[Pollinator] Salon.com on CCD and pollinators

[Ladadams at aol.com]

Salon.com 
A round table of experts answer all our pressing questions about the sudden 
death of the nation's bees. What they have to say has a bigger sting than we 
ever expected. 
By Kevin Berger 
May 29, 2007 | The buzz about the alarming disappearance of bees has been all 
about people food. Honeybees pollinate one-third of the fruits, nuts and 
vegetables that end up in our homey kitchen baskets. If the tireless apian workers 
didn't fly from one flower to the next, depositing pollen grains so that 
fruit trees can bloom, America could well be asking where its next meal would come 
from. Last fall, the nation's beekeepers watched in horror as more than a 
quarter of their 2.4 million colonies collapsed, killing billions of nature's 
little fertilizers.  
But as a Salon round table discussion with bee experts revealed, the mass 
exodus of bees to the great hive in the sky forebodes a bigger story. The 
faltering dance between honeybees and trees is symptomatic of industrial disease. As 
the scientists outlined some of the biological agents behind "colony collapse 
disorder," and dismissed the ones that are not -- sorry, friends, the Rapture 
is out -- they sketched a picture of how we are forever altering the planet's 
delicate web of life.  
The scientists constituted a fascinating foursome, each with his own point of 
view. _Jeffrey Pettis,_ 
(http://www.ars.usda.gov/pandp/people/people.htm?personid=10138)  research leader of the USDA's honeybee lab, told us the current 
collapse is one of the worst in history. _Eric Mussen,_ 
(http://entomology.ucdavis.edu/faculty/facpage.cfm?id=mussen)  of the Honey Bee Research Facility at 
the University of California at Davis, maintained that it may only be 
cyclical. _Wayne Esaias,_ (http://aqua.nasa.gov/about/instrument_modis_team.php)  of 
the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, an amateur beekeeper, outlined his 
compelling views about the impact of climate change on bees. And John McDonald, a 
biologist, beekeeper and gentleman farmer in rural Pennsylvania, reminded us, if 
at times sardonically, of the poetry in agriculture.  
First things first. The Internet, as you know, loves a rumor. Are 
_cellphones_ (http://www.technewsworld.com/rsstory/56901.html)  killing the bees?  
JEFFREY PETTIS: All the explanations that bees became disoriented by 
cellphone radiation, or this, that and the other thing -- there is zero evidence for 
any of it. All we know is we lost the worker population and they died away from 
the hive. What's unusual is they died over a short time period. Are they 
flying off to Nirvana? Who knows where they are? They are just dying away from the 
hive, which is normal.  
ERIC MUSSEN: It's important to look at what's normal. In the summer, bees go 
through a six-week life cycle: three inside the hive, three outside it as 
foragers. Then they die of old age. When bees are coming to the end of their life 
for whatever reason, they just fly off and don't come back. They fly out to 
die because flying out and dying is what they do. The question is, Why are we 
seeing bees with such a shortened life cycle? Well, now we're talking about w
inter bees. As you move into fall, the colony is supposed to be rearing bees that 
have a long life expectancy -- from about October to March of the next year. 
The problem is the winter bees aren't making it. Everything just sort of fell 
apart near the end of this summer and those bees that were supposed to live up 
to six months didn't come close.  
JOHN McDONALD: That cellphone thing is a major source of irritation to me. If 
it were true, I suspect about 10,000 people at Penn State would be lying on 
the street dead now. And yet you see them walking around and talking on 
cellphones. My son explained to me that cellphone radiation puts out a wavelength of 
about three inches. A honeybee is three-quarters of an inch long and so the 
bee is going to create virtually no shadow in that wavelength. That's one reason 
why I look askance at that theory. The other is where I live, in the middle 
of Appalachia, the bees are disappearing and there are virtually no cellphones. 
 
One scientist has said solving the bees' disappearance is like "CSI" for 
agriculture. What's the latest word from the lab?  
PETTIS: The latest word is we're working on a lot of different samples we've 
collected throughout the year. We're working under the idea that bees have 
suffered a one-two punch. The first is a primary stressor -- poor diet, mites, or 
low-level pesticide exposure. That puts them in a compromised or weak state, 
and then a secondary pathogen takes over. Because of how quickly the bees are 
dying, it seems most likely a pathogen would be involved. So we're looking for 
a secondary pathogen that might be unique or novel.  
