The Importance of Honey Bees
(Check out the link at the bottom to view the video on Honey Bees)
In those Westerns a lot of us grew up watching on TV, most of the old west towns were sets constructed using facades. The bank, the mercantile, the saloon — all authentically dressed fronts with nothing but empty space behind. This is a partial analogy for how we often perceive our food production and food sources. A storefront, a farmer's market, a quick peek at an almond or apple orchard as we fly by in cars. But what's behind these common sights?
Instead of empty space (and a stand-in for actor Jason Robards), there's a complex system at work. An all too important system of resources versus consumer needs versus industry profits, and it's a conflict we've yet to fully understood or manage.
Most critically it's a system rooted in one of our basic necessities: healthful, sustainable food.
At its delicately buzzing heart, however, is the single-minded honey bee. Workers, drones and queens living a nonstop, fully-focused life in and around the hive. No matter how we choose to spin it, these dedicated bees are the linchpin in our feeding machine. As the chief pollinators for U.S. farms that produce crops other than wheat, corn and rice (which are wind pollinated), they help grow fruits, vegetables and nuts by increasing yields and improving the quality of harvests.
In fact, a number of our country's crops would no longer exist without our honey bees' efforts in the work of pollination. A 1999 Cornell University study documented that the contribution made by managed honey bees hired by U.S. crop growers to pollinate crops amounted to just over $14.6 billion.
Also, think of all the tasty foods that become nearly impossible to grow without the help of wild and domestic bees: kiwifruit, cashews, brazil nuts, broccoli, watermelon, cantaloupe, cucumber, zucchini and more.
By some estimates, California crop growers use one million colonies each year. And as a result, the nation's beekeepers annually spend precious resources and risk the health of their managed beehives to truck bees to California.
Yet, pollinators are not only helpful in providing a well-rounded diet for the masses by improving our large scale farming endeavors, they also benefit small farms and pollinate many forage plants that feed our livestock. Cows fed on grain may grow faster, but natural pasture feeding is healthier. So it is not feasible for us to depend solely on wind-pollinated crops. Because, let's face it... a diet of wheat, rice and corn alone isn't enough to nourish an active, growing civilization. Not to mention the benefits of honey production.
The Work of Managing Beehives
To bring this back to the Western movie comparison, our constructed beehives are the inverse of movie sets, where most of the action takes place on the inside. Think of them as a facade of sorts for the more chaotic, bee-made hives found in nature. Whereas, the western town facades are populated by actors who can practice their trade whenever and wherever the sets are constructed, honey bees are the only insect species capable of maintaining their colonies in human constructed surroundings.
Managed hives are made up of wooden boxes called “supers.” Each super contains removable frames on which bees make hexagonal combs. Supers come in two varieties, deep and shallow. Noted entomologist, Keith Delaplane, Ph.D. advises that when starting a new hive, “Sugar syrup stimulates the production of beeswax, which is necessary for building comb.” It may not be as nutritious as their eventual honey stores, but it does the trick to help get them started.
The three main criteria for determining society in insects are 1) cooperative brood care, 2) reproductive division of labor, and 3) overlapping generations. Honey bees are Eusocial (truly social). The worker bees are female and mostly infertile, except for a few raised in larger cells and fed only royal jelly to be queens. Male drones make up the rest of a hive's population. They do not collect pollen or guard the hive, but serve only to inseminate the queen.
This is the thing. Any differences we choose to see between honey bees and people are superficial at best. Most people are workers, and only a few get the pampering and nutrients required to achieve queen status. Bee communities are a delicate balance of work, transportation and offspring rearing. Like us, they communicate their needs, they cooperate, they manage systems and they care for their communities. And an ongoing supply of healthful food and safe habitats make their existence possible.
An Interesting Tangent
Within the vegan community there's an ongoing debate as to whether honey is the dairy of the insect world. And by this they mean, if you're a diehard vegan, is keeping bees for honey production a cruel and exploitative act equivalent to abuses documented in the dairy industry? Officially, the Vegan Society takes the position that harvesting honey does not jive with their definition of veganism. Honey, therefore, is banned from use, along with bee pollen, propolis and royal jelly.
One debatable example of cruelty to honey bees involves the often misunderstood process of harvesting honey from the combs. The vegan argument goes something like this: Farmers and beekeepers remove honey needed by the bees for food, especially in the winter months when bees have a harder time collecting nectar, and then replace it solely with a substitute of sugar syrup. An uncredited article on the Vegan Society website says, this practice is “significantly worse for the bees' health since [sugar syrup] lacks the essential nutrients, fats and vitamins of honey. The bees then exhaust themselves by working to replace the missing honey.”
On the other hand, the article rightly points out the negative effects of selective breeding – often used by the commercial bee industry to increase productivity – which can narrow “the population gene pool and increase susceptibility to disease and large-scale die-offs.” Even though these critiques only show a part of the picture, the core of the vegan stance on honey is that humans, who “can thrive without honey in their diets [unlike hive bees],” have many alternatives they can choose from, such as date syrup, molasses and butterscotch syrup. Variety is good.
A Need for Education & Cooperative Action
While tending rosebushes on his property, Larry Brainard bent over and accidentally put his face fully into a nearby row of lavender, “it was in bloom and covered with bees,” he recalls. “As soon as I put my face in, I thought, Larry, you're dead meat.” Waiting to get stung, he closed his eyes and held his breath. A calmness overcame him when, instead of pain, he felt a flutter of delicate wings against his face. And for him there was no turning back.
Brainard was catalyzed. He'd successfully run a durable medical equipment business for years and wanted a new challenge. He decided to use his limitless enthusiasm and keen, research-based business methods to learn the art and science of the Apiary. He found an advertisement for a “beginner's beekeeping seminar,” and after participating on the following Saturday in a hands-on tour of several colonies, he was hooked.
As a local beekeeper, businessman and educator, Brainard manages about 50 hives in the Edmonds area. He is direct and earnest in his personal interactions as well as in this approach to keeping bees and mentoring newbie beekeepers. He is a passionate advocate for well-managed beehives. And to this end he teaches beekeepers to harvest only a hive's surplus honeycomb, leaving plenty for the bees to make use of as they grow their brood.
His cooperative, pro-bee attitude is key to improving managed and wild beehive populations not only for our use, but to encourage and maintain a healthy ecosystem. Strong pollinators, such as bees and butterflies, increase biodiversity in the garden and the wild. This inclusive approach goes back to Brainard's beginnings in the business world, where he learned to set realistic goals, identify and analyze the situation, and then earn the confidence of all the stakeholders. And, yes, the bees themselves are stakeholders. Possibly the most important ones.
“Honey bee pollination,” says Brainard, “is responsible for much of our produce production in the U.S. and worldwide,” But for him, their importance doesn't end there. Keeping bees and training new beekeepers is about community and resource renewal. He says one important way of turning around the negative impacts of Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) and other contributors to bee declines – like commercial industry stressors, weather extremes, and overexposure to pesticides – is to make the public more aware of the part bees play in our lives.
Check out the video for more information at www.youtube.com/watch?v=IkofSroNf90 or from our page www.youtube.com/user/goedmonds
