Project: Natural bee-keeping

• becoming more familiar with design processes
• designing and implementing a biotope
• practical skills: setting up a lasagna garden bed (for building instructions please have a look here or in the Supporting Evidence) and a dry stone wall

• design frameworks can help to reveal, increase and bring into action the real creative capacity in humans
  
• ecological value and importance of creating wildlife habitats

• expansion of my design capacities (creative human being)
• learning more about how to design small wildlife habitats and growing plants

• connecting with a network called “flowering landscape” to increase biodiversity on a more expanded level
• learning more about fodder plants for bees
  

The process I use to illustrate my micro-project "Sun Hive" is called the "Rapid Learning Cycle". It consists of the following steps: Plan, Design, Build, Test, Review. In that micro-project I had the intention to find a bee-hive made out of natural materials, where you can keep bees as naturally as possible but also have the possibility to control them if necessary. To read more details about the process, please see this document.

My primary achievements

• Finding a bee hive which is mostly made out of natural materials and connects traditional with modern knowledge
• Gained skills in weaving a basket
  
• Experienced people explained to me the characteristics of a Sun Hive
  

 Principle outcomes summarized

• Rediscover and revive traditions → people like it because it is a non-industrial product (nearly completely hand-made)
  
• Sun Hive arouses enthusiasm → makes people use more natural materials

• Finish my first Sun Hive completely
  
• Read more about the usage of the Sun Hive
  

• Weave a second Sun Hive and become more familiar with weaving this way
  
• Find out if there are more handicraft skills which I would like to learn
  

To expand my specified knowledge about bees, I tried to use the method of ArCEA outlined in the GaiaU Online Orientation (ArCEA-method explained below). I applied this method to almost every theory of bees I have heard or read of. Especially during practical work with bees at PaLS, where I have the role as a support person I learn a lot of theory which I can "Expand" (see ArCEA) afterwards. Because it is a very time-consuming process I did not manage to use ArCEA as frequently as I wanted to. I am still in the process of finding an appropriate plan for every-day implementation.

• Gained first experience in using the method ArCEA.
  
• Learned more about how to work strategically with texts.
• Challenging: very time-consuming process

 Professional Outcomes

• Gained some valuable knowledge in different methods of bee-keeping.
  
• Additional knowledge might help me in the future to increase the awareness of people and eliminate some destructive patterns in bee-keeping.

• Find an appropriate implementation for the every-day usage of ArCEA (more strategic!)
  

 New goals

• Apply ArCEA automatically
  

ArCEA stands for Active reading, Critique, Expand and Act.  Here I describe my first attempts to use this method:

 Active reading

• Skim the text (deconstruct) and write down the key words
  
• Read the text and draw a Mindmap (reconstruct) with the help of the key words you wrote down

• Is the train of thought in the text valid and plausible?

 Expand

• Expand the Mindmap with my own thinking and other sources

 Act

• Experiment with knowledge in reality or in imagination
• Review Mindmap after 24 hours
• After one week: Start with only the tangle knot and add the key words from your memory to evaluate what you still know (things you do not know → add later in a different colour)
• After a month: Do again what you did after a week

With ArCEA I hope to strengthen my knowledge over a long period of time. I will gain more specialized knowledge in things I am actively engaged in and I want to learn about. So far I tried to deepen my knowledge in bee-keeping, soil building and theory about earth-sheltered greenhouses.

For me the combination of expanded Mindmapping and practical work is a great way of action learning.