Currently viewing the tag: "bees"

WHAT IS THE BUZZ ALL ABOUT?

By On · Add Comment · In Featured Articles

James Rada, Jr.

Winged bee slowly flies to beekeeper collect nectar on private apiary from live flowers, apiary consisting of village beekeeper, floret dust on bee legs, beekeeper for bees on background large apiary

As the weather warms up, you might start to hear a buzzing as bees emerge from their hives to seek out pollen to create honey. They have spent the winter in their hives, clustered together, using their body heat to maintain warmth. With the outflow of bees, you might also notice people who look like they’re wearing radiation suits.

Dan Harbaugh of Emmitsburg maintains 35 beehives. He decided to learn about beekeeping after he retired because he wanted a new challenge. He took a class in Westminster offered by the Carroll County Beekeepers Association. He now sells his raw honey (meaning it is strained but not heat treated) at the Harbaugh Farm Greenhouse and Produce in Sabillasville.

Beekeepers will often sell additional products, such as beeswax, propolis, pollen, and even bees and hives.

Beekeeping has roots that go back to ancient Egypt. Workers keeping bees can be seen on the walls of ancient Egyptian temples. They knew what modern beekeepers know. Not only can bees be a source of honey and wax, but having them around improves the pollination of plants and flowers nearby.

According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, “Bee pollination is responsible for $15 billion in added crop value, particularly for specialty crops such as almonds and other nuts, berries, fruits, and vegetables. About one mouthful in three in the diet directly or indirectly benefits from honeybee pollination.”

“Honeybees are critical to our food chain, and I respect them deeply,” said Kelly Frye-Valerio of Emmitsburg.

While beekeeping is not expensive, there are set-up expenses beekeepers usually buy. These include hive supplies, an extractor, a smoker, and protective clothing. These add up to a few hundred dollars to get started, but it may be nearly all of your costs for years except for the cost of bottling the honey.

These initial costs are unlikely to be covered in the first year you have a hive because it takes time to get a healthy hive established. Once a bee hive is established, it doesn’t take much to care for them. Keep the hives in the sun and near a source of food. Once a week or so, beekeepers will check the hives to make sure there is enough room for the bees.

You don’t need a large area to keep a hive. Frye-Valerio lives in a subdivision.

“My husband and I are looking to transition in to more of a self-sustaining lifestyle,” she said. “Until we are able to find the right property, we are starting with what we can do right now on our quarter of an acre in a subdivision.”  They maintain four hives on their property.

Bees range for up to two miles in their search for pollen. They will collect pollen from whatever plants are in the area. The honey is usually identified by the plants the pollen is collected from, such as clover honey or orange blossom honey. Harbaugh calls the honey he collects wildflower honey because there are no identifiable flowers dominating the area where his bees collect their pollen to make honey.

The hives that beekeepers raise are actually boxes that are stacked on each other. The boxes are about 18 inches square and 6 inches high. Each box is open on the top and bottom to allow the bees to move from box to box. Within each box hangs a series of frames on which the bees can build their honeycombs. As the frames in one box fill up with comb and honey, additional boxes are stacked on top.

There are a few ways that beekeepers can start a hive.

They can buy bees and a queen and place them in a hive. They can capture a bee swarm, or as is often the case, they remove a hive from a house.

Beekeepers will also examine the bees in their hives for signs of disease on a regular basis. The big concern is the Varroa Mite, which needs to be kept under control to keep the hive healthy.

Beekeepers are also helping the world. Mites, parasites, and pesticides have reduced the bee population worldwide. They are needed, however, because they pollinate plants and allow things to grow. In the winter, bees weakened by a mite infestation may die, and if there aren’t enough bees to maintain the colony, it will collapse.

“The beekeeper needs to prepare, protect, or manipulate the hives to prevent these problems,” Harbaugh explained.

When the time comes to bottle honey, the frames from the hive are placed in an extractor, which is similar to a large centrifuge and spun. Honey is pulled out of the comb and falls to bottom of extractor, where it drains out a spigot into a bucket.

The result is a tasty treat that many people think has more flavor.

DID YOU KNOW? Here are 15 facts about bees you probably didn’t know.

        There are 20,000 bee species, worldwide.

        Bees are found on every continent except Antarctica.

        Honeybees have hairy eyes.

        Honeybees have five eyes: two large compound eyes with hexagonal facets and three   small simple eyes.

        The honeybee brain is sophisticated even though it is only the size of a grain of sugar.

        Some bee species, including honey bees, may have descended from wasps.

        All bees in a hive are aware of the presence of their queen bee. If she leaves, the entire colony knows within 15 minutes.

        Scent is very important to bees, and they are best at learning  new smells in the mornings.

        Bees cannot see the color red, but they can see the ultraviolet patterns in flowers, so they do visit red flowers.

Female bees can sting, but male bees cannot sting.

Bees have been trained as   bomb detectors and can detect hidden landmines.

Honeybees can be trained to detect illness in the human body.

Honeybees keep the inside temperature of their hives at    93° Fahrenheit.

