About a month ago, I got two beehives from a beekeeper in Vancouver Washington and brought them home to the farm in Sherwood. It was quite an adventure moving them - the beekeeper had sealed them up early in the morning, and we went midday and loaded them in the car to drive home, along with all of their accouterments - surprisingly bees have nearly as much stuff as babies!
Needless to say a few escaped in the car, which freaked our daughter out no end and we had to put our beekeeping hoods on. Must have been funny for other drivers on I5 who caught a glance!
We got home, moved the beehives to their new location at dusk, and let them out and they seem happy so far. We had some flowers still in bloom including a second flush of Lavandula angustifolia, sunflowers, and borage, which they took advantage of. We have the hives facing east and on warm days the buzzing is phenomenal. We started feeding them with drivert sugar syrup with healthy bee (containing essential oils) mixed in and they are going through a pail a week so far since the rains have hit in earnest.
Our bees seem very happy. So happy in fact that I am no longer using any protective gear when I check the hives! I use a bit of sugar water with some healthy happy bee mixed in (an essential oil blend) and they don't bother me at all. Its very zen - the less stressed you are, the happier and less aggressive the bees will be. We won't be taking any honey off them until next fall so maybe it will be a different story then, but for now, we're peacefully coexisting - we haven't had one sting - even during transporting them!
I had done quite a bit of reading before we got the bees, as I'd been wanting to get some for a while. My mum had bees when we were growing up and I have fond memories of helping her spin out the honey, smoke the bees, and getting stung! Well the memories of getting stung are not that fond, but lets just say that now I don't react much to bee stings!
Mum came to help us get the bees situated and she does have a bee whisperer knack it seems! When a large group of bees rushed out of the hive it gave me a fright, but she soothingly talked to them and calmed us all down (me, my husband and the bees!).
So far, the bees have been very easy to look after - they seem pretty calm - we check them once a week to make sure they have some sugar syrup left and look ok and thats about it. The beekeeper we bought them from had left a full hive of honey for them for the winter so they are in good shape so far. The blocks we set the hives on have settled and the hives are sloping a bit backwards, so one night this week we need to build them up so that they are sloping slightly forward to avoid water getting into the hive and causing mold.
But I am getting anxious the more I read. I also watched "The Last Beekeeper" on the Green Channel last night, and have been watching the show that works with A Year in the Life book. I've been reading Natural Beekeeping, Beekeeping for Dummies and a couple of other books. Its amazing how much there is to learn about these awesome creatures.
The Last Beekeeper was upsetting tho. These poor bees being schlepped across the country to pollinate the Californian almonds - and massive numbers of the hives simply dying from CCD (colony collapse disorder) - which supposedly has no definitive cause.
But let me posit these thoughts:
- Bees in nature travel 2-6 miles to collect nectar. Bees now are being trucked thousands of miles, exposing them to massive doses of pesticides, a variety of insect pests (like mites) and diseases that may or may not be in their home environment
- Bees are being put into monoculture crops that, due to their lack of sustainability, have to be heavily sprayed with insecticides, fungicides, and herbicides. This is making a chemical cocktail in the beehives. Bees, by nature, are monogamous- they pollinate mostly one crop at a time - which makes them ideal for pollination. But in nature, the plants themselves are growing with many other plants. Any time there is a massive industrial monoculture - whether it is corn, soybeans, or almonds , it makes it impossible for a sustainable pattern to exist
- Bees are exposed to many diseases and pests through this practice - its just like people flying a lot for business and getting exposed to a bunch of viruses - only of course we choose to do this - the bees have no choice!
- The travel itself is stressful to bees
- In nature, bees get the winter off. Now they are being forced to work almost year round.
One of the beekeepers in the movie commented "Bees are made to serve". That made my skin crawl. In the words of my daughter, "Dude!"! Bees are not made to serve! They are here fulfilling their own destiny, which coincidentally helps humans, and oh, by the way, the entire ecosystem. Yes, its possible for humans to manage bees in a way that optimizes how much they help us - but by destroying their natural ecosystems and lifecycle patterns, we're putting so much stress on them its almost inevitable that they would start to decline. They cant evolve fast enough to keep up with the toxins and stress! According to this documentary, if bees continue to die at the same rate, they will vanish from the US by the year 2035. This should be headline news!
I am a problem solver. And yes, there is lots of research going on with lots of brilliant people trying to figure out a solution. But, from a complete and utter newbie, here are some ideas:
- Why don't the Californian almond farmers (and other monoculture agricultural systems that rely on bees for pollination) underplant their crops with wildflowers (for longer nectar supply) and get their own beehives. The amount that the farmers pay for pollination services would surely pay for a year round beekeeper to look after their own beehives. No trucking bees around = less stress on the bees + less spread of disease and pests = less bee death?
- Let's leave most of the honey on for the bees to live on in the winter. Its completely unsustainable to take so much honey that the bees are living on sugar water. Sugar water is not nectar. Its like saying humans dont need fruit, just eat candy. Chemically its all broken down to glucose, but the nutrients found in fruit are the most beneficial part of eating fruit for a human. I am sure bees benefit in the same way from nectar and honey.
- Try to duplicate the natural habitat of bees as much as possible. Don't have thousands of hives living in an industrial warehouse eating sugar water. That seems like an ideal way to stress the bees and facilitate the spread of diseases and pests like mites. Spread them out in some local farmland maybe?
Yes, I know, there are lots of issues at stake here. But the bees are dying. In massive numbers. So the status quo is NOT working. So lets change it!
And for the rest of us with small farms, or even urban farms, think about getting a beehive! Happy bees are not aggressive and you'll get enhanced pollination of your own crops and your neighbors. This is particularly synergistic if you follow organic principles - the bees get clean nectar and pollen, and you get a bit of honey and enhanced pollination. I thought my chickens were my favorite farm animals until I got the bees :)
Another person on the documentary summed it up quite nicely: "Let bees be bees". Bees and people can live synergistically but we need to care for the bees. Not exploit them.
My two cents!
No comments:
Post a Comment