Are pesticides a major culprit?  
MUSSEN: Perhaps 10 percent of commercial bee colonies in any given year are 
either severely damaged or die on contact with agricultural pesticides. But 
there's no reason to believe the exposure this year is any different from last 
year or any other year.  
John, you wrote a pretty strong _opinion piece_ 
(http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/03/10/HOG5FOH9VQ1.DTL)  that fingered _Bt crops,_ 
(http://www.bt.ucsd.edu/)  which have been genetically modified to control 
insect pests. Based on your experiences as a beekeeper, how did you come to that 
conclusion?  
McDONALD: My first collapse started last summer when a powerful colony, in a 
manner of a week, went downhill. The drone cone sort of cascaded down over the 
foundation like ice on a mountain. In another hive that was equally strong, 
the bees ended up lying dead on a mat that extended about six feet. That didn't 
happen with the other hives, which is indicative of agricultural poisoning. 
Also, the drones hung around until snowfall, which is unusual, indicating some 
kind of kind of behavioral dysfunction with the worker bees.  
I did a little research and found two studies about the Bt phenomenon. When 
you look at the action of Bt gene proteins taken up in the gut of insects, 
including bees, you find an enzyme that gobbles its way through any protein there 
and affects the insects. And bees are known to forage on corn flowers to get 
pollen to rear their young brood. I'm not saying Bt is the sole cause of 
collapse, only that I would like to have it investigated.  
Is there any evidence, Jeff or Eric, of Bt crops killing bees?  
MUSSEN: When Bt crops were being used in the fields to control lepidopteron 
insects, or butterflies, there were a significant number of studies run to try 
to determine whether or not incorporating Bt into the food of the adult bees, 
or the larvae, would hurt the bees. And the answer was no.  
PETTIS: I contributed to a recent study where we directly fed the Bt toxin to 
whole bee colonies and could demonstrate no effects on them.  
MUSSEN: There was a study, and perhaps this is the one John is referring to, 
that showed the active chemical in these Bt cultures is a protein crystal that 
develops in organisms. For four years in a row, an institution fed that 
protein to honeybees at 10 times the amount that they would ever encounter in the 
field if they were feeding on pollen. In three of the four years, they saw 
nothing out of the ordinary. In the fourth year, a parasite showed up, and the 
bees that had been consuming the protein appeared to suffer more. The experiment 
didn't say the Bt protein gave the bees the "disappearing" disease, or that it 
killed all of them; it just said the bees that came in contact with the crops 
appeared to be more negatively affected by the parasite.  
Can you tell us about your experiences with colony collapse, Wayne, and your 
studies to understand wider ecological causes?  
WAYNE ESAIAS: Sure. I'm a small beekeeper. I have about 15 colonies and have 
experienced some loss. I realize there are many symptoms involved. Still, 
there are one or two I'm puzzled about. I keep records of when my bees collect 
pollen and nectar in my backyard. I weigh the hive and I have a time series that 
goes back to 1992. What I've seen over the course of that time is due to local 
warming: The pollen and nectar flow come almost a month earlier than they did 
in the 1970s. This is coincident with the urbanization of the D.C.-Baltimore 
area, causing temperatures to rise.  
I'm also using data from NASA satellites to address how global warming or 
environmental change might be impacting our honeybee populations, and even the 
spread of the African honeybee. We see plants blooming at different times of the 
year, and that's why the nectar flows are so much earlier now. I need to 
underscore that I have no evidence that global warming is a key player in colony 
collapse disorder. But it might be a contributor, and changes like this might 
be upping the stress level of our bee populations.  
One new study suggested the collapse might be the result of a rare spore 
called Nosema ceranae.  
MUSSEN: If you get enough Nosema ceranae, yes, a colony will die. If you get 
enough viruses, the colony will die. If you get enough mites, the colony will 
die. If you get exposure to insecticides, the colony will die. So all these 
things that we are looking at are capable of doing in a colony. There's no doubt 
about it. So could a true lack of food. Literally, you could starve the bees 
to death. Beekeepers have accidentally done that many times. What you're going 
to find is that in most cases there is not going to be one factor that did 
them in; it's going to be a combination. This is the perfect storm for 
honeybees.  
