Keepers of the Bees

I attended the seasonal meeting of the Iowa Beekeepers meeting last night.  Once every three months, this group of like-minded people join together to discuss the issues relevant to the life of a bee.  This group is an agriculturally minded group - dedicated to crops that their tiny flying armies live off of and help to grow with their pollination. They are as much, or more, a fundamental part of the agriculture industry than even the corn and soybean growers associations, but much less widely known or recognized.  What is different about this group of  farmers is that you will never see an industrial agriculture company among its ranks - no Monsanto, no Cargill, no Roundup.  In fact, to even bring up those words leads to a certain amount of snarling, leers, and mumbled expletives from the members of this group because they know all too well the havoc that industrial agriculture wreaks upon the life of their hives.

These keepers are the touchstone of the agriculture industry. They see what is happening to the natural world around us because they deal with it directly in the lives of the bees that they safeguard and keep. They are the miners that hold onto the canary and warn the other miners when the canary dies and the mine is no longer safe. They are not razzle-dazzled by the agribusinesses with their fancy commercials and shiny, glossy magazine ads for chemicals and GMO seeds, because they see all too clearly the consequences of such things first hand.   It is one thing to be a farmer and grow a crop - relying blindly on the pollinators that you may see but often don't acknowledge as being the direct cause for the fruit and vegetables that grow on the vine, but when those pollinators disappear so do the apples, cherries, blackberries, blueberries, watermelons, pears, peaches, almonds, and countless other crops.  When I see people in general acting so blasé about the effects of corporate agriculture on the tiny keystone insects that make that agriculture even possible in the first place, it has me deeply worried.

But here is what worries me the most....the bee keepers are disappearing as well.

I enjoy going to these meetings, but they distress me.  The average age of these keepers is easily somewhere in the mid 70's.  I am, quite easily, the youngest person there. At last night's meeting there was a sympathy card being passed around for one of the members that had just passed away at the age of 84.  Another one of the keepers, Charlie, received the honor of being recognized for keeping bees for the last 50 years! He has been keeping them longer than I have been alive, and appeared to be willing an able to do it for at least another few years which is a good thing because I really don't know what is going to happen when these quiet, thoughtful, nature-loving people depart this world for the clover field in the sky.  That is not to say that bees can't survive on their own, because they can, but we are loosing the people that monitor them closely and are able to tell the rest of us when the pesticides and chemicals that we love to pour on our fields of monoculture crops have finally broken the back of the tiny winged atlas that holds up the agriculture world.  But, then again, they already have told us....and we fail to listen or to learn.

 Darwin's theories hold true for all biological systems....even man.  Those species that are not smart enough to adapt and learn, get wiped off the face of the earth.  It may take hundreds, if not thousands of years, but it happens none-the-less.  We humans think we have the corner market on survival, but I feel quite certain that the seeds of our own doom have already been sown and continue to prosper under the falsity of capitalism - making a dollar at the expense of everything else and spending less money on cheaply produced goods that we will simply discard and replace with more cheaply made goods. It is an unsustainable practice and yet one from which it is hard to wean.

I looked around the room last night and watched as this group of people shared and discussed things in such a civil manner - even the disagreements were cordial.  There were discussions of wood peckers eating into hives and squirrels damaging the boxes that contain the frames.  They analyzed the best ways to get rid of mites without chemicals - apple cider vinegar and powdered sugar were the clear favorites.  Quiet, soft spoken, accepting of the ebbs and flows that nature throws at a person, schooled in the process of trying something and then adapting it as necessary to fit your needs and knowing full well that next year it may need to be adapted again.  So much knowledge, patience and time was tucked into that one meeting room last night, and the thought of that wealth of information slowly dispersing one sympathy card at a time made my heart clench.

