being there

December 2007

With the Bees
An afternoon of quiet delight in Port Republic
by Dolly Frazier dollyfrazier@comcast.net

eightyone beingthere december 2007Hot, sweaty, and unable to wipe my brow, I am encased in a full-length heavy white suit. My accessories: thick gloves that pull up to my elbows, and a hat with a mesh veil that attaches to the suit. It’s a lot of clothing for this 90-degree October day. I am spending the afternoon with my neighbor Norman Southerly and his approximately 180,000 honeybees. We are stealing the honey right out from under their noses.

“Puff a little smoke toward the bottom of the hive,” Norman suggests. “They will respond by tanking up on honey and this will settle them down some.” I envision myself stretched out on the hammock after a Sunday afternoon buffet unwilling to move around much. Holding the smoker as a talisman I advance on the hive puffing smoke and trying not to focus on the many, many insects hovering around the entrance.

My neighbor is not wearing a beekeeper’s suit. He has the same heavy gloves and veil as I have on, but in his jeans he looks too casual to be prying the top off of the hive. The buzzing gets considerably louder. He begins to remove the first super. Each super is a layer consisting of about 10 frames which the bees have expertly filled with honeycomb.

Each frame comes out along with fist-sized clusters of bees. Norman firmly taps the frame and most of the bees are dislodged. He dismisses the stragglers with a soft brush.

After a while I get the chance to try. Norman’s bees obviously know the routine for they seem surprisingly cooperative. The only time the buzzing escalates is when I inadvertently crush a bee beneath the thick finger of a glove. They all know immediately and respond with louder buzzing and an increase of activity. It makes me wonder how they would respond to something unexpected, like dropping one of the supers, which are surprisingly heavy and awkward to lift.

Norman answers my questions in the same quiet, deliberate manner he employs throughout the afternoon’s work. He has been a beekeeper for more than 50 years and remembers going with his daddy to find hives made by wild bees in old trees in the woods. They would bring the honey back home and use it to make the winter’s supply of cough syrup.

I ask him if he got stung much as a boy and he answers, “That’s why we wore three and four layers of clothing.” The cough syrup recipe consisted of honey, butter and bourbon. Homemade white lightning was substituted when bourbon was not available. With a flicker of a smile, Norman says,” I’m not sure if this syrup was much help for a cold, but it always helped to have a good comfortable nap.”

I learn that bees range over about a three-mile radius. They begin collecting pollen in mid February and leave off after the first hard frost. Bees especially favor the blooms of the locust and fruit trees. They also like thistle, clover, and dandelion. Ironically, they do not have tongues long enough to enjoy honeysuckle flower.

A beekeeper has to stay ahead of the honey production by adding more frames when needed. If the hive becomes crowded, the queen will stop producing working bees and start laying other queen larva. Normally a colony only answers to one queen, but as the others hatch out, the bees will begin to swarm and leave to establish another hive. This could be in an old hollow tree trunk or through a small opening into someone’s attic. An experienced beekeeper would be able to read the signs that swarming is about to occur and would likely put out an empty hive to capture the swarm.

Before closing the hive and leaving the bees with their portion of the honeycomb, Norman places it inside a gallon jar of sugar water laced with antibiotics. He also treats the bees for mites by leaving strips of chemically treated plastic in the hive. Norman uses Fumagilin-B, which is the only FDA inspected and approved product on the market that addresses honey bee dysentery. The antibiotics and chemical treatments are done only before the nectar flow in the spring and after the honeys been harvested. Keeping the colony healthy will help them fight off the viruses and diseases that plague bees.

Norman and his wife Mary do not need all of the nearly 200 bottles of honey they extract each fall. The Southerlys donate most of their product to various worthy causes through Mill Creek Church of the Brethren. The church has used honey funds to help build an elementary school in Kpando, a remote town in the West African country of Ghana. Their honey has also netted funds for the Mill Creek youth group’s trips to the National Youth Conference, Weekday Religious Education, and the Salvation Army.

Now, when I encounter a bee in the backyard, I have a pretty good idea from whence it hails. More informed from my talks with my neighborhood beekeeper, I see dandelions, clover, and thistles not as weeds but as potential honey. I feel a sense of responsibility to look out for this productive member of our society. It will be interesting to follow the research that is being done regarding bees and CCD (see sidebar). Having liberally sampled the Southerlys’ honey I can attest to its delectable taste. A warm piece of buttered toast topped with their honey is a heavenly treat. My family buys several jars of this honey to give to friends at Christmas. We often hear back that it’s best honey ever and get requests for more next year. Some folks bring us the clean empty bottles in November as a gentle reminder that they would like to receive more.

The last thing Norman told me as I headed home was that sooner or later all beekeepers come to the same conclusion. “No matter how long you have been working with bees, or how much you know about them, you are always going to be able to learn something knew. They will surprise you.”

A Quieter Buzz

Honeybees in the UnitedStates need all the loving carethey can get; in the last threeyears bee populations havediminished at an alarming rate.One particularly troublesomeproblem is a relatively newphenomenon, which is calledColony Collapse Disorder(CCD). With CCD, thebees leave the hive and justdisappear. This eerie scenariohas left parts of the nationwithout the bees necessaryto pollinate crops. Farmersmust rely on bees that aretrucked in from other areasand sometimes other countrieswhere bee populations stillexist. The problem of CCD isso bad in California that theyhave shipped millions of beesinto the state from Australia tokeep agriculture viable.

While the outlook for beesis better here in Virginia thisnational problem is gettingthe attention of our staterepresentatives; the GeneralAssembly has just appropriated$250,000 to study the problemsfaced by beekeepers today. PortRepublic beekeeper NormanSoutherly reminds us thatAlbert Einstein is attributedto have once noted that if beesdisappear, mankind will soonfollow suit.

Bees are disappearing forseveral reasons. First, bees aresusceptible to the Varroa Mite.If left untreated this mite canweaken a hive and eventuallykill its members. Another threatis pesticides sprayed within thepollination range of a hive. Abeekeeper who is given nowarning of pesticide sprayingmay lose an entire colonyovernight. African bees arealso a problem facing domesticbees. These more aggressiveinsects will invade and breedwith a colony. The end resultis a colony that produces a lotless honey and is difficult tohandle.

– D.F.