Millions of bees in California alone are trucked around from town to town to 
be used as pollinators on farms. That's got to be awfully stressful on them, 
right?  
MUSSEN: Yes, it's a stress. But commercial beekeepers have been moving 
substantial numbers of colonies on trucks for decades. I'm not convinced that 
they're being moved more, or that it beats them up any worse that it did ten years 
ago. California beekeepers have told me that in a course of moving the colonies 
around in the back of the truck, they tend to lose 10 percent of the queens 
with each move. Some feel it's that high. But that doesn't meant that 10 
percent of your bee colonies died; many of them will come back and you will still 
have a colony.  
One researcher has said that the competition for food among the millions of 
bees used to pollinate almond trees in California could, essentially, be 
working them to death. Do you agree?  
MUSSEN: Almond trees aren't the problem. It's what happens after the bees are 
done with the trees and are brought back to the holding yards. In late fall, 
there is basically no food -- after the almonds -- so the bees have to fend 
for themselves. Besides eucalyptus trees, there's a bunch of weeds that the bees 
can feed on. They don't get heavy and fat but they've got some food 
available.  
PETTIS: Beekeepers are always looking for what they call "good pasture," 
places they can put the bees and not have to feed the bees themselves. Florida has 
an abundant and diverse set of floral plants, so the bees are not suffering. 
What's interesting is that there's a number of government control programs for 
invasive weeds. Beekeepers love invasive weeds. Most produce a lot of nectar 
for the bees. So there's been competition in some cities over getting rid of 
the noxious weeds and keeping them for beekeepers. But California is unusual in 
that beekeepers are doing what we are starting to call "feedlot beekeeping," 
where we are having to provide resources because there is just not enough food 
out there. And this is just to meet the almond-pollination demands.  
MUSSEN: The real problem in California is that we've only had half a normal 
rainfall this year. So after the almonds, when the bees went out to find other 
things, there was barely anything there. What was really interesting was some 
of the bees looked like they were well on their way to establishing good 
colonies. They looked like they could live on the stored almonds they had picked up 
in the late summer and fall. But this time they collapsed. So that's the 
question: Why?  
And what's your answer?  
MUSSEN: I'm probably the strongest advocate in the United States suggesting 
that malnutrition was the underlying thing that set up our bees to be whacked 
by everything else researchers are looking at. Honeybees rely on pollen for 
protein, vitamins, fats and minerals. That's where their major "health food" 
comes from. If we are having a typical year, and the rains come, there aren't too 
many places in the United States where the bees cannot find their mix of 
pollens to meet their dietary needs and get them through a normal life cycle.  
The question is, What happens when things don't go like that? Well, you get 
this blast of hot temperature, which is about the time the flower buds are 
forming and the pollen grains are beginning to form. What does that do? You get 
sterile pollen. A beekeeper could look into the hive and say, "I've got all 
kinds of pollen in there and the bees disappeared." Well, right, you've got pollen 
grains, but do they have any nutrition in them?  
Anything that interferes with the availability of food, or the quality of the 
food, is going to be detrimental to the bees. They don't have much of an 
immune system, so the only way that they can resist being infected by a lot of 
things is when they have their innate resistance up, and the best resistance is 
when they're best fed. So my feeling is that their nutrition just wasn't what 
it was supposed to be, and they were susceptible when they should have been 
resistant. I think something happened at the end of last year in many places in 
the temperate climate around the world, not just here, and fouled up the bees' 
food supply. Unless somebody tells me differently, I'm blaming it on the 
weather.  
ESAIAS: One of the things that I've noticed in my short little time series in 
my backyard is that I could pick out every El Niño and La Niña effect. These 
are normal. These short-term climate changes are normal, and our bee 
population and our natural pollinator population have seen them, and they can probably 
handle them. What is disturbing is the long-term trend. Maybe years of severe 
climate impact are going to be more frequent and it's going to be really 
difficult to pick them out as causative factors unless we have a coherent way of 
studying each one.  
Could the bees be dying because once they are sent out to do their work as 
pollinators on farms, they can't find their way back to their colonies? 
Sometimes it seems like there are more mini-malls in America than flowers, and maybe 
the bees can't navigate urban land patterns.  