 I realize that I am something of  a throwback to an earlier age - I look around at my peers and I marvel at their concern for things like flat screen televisions and fancy cups of coffee.  I try to reconcile this generation of "wants and desires" with the generations before us of "hard work and survival" and think that, somewhere, there must be a sustainable mix of the two.  Is it that people just no longer care or is it just that they don't know?  And if they did know, would they care?  I understand the concern that our elders have for my own generation and then I look at the kids today....or rather I look at the tops of their heads as they are busy with their i-phones and texting their friends... and my concern only grows deeper.

Meeting over and coffee poured, this group began the social part of the night which is really more of an extension of the meeting itself, but this time with a cup of coffee in hand.  I made a few rounds asking pointed questions of the keepers that have seemed to have the most success and then headed out to the local store to buy some supplies for my two small, struggling hives of bees under the recommendation of my main mentor, Floyd.  It will be three months before the group convenes again and I left with a hope in my heart that at the next meeting there will be a few more people in their 30's and 40's and not a sympathy card in sight.

The Honey Flow

I think it is safe to say that the drought has gotten the better of me this year.  Although it has been pointed out to me that my attitude toward this whole drought thing has been less than stellar, my only comment is that my optimism has wilted right along with most of my flowers.  But there was a ripple made in the stagnant pool of drought frustration recently when I pulled in our first honey from the bees.

I have checked them several times throughout the summer and would often find them crowded on the sill of the hive in a small swarm attempting to fan themselves and the hive to keep it cool.  Initially, I had regretted putting one of the hives in the shade of a tree, but then as this abnormally hot summer has progressed, I have rethought that position and have noted that, of my two hives, the shaded bees are clearly the more comfortable.

It fascinates me to visit the hives.  My entire childhood, I was afraid of bees, worried about stepping on them while they were busy patrolling the dandelions and the white clover, instructed never to go too near a hive.  Now I find myself sitting on the palates upon which my hives stand, a mere inches from thousands of bees that are busily going about their business.  They dodge and swoop around me as I peer at them and I have occasionally been accidentally run into by one or more of them on their way to or from the hive.  Like any Midwesterner would, I apologize for being in their way and kindly move aside. They don't sting, they don't get angry, they just keep on working.

I have bemoaned the loss of the flowers and watched as the clover has sadly dried up and wondered what the bees would find to eat, but they are clearly more resourceful and optimistic than I am these days.  I set out yesterday to crack open the hives and see how they are managing things on the inside after hearing stories from some of the other beekeepers in the area that noted that they had had the entire comb within their hives melt down in the heat.  Not that bees can't handle that sort of devastation, but it takes them a while to clean up and rebuild.

I happened to have the foresight enough to take along a few empty frames and a deep super just in case.  The first hive that I opened, the one that I typically think of as the weaker of the two hives, had finally filled both levels of supers up with comb and were putting down a substantial amount of honey in all of the upper frames.  I had to break into the bottom super to find the brood of bees and be sure that they were doing well.  The size of the hive had clearly expanded and there were any number of bees that were very unhappy with the general ruckus that I was causing them.  It takes some amount of control when being mobbed by several thousand bees at once, not to swat at them or get anxious.  Bees are a very intuitive lot - they respond almost instantly and as a single organism to slight changes in mood and surroundings. I have watched them milling about on the outside of the hive and a bee will twitch differently and the whole group changes its dynamic simultaneously.  When I am busy trying to move bees aside so that I can get a grip on a frame, I will notice subtle differences in the tone of their buzzing and can tell when I have angered the lot of them. I don't work with a smoker because, for the most part, the bees are fairly tolerant of me and don't attempt to sting....that doesn't, however, mean that they aren't unhappy with me.  I find myself humming the Winnie the Pooh "I'm just a little black rain cloud" song and that seems to quiet both myself and the bees down a bit.   I did have one bee yesterday, however, that was especially upset with me and she kept throwing herself at my mask repeatedly long after I had put her hive back together and moved on to the second hive.  No amount of explaining would dissuade her from her attempts at driving me away.

