Bee Space

Loving food means wanting to know everything about it- which is why we garden and why we cook. When we got the chance to take the 'Beekeeping for Beginners' class at Lewis Ginter Botanical Gardens, Shannon and I were hoping to gain some insight on the mysterious 'Colony Collapse Disorder' affecting beehives all over the country. (Plus I have a thing for older, agrarian men.)

No matter. The important thing to remember is that one out of every three bites of food you take is thanks to bee pollination. (And just remember, corn is wind pollinated. Ahem.) Bees are so important, and so fascinating, I feel compelled to share a bit about what we have learned. Plus, there might be something YOU can do to help them.

I have always loved bees. I thought the very idea of a honey creator was absolutely miraculous. In the library window of my elementary school (John B. Cary- represent...) there was a demonstration beehive. I don't recall that anyone gave us lessons on bees, we were just free to observe them coming and going. The side of the hive attached to the window was clear so we could also watch the workers create their perfectly ordered hexagonal cells and move busily about.

Bees garner my respect because they work. Even though they don't fly at night, they do not sleep. During the winter nights, bees huddle together and flex their wing muscles to generate heat. They will literally work until their wings fall off. Consider these amazing facts:
Bess will visit 2,000,000 flowers to make 1 lb of honey.
They fly 55,000 miles to find those flowers.
The average worker makes 1 ½ tsp of honey in its lifetime.

Good gracious. For these, (and many other reasons) I have a new found respect for these tiny beings.

My favorite new piece of trivia is that eating itself seems to be a social activity for bees. Even though there is always food available from the nectar cells, they often accept food from one another instead. Their interdependence is a gorgeous thing to consider.

Of course, we have all heard about the plight of the bees. Hives are failing without predatory cause. We learned on Saturday that home apiarists have not had the troubles that agribusiness has with the Colony Collapse Disorder. Our speaker, David Fitzgerald, theorized that migratory pollination, (that is carting bees around to pollinate crops) is extremely stressful, and exhausts the workers and disorients the entire hive. Go figure.

It is so important to remember that there are many vital reasons to support local, organic agriculture. Our lives are intimately connected with those that feed us. And that includes the bees.

For more information on beekeeping in Virginia (and interviews with some of the cutest gentlemen ever) check out Angels of Agriculture. For more universal information on the predicament of the honey bee, take a look at the Vanishing Bees Site.