MUSSEN: Land patterns would be the least of their problems. When a honeybee 
transitions from an in-hive bee to an outside bee, it flies back and forth 
around the hive for a few minutes. Then it backs off and goes further away. In the 
process, it is taking a bunch of snapshots. That's how it's going to navigate 
from that time on -- through those snapshots. It's going to learn the roads, 
the trees, the houses, and the part of the hive with the entrance it uses. 
Bees use those landmarks to determine where they are and where they are going. 
That's another reason why cellphone communication is not going to rattle them 
unless it completely fries their brains so they can't see anymore. But when you 
put them into the environment where they have been flying, they'll follow 
their landmarks home. So I don't think we have to worry about that.  
McDONALD: I'm not sure. I've been thinking about the size of the current 
soybean and corn crop, which I think impacts on this. When we fly over the fields 
in a jet, we look down and think we see some pastoral idyll. But the truth of 
the matter is, we may be looking at a slow-motion ecological train wreck. I 
made some calculations, and the total soybean and corn crop, including 
genetically modified seeds, is in a neighborhood of 102 million acres. After a little 
basic arithmetic, that would be a strip of crops running from Pennsylvania to 
the Rocky Mountains. It would be 100 miles wide, and if you were flying over in 
a plane, it would take you four hours. When you look at that thing at that 
magnitude of disruption, you can't help but suspect that maybe there's more to 
the picture than meets the eye, when you consider the absolute scale of things, 
compared with natural environments where you still have weeds and flowers.  
ESAIAS: Land use has changed drastically in the past 100 years. There's no 
question that urbanization is increasing at a fantastic rate. I was thinking, as 
I was listening to John, that a lot of these concerns apply to our native 
pollinators -- the things that live in the hedge rows and the woods -- much more 
so than to our managed bee colonies, which are generally cared for by 
beekeepers. Crops are a significant source of pollen and nectar for our bees and our 
pollinators, and there is no doubt in my mind that the flora quality is 
changing, even if we can't say whether it's for the better or worse just now.  
McDONALD: You know, I was looking at my flowering trees the other day. I have 
a beautiful weeping crabapple, and my grandson, while standing under the 
tree, which was just heavy with blossoms, said spontaneously, "Last year that tree 
was humming with bees." Now there was one bumblebee on it. The small nascent 
bees and other little bee types are absolutely missing. Near that tree I've 
got acres of dandelions and you cannot find one of the native pollinators. And 
it's not just the honeybees; it's other pollinators like moths and butterflies. 
In many ways, their loss is probably more alarming or indicative of a deep 
problem.  
PETTIS: We rely on honeybees for agriculture because we can move them in 
large numbers. And we know how to manage them. But the National Academy of 
Sciences recently published a study that showed that all pollinators -- which rely on 
a diversity of flowers -- are in decline. Whether it's urbanization, habitat 
fragmentation, or an increase in agricultural land use, something is severely 
impacting the native pollinators.  
Colony collapse disorder was reported by commercial beekeepers. Is it also 
happening to bees in the wild?  
PETTIS: There's very few places where we actually monitor the feral 
population. I know of a group in Texas that was following some wild populations of 
bees, and a Cornell researcher has found a group around Ithaca, New York. But it's 
often hard to sample those bees. We know that wild bee populations were 
decimated by parasitic varroa mites over time, and they've rebounded, probably due 
to natural selection for natural resistance. But I'm not familiar with data 
coming in from feral populations.  
McDONALD: A few years ago, in a very remote part of the state, I found 
thriving bee populations that I assumed were feral. To help them along, I set up 
bait boxes and put in anti-mite strips. I slipped them in seed oil and made 
little puddles so the bees had to walk through the oil in this experiment I called 
"remote medication." But as the summer went on, the bees collapsed in spite of 
my attempts to help them. The feral population is just getting so hard hit 
that I suspect it's virtually gone by now.  
Are scientists looking at how the climate affects the bees' favorite flowers 
and food sources?  
ESAIAS: That's a good question. Most of the nectar sources in Maryland, my 
state, come from trees -- tulip poplar, black locus, and holly trees. There has 
been a great deal of research on plants and increased CO2 and warming. I tried 
to find out how temperatures would affect blooming dates, and there is 
virtually no information in the literature on how temperature affects blooming dates 
of our trees and how increased CO2 concentrations affect blooming dates. 