Bees vibrate their bodies to create body heat to warm up the hive to 93°F if it is cold outside. Bees flap their wings like fans to create a breeze to cool the hive off to 93°F when it is hot outside.

Worker bees do the “waggle dance” to alert their hive sisters about where to find great new sources of water and nectar.

On The Wild Side

By On · Add Comment · In Community News

Christine Schoenemann (Maccabee)

Misunderstood But Beautiful (Part 2): Tall Natives and Useful Pests

I just got in from collecting Japanese beetles from wild evening primrose flowers, which are growing throughout my property. By 7:00 a.m., the bees are already busy on the yellow flowers, and the beetles are just waking up. Slowly, I knock them into a container of water, careful not to interrupt the bees. Two things are accomplished by my doing this twice a day. First, I am saving the flowers from being devoured; second, my chickens enthusiastically consume the crunchy bodies of these pests. Useful pests, I call them, providing extra protein and minerals for my birds.

The wild evening primrose used to be seen in areas along roads that have not been mowed, in vacant fields and ditches if they are lucky, and in my gardens. Sadly, I saw very few of them this year beyond my gardens, due to herbiciding and lots of mowing. I imagine most homeowners would not like them due to the fact that they grow much taller than the greenhouse-cultivated primroses that most gardeners buy. Perhaps this aversion is due to an over-civilized fear of wild natives. Well, I have no fear, just curiosity. I have never seen my primroses grow as tall as they are this year, which is most likely due to all the rain that we had earlier this summer. My tallest plant towers above my head at a record-breaking height of nine feet. That’s tall!

For some reason, I have a particular interest in tall, gangly, misunderstood plants. I suppose this is because I see their value for our pollinators, but mostly I believe it is because I admire them. In truth, I am blown away by the diversity of wild flora, which are indigenous to this area. I have made it my mission to preserve as much as I can here on my property and elsewhere when possible, before they become extinct. I know my worry is legitimate since every year it seems many rare plants (see list at bottom of this article) have just disappeared from places I have seen them in the past.

Therefore, I am writing to clear up some misunderstandings about our interesting wild neighbors, and possibly to save them.

Teasel, another plant which is normally not permitted to grow in typical gardens, can still be seen in areas along the highway and other unused places. It is not a thistle, though it looks like it. In my gardens, I pamper it. It has multiple uses, primarily as a producer of beautiful lavender flowers which bees love. It is also an interesting component in dry plant arrangements, which I make. Stately, but prickly, they are to be handled with care, preferably with a gloved hand. Presently, I am cutting some of mine down now that they have flowered, as I don’t want the seeds to scatter everywhere in my main garden where I also grow vegetables. I plan to scatter some of the seeds in the larger meadow before winter.

By far the most misunderstood wildflower of all is golden rod. I have learned through my reading that it is not the pollen producer that affects most people adversely. Ragweed is the culprit, as it has very nondescript flowers and blooms at the same time as golden rod. Very sneaky of ragweed, I would say. The pollen from golden rod is too heavy to be carried very far by the wind, whereas ragweed pollen is very light. There are sixteen species of golden rod throughout our country, and I happen to have about four or more species on my property. They are beginning to bloom, and I eagerly await the show! All my various wild aster will bloom soon as well, so between the two of them, my bees and butterflies will be well fed before the killing frost. Along with all these pollinators, you can be sure I will be rejoicing as well.

The other day, I nearly hit a monarch butterfly that was caught between a road, parking lots, stores, and large grass deserts with no flowers in sight. It seemed confused and did not know where to go. This is a perfect example of a growing problem called “habitat fragmentation.” Good-hearted people who plant flowers in their yards are doing a great service, but these same butterflies and bees we feed frequently must travel far and wide just to find other flowers to feed on or appropriate plants on which to lay their eggs. We all know the need of monarchs for milkweed, but there are many others, such as the larvae of the fritillary butterfly for violets, the checkerspot butterfly for turtlehead flowers, and the rare/endangered butterflies in the Blue family for clovers and lupine flowers.

Lately, and even over many years, I have been reading writings by prominent mystics and naturalists who all sing a similar theme song. This song is one of praise for creation and its awesome diversity that can aid us as humans to connect more intimately with ourselves and the Creator. This goes for everyone, even atheists and agnostics, for “things in nature are optimal teachers to help us discern how to be ourselves. We have been separated from the source of our identity and have to fall in love with it all over again,” writes Belden Lane in his book Backpacking with the Saints, an amazing read full of wisdom.

And so, this Sunday morning, the natural world is the temple in which I worship—today and everyday. For me, and so many others, the amazing diversity of lifeforms on this planet are not only an expression of the infinite nature of their Creator, but also an expression of amazing love, without end, unless we humans choose to continue to destroy it. We always have a choice.

Note: Some local natives rarely seen and loosing habitat: purple swamp milkweed, goatsbeard, moth mullein, bergamot, blue lobelia, vervain, obedient plant, Deptford pinks, cardinal flower, wild columbine, cinquefoils, St. Johns wort, Yarrow, sweet cicely, and wild sweet clovers.