world from many different causes, loss of nutrition, loss of forage land, parasites that carry mites that carry viruses and exposure to pesticides. But what, do you ask, does that have to do with the bears and the trees and the fungi??? Everything.

When bees have to travel further to forage, they don't make it back to the hive, as they would if there were ample foods closer. In a hive the younger bees work in the hive, caring for the young, cleaning up the mites, and then when they are older, they become foragers. When the foragers go out and don't make it back, younger bees need to go out sooner, leaving less bees to do the work in the hive, causing stress there, more mites and more viruses, and eventually causing the collapse of the colony.

So now we take the leap...The bees drink the sap from the birch and tamaracks, where the bears have torn the trees open (or the trees have damage from other reasons). The bees will also remove leaf debris on the forest floor and access the mycelium that way. The sap contains the antivirals and other really good stuff. It helps that bees stay healthier, with the workers living longer and the hive in general in better health to fight off the viruses.

So long story short, we need the decaying trees in the woods and the fungi that grows on them. We need the fungi that we know about that does amazing things, and to keep all the stuff we don't have a clue about, because the next big cure may be right under our noses. We need bears to be bears and trees to be trees, and the forest to be raw and messy and full of life. So if you go out in the woods, winter is a good time to see the polypores and the chaga. Now you will appreciate it even more...

Photo Red Belted Polypore in Camphill. Photo by Ann Luloff