There's lots of research that says it makes plants grow faster, and some of them, 
like poison ivy, become more toxic. But ecologists in general have not paid 
attention to the timing of blooming and nectar availability and quality of 
pollen.  
McDONALD: That is so true. The only number that I go on is that an apple tree 
will bloom after 40 days in 40-degree temperatures. That boils down that 
simple formula.  
ESAIAS: As a kind of a climatologist, I'm getting paid to study the impact of 
potential global warming scenarios on our ecology. There's a lot of research 
being done on carbon cycling, but without information about when the plants 
bloom and how the quality of the flora changes, we are in a poor position to 
asses the effect of changes in temperature and rainfall on our ecosystems.  
Can bees survive climate changes?  
MUSSEN: I can tell you that beekeepers take their honeybees north to the 
upper Canadian border and all the way down to the equator. If they're warm, they 
cool themselves by evaporating water, and if they're cold, they heat themselves 
by sucking up a little bit of extra carbohydrate and rattling their muscles.  
So they're great adapters?  
MUSSEN: They're going to handle it. The honeybees are not the ones I'm 
concerned about. I think Wayne will back me up on this: Historians have said that 
thousands of years ago, there were some pretty nasty fluctuations in the earth's 
weather. And through this period of time, we became and continue to be very 
good farmers. But for whatever reason, we are beginning to kind of move into a 
cycle where we are going to find more extremes than we used to have. The 
droughts may be hotter and longer, the storms and floods may be more severe. Things 
aren't going to be so nice in the future. But again, I think the honeybees 
are more likely to handle that as long as they've got some food available to 
them. But with some of these other pollinators, which we rely upon to keep the 
environment going for us, well, if they get knocked around too much by the 
weather, then that's going to be really consequential.  
What do you think the disappearance of the bees teaches us about ecology?  
ESAIAS: If I can go back to what Eric was saying, I too don't doubt the 
survivability of the honeybee. On average, it's going to do fine. But what we are 
dealing with now is a series of local effects. That doesn't mean we aren't 
going to see an average global increase of temperature in the future, if you 
believe the predictions.  
What does it tell us about our native pollinators and ecology? That's such an 
exceedingly complex question that I don't know. It just puts me in awe of 
earth's complexity. If you ask scientists to predict what global warming will do 
to an ecosystem, and they don't throw up their hands and say, "Beats me," then 
it shows we have a lot of work to do to understand the complexity and 
responses of all of these insect and plant interactions, when they occur, and will 
they get out of phase.  
McDONALD: I think there is a cautionary tale here. Look at the progenitors of 
the maize, the corn which was developed in Mexico. It took a long time for 
environmental researchers to find the original plant because as the maize became 
dependent upon cultivation, a lot of those genes from the wild corn had died 
off. There used to be 1,000 small meat-packing plants, and if a problem arose 
at one, it was not particularly important to the other 999. But now with all 
these together as one vast factory, any problem that arises has instant 
implications everywhere. We're at the mercy of assembly-line farming and high-speed 
distribution, and maybe no accountability as far as the quality of the food. 
But I don't know how you do it. How do you get more people to go back to smaller 
farms? It's practically utopian to bring that up anymore.  
It's amazing that an esoteric subject like beekeeping has erupted in the mass 
media. Do you think that's been beneficial?  
ESAIAS: I think the media coverage is wonderful. I think we are facing a 
series of problems like this, problems that are environmental in nature, and this 
has been a real eye-opener for me as to how poorly prepared this country and 
countries around the world are in taking note of how climate change or global 
change will impact our ecosystems. Humanity is affecting our ecosystems, and 
it's very complex to determine whether this is due to environmental change or 
some disease. You can see now that it is very difficult to pull these things 
apart.  
McDONALD: The media has done a very good job of telling all sides. But the 
problem is, how do you motivate people to change the way they are? Where I live, 
I try to live pretty low on the food chain and avoid the temptation of most 
of the things that people have. People are just incredible consumers and 
runners of fuel and buyers of gadgets. How do you change that? It's as if there's an 
ethical or a moral blank spot there. I don't like to preach, but it's pretty 
obvious: When you're killing the corn belt by growing fuel to run SUVs, 
there's a very bad disconnect somewhere along the line.  
