Permaculture Ouroboros
Gini Lester is certified both in Permaculture Design, and as a Permaculture teacher.
As a Nurse Gini had been first person witness to changes in the overall health of human bodies over time. Because of this perspective she recognized that now that she is retired, it is time to begin treatment in the community. “Eating healthy food is the foundation of a healthy body. Growing your own food is a good source of healthy food.”
Stephanie Bergner joined Solomon’s Knot as its beekeeper. She is a Social Worker who began beekeeping as a hobby. She gained bee knowledge through professional courses, training, self-directed on-line education, and personal experience. She has enjoyed several years of successful beekeeping with healthy bees. She works hard to make sure they stay healthy.
If you are in the market for local (Will County, IL) honey, please call us or go by Mitchell’s Food Mart on Raynor in Joliet, IL. If they don’t have it, we don’t have any honey left until next season. We always leave enough honey for the bees for winter, when the bees cluster together to keep each other warm.
The apiary is located in a metal scraper´s yard near Joliet. Having beehives in Joliet is against zoning code unless you know someone. The honey is still local honey because it´s the same bio-region. We were forced to move the hives out of Joliet.
We started with 3 hives and 1 nucleus (nuc) beginning of 2022 in the new location. The bees did well over that winter. The apiary grew a little so that by Nov 2023 there were 3 hives and 3 nucs. 2 were weak, and suspected they wouldn’t make it over the winter. Unfortunately, none made it over the winter. We re-started April 2024 with 2 colonies and 2 side by side nucs. The apiary did well over the winter 2024 – 2025. Come Spring of 2025 we added 4 colonies from Wisconsin, and split 2 hives. The bees decided they wanted to make their own queens instead of the ones we gave them with the splits, so we had to let them do their thing. It did mean that honey production was not as high as hoped but, such is bee life. We added 2 swarms to the happy little apiary and late season 2025 2 more swarms were added. The swarms are the wild cards. We do everything we can to make their survival possible but fear the odds are against two of them. Now the bees are ready for their wintertime cluster. We do worry about them over the winter, but there is nothing we can do but hope that we did our best to put all the odds in their favor.
7 hives, 2 nucs November 2025