As more people grow concerned about the dwindling population of bees, some are beginning to act on that concern. Folks are growing flowers to entice the insects to their properties; others are going even further and starting bee hives of their own. The problem is vital to anyone that eats. Illinois Public Radio's Jim Browne gets the buzz on the new popularity of an ancient hobby:
Bees not only produce honey, but pollinate about a third of the crops people and animals eat. In a recent interview about the disappearance of the insects, University of Illinois bee specialist Nick Naeger says it's tough to pin down what's killing the bee hives:
"Colony Collapse disorder has proven to be a very complicated phenomenon."
Naeger, with The Robinson Laboratory in the Department of Entomology and Institute for Genomic Biology at the University of Illinois says it is believed mites carrying disease, along with pesticides and habitat changes are all putting stress on the bees.
A non profit agricultural education group, "The Land Connection," is sponsoring a workshop on beekeeping later this month in at Nipper Wildlife Sanctuary in Loami Illinois. Jeff Hake is with the Land Connection, and says a beekeeper will be there:
"Arvin Pierce. And he talks about himself like he's an amateur beekeeper, but he's been doing it for over a decade, he's just a very passionate beekeeper. He's going to be doing a slide show of his photography, and then he'll do a honey extraction using some of his hives. I mean he'll take us actually to his property and open up a hive for everyone to look at."
The workshop is August 23rd in the Sangamon County community.
In order to get a better idea of what's involved in beekeeping, it seems best to visit some hives first hand and talk with a beekeeper. Fortunately the Communications Director of the Heart of Illinois Beekeepers Association keeps bees in an area outside of East Peoria. We took advantage of a recent sunny mild July day to pay a visit to David Moechnig at his hives, where he estimates a quarter million of the insects live. David agrees with Nick Naeger about colonly collapse disorder, saying it's a complicated issue with a number of contributing factors:
"You've got pesticides, you've got a shallow genetic pool for a lot of your package bee suppliers, what a lot of people start out with keeping bees. And then you've got migratory beekeepers that, it's just stressful to keep moving bees every few weeks to a new location."
Moechnig says the migratory beekeepers follow flowering crops allowing their bees to pollinate them. It's a service some farmers are willing to pay for. Despite the harsh winter in Illinois this past season David says his hives did O.K, and he says the reason may be his drive to establish a genetically diverse hive population:
"I'm pretty happy with our overwinter success here, in large part I think that's due to the genetics that I'm had over the last few years I've been collecting swarms and cutting bees out of people's houses trying to collect as many of the feral, or wild genetics as possible that are more adapted to our climate, you know and some of the diseases and pests in our area and they seem to be doing extremely well and so this year we've been working on raising some queens out of our best hives."
Jim Browne: "So you're looking for a nice diverse genetic mix for your bees."
Moechnig : "Yeah, I'm trying to get kind of deep genetic pool built up in our apiaries and then take and select the best queens and graft new queens from those, make new queens, essentially and make new colonies based on the traits that I find important, including honey production and over wintering ability."
Honey production doesn't seem to be a problem for David Moechnig. He says there's 90 pounds of the sweet stuff at his home, and calls it the best season yet because of a lot of Black Locust and other Midwest wildflowers that produces a light colored honey which he favors.
As David lifts one of the frames out of the hive, covered with bees mulling about, he points out some of the cells in the hive that contain young bees:
"The sealed off, the kind of brown looking caps here are the ones that have the pupa stage. So the queen will lay an egg and after three days the egg will hatch into a larve, and then it gets fed a diet of honey and royal jelly for several days, and then they'll cap that pupie off and after 21 days that bee will emerge as an adult."
David points out drones, they're bigger than the workers, and are really a pretty useless lot except for mating. They even have the equivalent of a singles scene:
"During the afternoon they will leave, and they go to what's called a drone congregation area, and I don't think anyone understands how a drone congregation area becomes a drone congregation area, but that's where the drones and unmated queens come and meet, and mate."
Moechnig says he's working to help other beekeepers expand their genetic base, or establish bee hives. He says the Heart of Illinois Beekeepers have a begining beekeeper class in February. He says recently he's fielded a number of inquiries from people who are interested in "urban beekeeping." He says there are some laws standing in the way of raising bees in an urban setting, but efforts are underway to change that:
"We're working on getting some ordinaces changed in Peoria and some of the surrounding communities to allow people to keep a couple of hives in town. And actually right now with all the agricultural spraying, some of the best places to keep bees are in urban environments."
David Moechnig has been raising bees for over three years now, and his efforts at expanding the genetics of his hives results in hundreds of pounds of honey every year, nearly all of which is snatched up by neighbors and others who hear about his hobby.
"I enjoy it, I get a little bit of solidarity, I get to come out and just be by myself a little bit, we make a little bit of money selling honey and I enjoy talking to people about bees and it's a fun hobby, and it's an introvert's dream to just come out and work with insects that can't talk back (Browne: "Some people fish, David"), yeah, but you can't get honey from fish."
David's group, the Heart of Illinois Beekeepers, has a lot of information about beekeeping, both urban and rural.
The Heart of Illinois Beekeepers also has a class for beginner beekeepers in February, and the The Land Connection is sponsoring a workshop on beekeeping at Nipper Wildlife Sanctuary in Loami Illinois Saturday, August 23, 2014, 1:00-4:00pm.