It’s the greatest icebreaker ever. When people I meet find out I’m a beekeeper, the interest lamp goes “on” and the conversation almost always draws other people into it as well. Everyone is 1) already a beekeeper and wants to compare experiences, 2) has thought about it and wants to know how to go about getting started or 3) has read about the declining bee populations and wants to know if the world really will come to end if we lose the bees. In any case, the conversation is lively and I have the perfect opportunity to explain my love affair with an insect.

Honeybees are pollinators. So are a whole slew of other insects, birds and critters. But honeybees are, by far, the greatest of the great. It’s all those little hairs on the bees that accidentally collect pollen as the bees are filling their little built-in hind leg saddlebags with pollen or nectar that kindles the flowering sex orgy that in the spring (to quote Bette Midler) becomes the rose. Well, to be fair, we should also include most vegetables, fruits, flowers, and nuts. No wonder there’s a lot of talk about the decline of the honeybee.

If you’ve already taken the plunge into the realm of beekeeping, congratulations. You are part of a small but determined legion of backyard hobbyists that throw large sums of money at a relatively small box with thousands of busy little “girls” working their tails off. (all honey bees are female except for a few drones that are kept around simply for the use and pleasure of a queen. If you think I’m kidding, just watch what happens in the fall when the hive is preparing for winter. All the drones are escorted out of the hive, along with their little suitcases as a chorus of Hit the Road Jack is sung in the background)

As beekeepers we all learn the hard lessons of trying to keep a colony of bees alive and healthy for more than one season, a feat I find more and more difficult as my experience grows. Honey bees have a lot of enemies. Bears, yellow jackets, mice, racoons, and other honey bees come to mind as natural connoisseurs of the treasures of the hive. Even more onerous are bee parasites like varroa mites and trachea mites that will weaken a hive so badly that it will not survive through a winter without treatment. There are other diseases, but I don’t want to put you off your dinner, so I’ll just say that healthy, happy bees need us…and believe me, we need them.

If you were in that second group that has an interest in beekeeping but has no idea about how to go about it, a word of advice. Do it. Alright that’s two words but why not jump in? A thousand-dollar bill should do it and then you can join the rest of us backyard hobbyists struggling to do a Vulcan mind meld with the Queen of Theehive to figure out what they need and when they need it. Her subjects are highly energetic and very industrious and literally work themselves to death to feed and nurture her. In beekeeping, just like chess, it’s all about the queen.

Take A Class

For you, the future beekeeper, the best way to gain the keys to the kingdom is through education. Take a class. It’s a must, no shortcuts. Find a class through your local beekeeper’s association, community college, your local university extension office or at the very least, find a beekeeper who is willing to mentor you and buy the beekeepers bible, Beekeeping for Idiots®. There are a lot of books out there on beekeeping. They all offer a wealth of knowledge but there’s something special about BFI that makes me go back to it time and time again. In any case, get that edumacation!

An amazing phenomenon about these beekeeping classes is that they all end in late spring about the time that your bee colony(s) arrive. There you are with your freshly printed apprentice beekeepers diploma, all that wonderful beekeeping stuff that your thousand-dollar bill bought, and one or more freshly shipped bee colonies with 10,001 bees (a screened box containing 10,000 worker bees and 1 queen in a separate little box of her own) ready to settle into your yard. Believe me when I say that your first year as a new beekeeper is a wonderful journey and a magical marriage of man and a wonder of nature that can never be repeated no matter how long or how many hives you ultimately adopt.

What’s Happening To Our Bees?

The notoriety of the peril of the honey bee is real. Colony Collapse Disorder is the latest disaster to affront the honey bee. For several years, no one had a clue of why this nearly empty hive was suddenly appearing when days earlier it had been hale and hearty. Today we know why but I seriously doubt that we have the political or practical will to fix the problem. We are destroying the immune system of the honey bee with pesticides and insecticides. We are giving our honey bees the equivalent of AIDS.

How do we fix it? Stop using pesticides and insecticides. Of course, that can never happen due to our American system of monoculture farming and the unbelievably intense and effective lobbying of our mega giant chemical companies.

Right now, we’re at a stalemate. Commercial beekeepers are still shipping their bees, by the semitruck load, to monstrous monoculture farms all over the country and losing half of their hives every year. How in the world can they sustain losses like that and keep going? By creating hives in factory mode. It’s not a natural process nor is it a pretty picture. It’s almost surreal to watch it but so far, the bees just keep being bees and go on and on doing their bee thing.

If I’ve painted a dark and gloomy picture for the survival of the honey bee, be assured that honey bees are a master work of nature and mother nature is indeed a wise if somewhat abused healer of all things. Bees have been around for millennia without the help of humans. I believe they’ll find a way around the natural pests, the manmade death cocktails currently being served up by Monsanto, Bayer, Dow and friends as well as the questionable sustainability of monoculture agriculture methods that we Americans find so compelling.

All that being said, it’s a great joy for me to dawn that white hazmat looking bee suit, open up the hive and visit the girls. They tell me how they are doing by the progress of their honey and brood production. That fabulous earthy sweet smell of bee industry and the hum of 60,000 very busy and industrious insects going about their business never gets old. It’s a love affair with an insect. I admit it. My little backyard hive doesn’t make much difference in the global scheme of the planet, but it feels right for me to host these wonderful little pollinators. To watch them literally work their wings to the nubbin providing sustenance and protection to their queen and food for their, and our, survival is an amazing cycle to which they graciously let me be a witness.

Oh yeah, and there’s honey there too.