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Honeybees spend most of their lives in darkness, encased in a waxy membrane that extrudes from their own bodies. They sally forth, flirting from flower to flower, gathering nectar and pollen, encapsulating golden drops of sunshine that we call honey.
I started keeping bees eight years ago with just two hives. I now have over sixty and manage another two dozen. Unlike most beekeepers, I raise bees in the city. It’s warmer here and the flora for harvest is some of the best in the state.
As true ecologists, honeybees give much more to the environment than they take. They have nurtured humans in many ways: providing us with food, medicine and one of the earliest sweeteners. Until Thomas Edison invented the light bulb, candles from their wax gave us one of our cleanest sources of light.
When honeybees are in trouble, humans are in trouble. Current farming practices and the continuing decline of natural landscapes have contributed to their demise. So what is causing Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD), where the bees are no longer able to return to their hives and where the queen and a small band of workers futilely try to raise brood, as more and more foragers fail to return home? Is it caused by stress, a lack of diversity in their diets, the feeding
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brood, as more and more foragers fail to return home? Is it caused by stress, a lack of diversity in their diets, the feeding of corn syrup, the lack of diversity in commercially available queen stock, or possibly the varroa mites? Or could it be the insecticides found in the environment or even the insecticides put in the hives to control the mites. Undoubtedly all have contributed to the decline of honeybees. And without pollinators, most of our fruit and nuts would disappear, and many of the vegetables we eat would no longer be available.
What can we do besides waxing poetic about these canaries in the coalmine? Become beekeepers! In Michigan, from Saginaw to Monroe, more and more bee schools are starting up every spring. Programs and workshops around the state include classes at the Southeastern Michigan Beekeepers Association www.sembabees.org, where I first studied. Talk with a beekeeper at your local farmers market about your interest in bees; you may walk away with a new friend. If you can’t find a class, read a book, such as Robbing the Bees by Bishop Holly or Kim Flottum’s Backyard Beekeeper. Even Beekeeping for Dummies has a lot of useful information, and check out the web. It doesn’t match hands-on experience, but it’s a start.
The scariest thing I’ve done in recent years was to open a hive for the first time. I was about to meet 40,000 stinging honeybees waiting to protect their hive. I was going to blow a few puffs of smoke, open the hive and expect the bees to let me get away with this. I took a deep breath… and it all went well. And over the years, with experimentation and patience, my experience in the bee yard has been one of the most rewarding and spiritually healing processes of a lifetime.
Rich has been a beekeeper for eight years and manages over 60 hives in the Detroit Metro area. A member of Southeast Michigan Beekeepers (SEMBA) and Michigan Beekeepers Association, he markets his and other Michigan honey at the Royal Oak Farmers Market the first and third Saturday of every month year round.
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