The Buzz on Bees

I recently read about how, due recent episodes of colony collapse, bees, when they decide to set up shop in areas where they are seen as a nuisance, are being moved by beekeepers and environmentalists rather than removed by extermination. These attempts to save bee colonies are a bonus for the bees and the rest of us who either depend on them for pollination or have a sweet tooth for local honey (like me). The added bonus of ingesting local honey is the possibility of desensitizing oneself to some common allergies, specifically the pollen related ones. Bees collect 66 pounds of pollen each year per hive (that much less to invade my nasal passages!).

At the Saturday Community Market (9 AM to 1 PM downtown in front of the pavilion) in St. Marys this weekend was the first time this winter that I didn’t see Honest Dan the Honey Man (and his dwindling wares) downtown. I fortunately still have some of his locally produced golden sweetness and hope it lasts till his return to the market later this month because it is a staple for us on fresh warm biscuits most weekends. Dan is also my go to local expert when I have questions about bees. In St. Marys bees don’t produce honey all year round but they do eat honey all year to survive. In the winter the hive is quite inactive and bees cluster together for warmth maintaining a temp of 93 degrees Fahrenheit in the cluster’s center year round.

Here is a fact, recently unknown at least to me that I found out in my discussion with Dan; sometimes you have to feed your bees (especially if you've harvested a lot of their honey). How I came to find this out began with the behavior of bees in the Bahamas. On Andros, a place I enjoy frequenting, Cuban emeralds (iridescent green hummingbirds) and bananaquits (tiny blue and yellow bird acrobats) abound and visit numerous hummingbird feeders strung among the residences there. There’s even a hummingbird feeder hanging in the tree in front of my husband’s 711along with a seed feeder, wind chimes, etc. You might wonder what that has to do with bees, well shortly after a hurricane passed by last season the local bees kept in hives by some of the beekeepers in the neighborhood began visiting the hummingbird feeders too, much to the chagrin of some of the local bird watchers (and feeders). Apparently the high winds blew the blossoms (and subsequently the pollen) off the foliage on Andros forcing the bees to go looking for other sources of food. I also found out that bees like even the smallest blossoms (think clover and others I always thought of as weeds) and if the beekeepers on Andros had fed their bees they could have headed off the need for the bees to make a run on an alternative source of sweetness, the hummingbird feeders.

That’s my buzz for today on bees.