MUSSEN: Bees are a necessary part of our food production. If we don't grow 
our own cherries and apples, can't we just buy them somewhere else? The answer 
is yes. But do we want to become as dependent on foreign nations for our food 
as we are dependent on them for fuel? I would certainly hope the answer is no. 
I believe that the amount of food we exported to other countries last year was 
less than the amount of food we imported for our consumption. We use to be 
the breadbasket of the world. Now we're just one of the breadbaskets.  
McDONALD: The basket case.  
MUSSEN: [Laughs.] So to keep our industry healthy, we certainly have to keep 
our pollinators healthy.  
In the end, are we the people the ultimate cause of the bees' collapse?  
PETTIS: We're the ultimate cause in that we've changed the planet to suit our 
needs. We're running it to suit our needs and not the benefit of all the 
organisms around us. Honeybees aren't totally domesticated, but we have tried to 
domesticate them. We've tried to make bees more gentle and make more honey. In 
enhancing certain traits, we make the bees more susceptible to other things.  
Do you think the bees will be back?  
PETTIS: I do. I don't think we've gone that far in domesticating them. The 
bee population is very diverse and can withstand an onslaught of different 
things -- including beekeepers.  
Research assistance by Jonathan Vanian 
 
Buzz kill 
Preparing my back-porch beehive is my favorite rite of spring, but this year 
my flock mysteriously went missing. I'll miss more than just the honey. 
By Novella Carpenter 
March 13, 2007 |  
Bee! I'm expecting you!
Was saying yesterday
To someone you know
That you were due.  
The frogs got home last week, 
Are settled, and at work; 
Birds, mostly back, 
The clover warm and thick.  
You'll get my letter by
The seventeenth; reply
Or better, be with me, 
Yours, Fly.  
-- Emily Dickinson  
Spring arrived here in Oakland, Calif., and I didn't even notice until the 
police busted a _marijuana_ (http://dir.salon.com/topics/marijuana/index.htmlr) 
-filled warehouse across the street. I was in my garden -- raised vegetable 
beds in an abandoned lot in the bad part of town -- picking grass and clover for 
my rabbits, when I heard pounding on the warehouse's metal roll door. Ten 
black-and-white squad cars screeched up, some emblazoned with the words "Canine 
Unit." I watched awhile -- the door came up cautiously, the police inched 
closer -- until, out of the corner of my eye, I was distracted by the most 
beautiful peach blossoms. Decorating the parking strip between my garden and the just-r
aided drug warehouse, the blooms were frilly and deep pink, and would have 
made a good tattoo.  
Then I noticed other trees. A weeping Santa Rosa plum, branches like 
dreadlocks woven with white buds. A three-way grafted apple, each of its girlish 
pink-and-white blooms promising fruit, a different variety on every branch. Even 
the eucalyptus across the street, shading the police, was adorned by thousands 
of filamenty flowers.  
All those blooms, but no honeybees.  
Like commercial and backyard beekeepers _in 22 states_ 
(http://www.allheadlinenews.com/articles/7006579930)  around the nation, I recently opened up my 
beehive for spring inspection, only to discover that my hairy herd had gone 
missing. For years, the beehive has presided over the deck off my apartment, and 
the bees bobbed in and out, loaded down with pollen baskets and nectar collected 
in my garden and in the weedy debris of nearby abandoned lots. But now, 
nothing.  
They left behind no forwarding address nor clues to their whereabouts, and 
there were no corpses cluttering the hive for my amateur forensic inspection. My 
flock had simply wandered elsewhere, and likely perished. Bee researchers and 
scientists at the Department of Agriculture have christened this unexpected 
bee holocaust _Colony Collapse Disorder_ 
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colony_Collapse_Disorder)  and hypothesize that the die-off could be a result of 
either a fungus, a nicotine-based pesticide, or a virus. (They're working on it.) 
But in the meantime, CCD could very well spell commercial disaster: for almond 
farmers whose trees won't be pollinated, for consumers who may face a shortage 
of apples and peaches and cherries because there are no bees to turn flower 
into fruit. While my livelihood may not depend on it, as the mistress of one 
hive on one porch in Oakland, the loss still came with an intense pang of grief, 
like a death in the family.  