Having assured myself that the shaded hive was doing well, I moved on to what has typically been my larger hive.  This group has completely filled the two initial supers and is now starting on the third.  I removed the top super (the one that they are only getting a start on) and launched into the second (or middle) super.  I found healthy capped brood in the middle of the super and then chanced to check some of the other outer frames in the box.  Honey! Capped, finished honey!  I pulled the first full frame up out of the hive - weighing roughly 20 pounds and full of unhappy bees, this is not something that you want to drop - I was completely amazed.  Capped honey is beautiful, but brand new clean white honey comb that is full for the first time is really beautiful!  I set the frame down and peered into the hive on the other side and was rewarded with a second full frame of capped honey on the other side as well.  I pulled this one out as well and set it next to the first frame full of honey and then went to get the empty frames that I had brought along. There were several more frames of mostly capped honey, but the bees use honey as their main food supply for feeding the young bees and always need to be left with enough in reserve to maintain the hive.  I put the empty frames in the hive in the places of the full frames and then quickly and apologetically brushed the bees off the honey filled frames back into the hive before I spirited them away to my green house which doubles as the "honey house". 

Walking with a loaded wheel barrow while still wearing most of my bee costume to the green house, I attracted the attention of my 7 year old and she came skipping over to see what I was up to.  She is a honey lover herself and was willing to run to the house to get a few of the necessary items I would need to clean and prep the centrifuge that I had not even bothered to examine yet, thinking that it would be at least the end of the season, if not a full year from now, before I would need it.  With a crescent wrench, some clean rags, a hose and a little dilute bleach, we had the thing up and running in no time.  A large knife was obtained from the kitchen and the top beeswax seal on the honey was removed and saved in a pan.  In general, it takes 10 pounds of honey to make 1 pound of beeswax and it is worth its weight in gold, so I wasn't going to loose a bit if I could help it.  A little balancing of the centrifuge and ten minutes of spinning and a beautiful stream of golden honey came pouring out of the spout at the bottom of the centrifuge.

 Honey is one of the easiest food stuffs to work with.  It is ready to eat in its natural form, does not spoil, and can be used in just about everything.  The only thing that I had to do in order to put this honey in jars was to strain it a few times through several layers of cheese cloth.  Seven pounds of honey later, the now empty frames of beeswax were returned to the bees and the empty placeholder frames removed.  They will take one look at the devastation that I caused to their comb and start again to clean it, repair it, fill it with more honey and cap it once again. In trade off for my providing housing, food through the winter, protection from the cold and a little water for the hot summer months, these tiny little beings supply me with potentially endless supplies of the most natural sweetener known to man and they will pollinate many of my flowers and crops. I am pretty sure that I am coming out way ahead on this deal, but it really is a fairly symbiotic relationship although, technically, they would survive just fine without me.  I do, however, speak on their behalf when the crops are being sprayed with potentially toxic chemicals that threaten to completely wipe out honey bees all together, and in that small way attempt to pull my weight in the relationship.

 More and more I see these types of relationships in nature and for many of them, man is thought to not be an important link in the symbiotic chain, but we are perhaps one of the most important players in symbiotic relationships - we have to protect them.  "A chain is only a strong as its weakest link." as my brother used to remind me (typically while he was pointing out that I was, apparently, the weakest link) - but it is very much true.  Our job as humans, and as links in the chain, is to protect the other links in the chain, the bees being sprayed, the shrimp being covered in oil, the cattle, chickens and pigs being restricted to tiny lots or confinement units.  Sadly, we humans are often the weakest links and fall far short on our jobs. 

So, the next time you pull out the honey jar and take a teaspoon full of honey, think of the little beings that worked themselves literally to death to bring that to you.  Each worker bee, in her short lifetime will produce only the equivalent of 1/10 of a teaspoon of honey, and to produce a pound of honey, bees will fly the equivalent of twice around the world and visit roughly two million flowers.  And that is just the honey.  The value they represent in their ability to pollinate crops and further provide us with food, eclipses the value of the honey alone.  The next time you eat a fruit, vegetable, or even have a cup of coffee....thank the bees.