Indoor

So far I've not been able to find some way in which bees could be utilized in the environment we envision. It seems we won't have many bees in the aftertime, not without the sun. From all the information I've been able to gather, bees are absolutely dependent on sunlight for all of their many cycles. They don't necessarily have to live outdoors, and there is a special bee variety developed in Israel for indoor strawberry pollination. But these bees live in the strawberry hothouse, which is covered with clear plastic which lets all the sunlight through. Whereas in the immediate post-shift environment, we're supposed to have very little sunlight (or am I wrong about that?) If any research is to be done with bees, it has to involve low-light settings, such as a complete hydroponic garden in a very large basement. My bee-man friend says he doesn't know any bees that can live like that. The big problem is creating 'low-light' bees.

Offered by Sol.

One of the projects on my plate is to produce a database/Excel application to determine, based upon the number and types (gender/age) of people at a survival site, the number of calories required per day and thus the amount of hydroponics grown indoors, and from that the amount of artificial lighting - thus electricity generation capacity required. This pre-supposes a "high-tech" settlement capable of growing the required amount of hydroponic vegetation. From preliminary calculations it is clear that such a hydroponic setup will require a very large "shelter". The size of shelter required, and the continuously blooming vegetation appears to be quite adequate for a hive or two of bees. The only problem in this regard is that when working in the hydroponics "shelter", one would probably be required to wear the same sort of protective clothing used by bee keepers. So, my vision of a viable community hydroponic setup would certainly include one or more bee hives and thus the by-product of honey. By the way, the large shelter could easily be a group of interconnected smaller shelters. This wouldn't matter to the bees as long as they can get back to the hive.

Offered by Ron.