When a beekeeper dies, the bees must be informed. I learned this tradition a 
few years ago, while visiting _Slovenia's Apicultural Museum._ 
(http://www.bf.uni-lj.si/jbozic/muzej/muzej.html)  One of the exhibits was a short film. My 
mother and I watched as a grandfather trained a lederhosen-wearing boy to be a 
beekeeper. Shot entirely in golden late afternoon light, it was a bittersweet 
story, and near the end of the film the grandpa died. A final scene showed the 
boy hunkered near the hive, his lips moving in a whisper. I knew the boy 
would have felt the heat of the hive, generated by so many thousands of bees, and 
that it would have smelled like wax and _propolis_ 
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propolis)  -- a rich ambrosial aroma. The bees whining through the box 
would have sounded like a wail. How consoling that act would be in the face of 
death.  
- - - - - - - - - - - 
Back then I hadn't yet experienced the loss of a hive -- I was too engrossed 
in the joyful part. Like installing new packages of bees -- one of life's 
greatest pleasures. The last one I got, the one that has now died, arrived at the 
Oakland post office three years ago.  
When I pedaled up to retrieve my flock, a few lonely, feral honeybees hovered 
around the post office. It was April in Northern California, arguably the 
loveliest month of the year. The postmistress seemed unnerved by their arrival, 
but admitted she wouldn't mind some honey, if I got the chance. This was 
Oakland, not Mayberry -- but I nodded and promised anyway. My bike had a basket 
attached to the front and the humming package fit perfectly inside. As I rode down 
Telegraph Avenue, I laughed out loud at the bees that trailed us through the 
traffic and stoplights.  
My first colony was a birthday gift, from my beau, Billy, while we were 
living in Seattle. He loaded me into the car and took me to a small beekeeping shop 
in the middle of the woods. He promised me a beehive with all the fixings: a 
smoker, a veil and cap, long, thick gloves, a hive tool, boxes to add as the 
colony grew, a starter book ("First Lessons in Beekeeping") and a small wire 
box filled with 3,000 bees and one queen suspended in her own chamber.  
I don't have children, but that day I experienced a glimmer of what it must 
feel like to return from the hospital with a newborn. As we pulled our Dodge 
Dart away from the forest of Christmas trees, I wondered if I could handle such 
responsibility. What if I dropped the box? What if they grew up and decided to 
swarm, or to abandon me? But also, to be honest, I was thinking about getting 
stung. A lot.  
Even if you've been stung before (when I was 12 I stumbled through a 
yellow-jacket nest and received more than 25 stings), as a beginning beekeeper you 
worry about your first sting. We're choosing to get stung. It feels a bit 
transgressive. It certainly seemed so to my next-door neighbor.  
"You should move to the country," Trudy said when she saw my buzzing shoe 
box. She was out on her lawn, trimming the grass with a pair of scissors. Next to 
her lawn was our raised parking strip garden, a chaotic jumble of tall stalks 
of fava beans, lettuces and Swiss chard. Most city ordinances allow 
beekeeping if there is adequate distance from the hive to any neighboring structures. 
Since we planned to house the hive on our upstairs deck, we were within that 
legal boundary. And so I marched upstairs to our deck clutching the bee package, 
hoping I looked like I knew what I was doing.  
I put on as much clothing as possible. Triple shirts; a mechanic's jumpsuit; 
several pairs of socks, hiked up and tucked into my pants; heavy-duty fabric 
beekeeping gloves (regretting I hadn't bought the more expensive leather ones), 
and finally, my veil. Swaddled as I was, I could barely put down my arms.  
The sun was going down, that lovely April day. I set up the hive to face due 
east so it would get early morning sun. Installing the bees later in the day 
avoids confusing them, for they like to spend at least a night in their hive 
before venturing out. I pried the lid off the bee package and, as instructed, 
tilted the opening toward the fresh hive body, with its orderly rows of frames 
just waiting to be filled with honey.  
The bees fell out like a liquid, spilling into the box without incident. The 
bearish man who'd sold them to me had demonstrated how to tap the box out -- 
like a ketchup bottle -- which I did to get the last of the stragglers. Because 
of my fear and the sheer volume of my clothing, I had a slick of sweat 
dripping down my back. But my terror was unfounded: The bees were entirely docile.  
