By: Ben Wozniak
Lazy Lodge Honey, Birch Lake, MI
This article originally appeared in the Summer 2019 issue of BEEKeeping Your First Three Years
South Western Michigan is an ideal location for gardening. Our front yard is loaded with flowers, so why not try for something edible?
With unlimited enthusiasm, my wife and I were certain we could grow all the fruits and vegetables we needed, in addition we were going to grow enough squash and pumpkins to decorate all Fall. Some years we would have miles of pumpkin vines and hundreds of squash blossoms with nothing tangible to show for all our efforts. Our thirty blueberry bushes produced enough fruit for ONE pancake. We are not the types to give up. So, one Fall I visited a few pumpkin and blueberry farmers and asked them for advice. The common answer was that they rented bees during pollination season.
Rent bees I asked? Yes, there is an entire industry around bee rental they explained. My thought was why rent when I can own? With help from a local beekeeper, YouTube, a gag gift of “Beekeeping for Dummies”, I was going to save the planet, or at least our small part of it.
I had been reading how extremely important bees and other beneficial insects were to our food supply, and being 6’7″ and 250 pounds, food supply is more important to me than most. I read how the honey bee was endangered, and backyard beekeepers were making a difference in saving the species. Tums out that many of our local crops are almost entirely dependent upon the honey
bee. Michigan State University estimates that 15 crops in Michigan alone would go extinct without the honey bee. Many are my favorite: apples, blueberries, cherries, pumpkins and even onions to name a few; even the Summer sensation WATERMELON! Who doesn’t love cold watermelon on a hot Summer day, or an apple crisp with brown sugar crumble? Makes me hungry just typing. Washington State estimates the value of crops pollinated by bees in the U.S. alone to be in excess of $14,000,000,000. I wasn’t really trying to save the entire world, I just wanted a few pumpkins and blueberries. Simple I thought, I will become a beekeeper.
My first purchase was a custom made extra-large tall beekeeping suit! Then on to the hardware. Wooden boxes, frames, stands, covers and honey extraction tools. Oh, and three packages of bees. Yes, bees are sold in packages of 10,000. Complete with one queen per package. Install the bees from the package to the boxes with frames, and you have a hive. Multiple hives constitute an apiary or bee yard. It’s that easy, or so I thought.
My first year, I got stung at least 30 times. My wife, our neighbors, and friends have yet to be stung to my knowledge. In fact, honey bees do not like to sting, they do it as a last resort because they die after stinging, unlike hornets and wasps, that can sting endlessly just for fun. I even cleared a half acre of our property to recreate a native Michigan wildflower habitat.
Two girls dressed for work
I have come to recognize that the honey bee is an AMAZING creature. Take a few minutes this Summer and if you are lucky enough to see one working, just watch and discover how beautiful their efforts are. All the honey bees you see out working are female. In fact, 95% of the hive are unfertile females and only the queen is fertile. All have what looks like a mink stole. It’s like they dress up for work, but the hairs hold and spread pollen. This past Summer just one squash vine produced over 30 squash thanks to our bees.
A beehive is a social community of workers. By mid-Summer one hive alone can grow to 20,000/30,000 or more. Only about half of the bees are out gathering pollen, nectar and water on sunny days. They stay home on cloudy or rainy days because they navigate by using the sun. Speaking of home in the hive, there is an entire support staff of bees inside the hive doing many chores.
Can you locate the queen?
One entire group just looks after the queen. They feed her, bathe her, and take care of her every need so she can do her sole job of laying eggs, which is typically 1,000 or more per day. Others in the work force guard the hive, while some clean up debris and remove any waste. In fact, the hive is sterile clean, and smells amazingly sweet. Nurse bees feed and tend to the newly emerging brood. Guard bees wait at the entrance to the hive and check every incoming bee for any intruders that may steal their honey. Still others regulate the temperature inside the hive to keep it a balmy 90 degrees both Summer and Winter. That’s right, when it gets above 90 in the Summer, bees will position themselves at the hive entrance and fan their wings to cool the hive. In the Winter they cluster together around the queen to keep her warm even during a polar vortex.
Still other bees are scouts that go out and look for specific flowers they like. When they find them, they fly back to the hive to perform an elaborate dance in total darkness that tells the pollen gathering bees how far and in what direction to fly to find the whereabouts of the good stuff. The bees all work as one organism, all controlled by the pheromones sent out by the one queen. It’s good to be the queen. There are entire groups that build the wax, store the pollen, save the nectar, and produce the honey. In the entire life span of a worker bee, it may take 12 to 16 bees just to produce 1 teaspoon of honey. It takes an estimated 50,000 flight miles to produce just one pound of honey. Every location where honey is produced has a distinct flavor from the flowers, water, and nectar found. That is why local honey tastes so good. Ours tastes like Summer at Birch Lake!
Since the bees are doing all the work, one might ask, what does the beekeeper do? The beekeeper’s main function is to assist and protect the bees. Feeding them when they need some help in early Spring after all the honey stores have been eaten. Extracting honey in Summer so the hive is not congested. Dividing a large colony, so they do not fly away. Maybe you have seen on the news when a bee colony swarms away? Beekeepers also treat bees for pests that might endanger the colonies.
Imagine my shock and HORROR when last Fall while cutting the grass, my tongue started to tingle and I felt dizzy. When I stopped the mower, I saw my neighbor had contracted a pesticide spray company to fog his property. They were power spraying a blue fog up into the trees and bushes on his entire property! In a panic, Vanessa called him to find out what was going on. He and his wife were safely cocooned in their home. They told her the spray was “natural” but they were told to stay in the house and keep all their windows and doors closed. No one told us? Within days, six of my eight hives were completely dead. That’s about 180,000 dead bees. You see, bees gather pollen and nectar and bring it back to the hive. If the pollen and nectar are covered in poison, they unknowingly bring it back to the entire colony to be poisoned. Years of effort and struggle gone. All of those wooden boxes, all the wax frames, the stores of honey no longer usable or fit for human consumption, all the worker bees and queen destroyed. I estimate my monetary loss to be around $4,000, but the eco loss is immeasurable.
Photos show one dead hive that once buzzed with over 30,000 bees.
Fogging indiscriminately kills all bugs. Mosquitos, yes, butterflies certainly, dragonflies, lightning bugs, crickets, caterpillars, all bugs, even the bees sadly.
I love the sound of singing crickets on a hot Summer evening. I love the flashing of fireflies in a field at dusk. I love the flutter of the Monarch, Swallowtail, and other butterflies in the breeze. I love the taste of a warm apple crisp and cool watermelon and blueberry pancakes, and I loved Birch Lake Honey!
One last thought, if you must spray, be a kind neighbor and warn others so they too can protect themselves, their pets, and their garden. Warn a local beekeeper so hives can be protected. Think before you use chemicals. Better yet, try to do your little part to save your part of our planet. You don’t have to spray poison.
