The buzz on bees

By JOHN KLINE
john.kline@goshennews.com

June 20, 2009 09:28 pm

— NAPPANEE — Attendees of the Nappanee Home and Garden Walk Saturday got an up close and personal education on a big friend of the gardening world — the honeybee.
During the tour, hosted by the Nappanee Home and Garden Club, attendees got the chance to visit various club members’ gardens situated in and around the Nappanee area, one of which belongs to Ann and Clayton “Ted” Love, the area’s resident bee expert.
A popular stop on the tour, the home, located at 23115 C.R. 54, features a large wooded backyard complete with numerous perennials and grasses and a functional frog pond.
But perhaps the biggest draw for the property are the resident bee colonies, of which Love has approximately 20 on site.
Love, a past vice president of the Michiana Beekeepers Association and current leader of the Elkhart County 4-H Beekeepers Club, was on hand during the event to provide “Bee Smart” talks to visitors every hour from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m., giving demonstrations and answering any and all questions that might arise about bees.
“Beekeepers and gardeners seem to get along quite well together,” Love said with a laugh. “Bees pollinate a tremendous amount of our food supply, and they add a lot to our gardens.”
An avid gardener, Love said he tries to create an environment that is as attractive to bees as it is to him, thus creating a system that is both beautiful and mutually beneficial to both his garden and their colonies.
Unfortunately, Love said that not everyone is so accommodating when it comes to the needs of the little pollinators, a fact which he said could be one of the reasons behind the massive bee colony die-offs that have been reported in recent years.
“Bees will find what they need if people would just stop manicuring their lawns once in a while, maybe leave in the dandelions and clover every now and then,” Love said. “We’ve done so much to remove all the plants that the bees use as sources of nectar and pollen, and it’s really starting to have an effect on their survivability.”
According to Love, bees must visit roughly two million flowers in order to produce just one pound of honey, and with only a 30-day life cycle, that doesn’t leave a whole lot of time for idleness.
“A bee only makes about a drop of honey in its lifetime, maybe a little less, and they only last about 30 days,” Love said. “They also can only harvest as the nectar sources allow them, typically beginning in the spring, and then I usually harvest the honey in late July.”
Out of that harvest, Love said he can usually count on acquiring about 40 to 70 pounds of honey, depending on the idleness of the season.
Unfortunately, with this season’s uncharacteristically rainy spring, Love noted that his bees have not been able to harvest nearly as often as they would like.
“It’s been extremely slow for my bees this year to build up honey because of all the rain we’ve had,” Love said. “We could really use a 10-day dry streak, because all this rain is washing away the nectar in the flowers.”
Infestations of mites that feed off the larva of bees is also causing some problems for the colonies this year, Love said, a fact which further compiles the growing problem of colony die-offs.
“The average die-off is about 30 percent in this area, but it goes up and down,” Love said. “Bee keepers that don’t treat chemically for mites also tend to have more die-offs. I don’t use any chemicals on my bees, so that puts me at greater risk.”
While the exact cause of the massive colony die-offs reported around the world are still for the most part a mystery, Love said it appears to be a combination of nutritional, chemical and stress-related issues coupled with growing mite infestations that could be the biggest culprit.
“I lost 60 percent of my bees last year, and that comes down to three things — some starved, some froze and some had mite problems,” Love said. “Normally I’m at about 30 percent, but this was a bad year.”
Bees have also gotten a bad rap over the past few year due to reports of increasing populations of Africanized honey bees in North America, also known as killer bees due to their tendency to viciously attack people and animals who unwittingly stray into their territory.
“Bee keepers are just so happy now to be talking about what is killing bees, instead of bees that are killing,” Love said.
Despite the many recent setbacks, Love said he still enjoys everything about the bee-keeping process, and has no plans to stop any time soon.
“I love educating people about bees,” Love said. “It’s incredibly important for people to understand them, because around two-thirds of what we eat needs pollination, and bees play a major roll in that.”
As an example, Love noted that pretty much anything you would find as a garnish on a hamburger at one point needed pollination.
“We tend to take things like that for granted,” Love said. “Also, when you’re talking about the hive itself, there are so many life lessons that people can learn from observing bees: they work hard, they work together as a community, they’re expected to produce, they take care of each other and everyone has a purpose.”
Luckily for him, interest in the area of bee keeping appears to be picking up in Elkhart County — something he is taking full advantage of.
“I love speaking to the public about bee keeping, because there is so much about them that appeals to people,” Love said. “In just a few years the 4-H club has grown from four or five members up to 15. Kids like bee keeping because they love insects, and gardeners like it because it helps their gardens.”
And of course, we can’t forget the honey.
“After everything else, the honey is just a positive by-product,” Love said with a laugh.

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