Finally, out of the then mostly empty box, I fished out the queen chamber. A 
few bees, her attendants, clung to the sides. At the bottom was a stopper plug 
made of candy. The idea is that the workers will eventually chew through the 
sugary plug and release the queen. But I wanted to see her. So, against proper 
bee protocol, I popped the candy inward with the end of my hive tool -- and 
out she emerged. Her ass was enormous; she looked like some kind of exotic 
beetle. I held her on the top of the new hive, and she strutted across. Was it 
just me, or did she actually have the gallant air of royalty? Then she was gone, 
down into her chambers where she would lay all the eggs to keep the hive 
going.  
Most of us carry around a pack of defining moments. Beginning that colony on 
a gentle spring day is one of my fondest. I received one sting: on my wedding 
finger.  
- - - - - - - - - - - - 
Six years later, I've made room for a honey extractor in our living room. And 
each year during prime honey-extracting season -- late summer -- I invite 
friends over for a sticky party. In preparation, the night before we place a "bee 
escape" under the super, the box where the honey is stored. The escape allows 
the bees trapped in the box to flee through narrow tunnels, but prevents them 
from returning to the box once they've left.  
After 12 hours, the entire box of honey is bee-free, and we take it to the 
kitchen. The super looks like a bottomless dresser drawer, except inside, 
instead of socks, 10 frames are crammed side by side, lined up like library books. 
Inside each one, a Bible-size chunk of sealed honeycomb hangs suspended in the 
rectangular frame. We spin the extractor and centrifugal force splatters the 
honey on the stainless steel sides, where it drips down and collects at the 
bottom. Most "real" beekeepers use an extractor with a motor, heaters and 
filters. But our guests simply steady the hand-spun extractor (which has a tendency 
to keel over), and crank it as hard as they can. Then they open the valve at 
the bottom and let the honey dribble out into quart-size Mason jars.  
At these gatherings, everyone gets covered in honey, and we eat as much in 
one sitting as we can bear. The harvest is different every year, and the flavor 
of the honey can even vary from frame to frame. If a frame appears darker in 
color, we'll spin and bottle it separately. One year the honey tasted like 
licorice -- was it from the wild fennel filling so many abandoned lots? Another 
frame held eucalyptus honey, which had a medicinal taste to it. A different 
time, the honey was so sweet, it hurt. But no matter how it tastes, the experience 
always makes everyone involved feel richer for it -- charmed, elated, sated.  
Afterward, when I return the honey super to the hive, the bees are always 
more apt to sting, and they seem, well, upset. That's why beekeepers call it 
robbing the hive. But bees don't organize a block watch or call the police; they 
simply get back to doing what they do, which is to salvage any remaining honey 
and wax and clean up the now mostly empty frames. I take, they give.  
But this spring will be different. My honeybees won't pollinate my fruit 
trees. There'll be no sticky party this summer. My home will seem empty without 
their comings and goings. I'll even miss their stings.  
In Slovenia, you're supposed to tell a hive when the beekeeper dies, but what 
are you supposed to do when it's the bees that have left you? Should I 
console myself and whisper into the hive, "It's spring. I'm expecting you." Lean 
into its warmth and whine, breathe in the scent of that insect cathedral? Maybe. 
But the box is as cold as winter now, and there's nothing inside to receive 
the news. 


Laurie Davies Adams
Executive Director
Coevolution Institute
423 Washington St. 5th
San Francisco, CA 94111
415 362 1137
LDA at coevolution.org
_http://www.coevolution.org/_ (http://www.coevolution.org/) 
_http://www.pollinator.org/_ (http://www.pollinator.org/) 
_http://www.nappc.org/_ (http://www.nappc.org/) 

Bee Ready for National Pollinator Week:  June 24-30, 2007.  Contact us 
for more information at www.pollinator.org 

Our future flies on the wings of pollinators.



************************************** See what's free at http://www.aol.com.
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://lists.sonic.net/pipermail/pollinator/attachments/20070529/afd1048f/attachment-0001.html 
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: image/gif
Size: 8647 bytes
Desc: not available
Url : http://lists.sonic.net/pipermail/pollinator/attachments/20070529/afd1048f/attachment-0001.gif