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By ESTHER K. SMITH
News staff writer
May 10, 2006
Bees are not the only creatures that are
busy during blossom season – beekeepers have to stay one step ahead of
them. And the busier the bees, the busier the beekeepers.
Bill Edwards, of Dee, is a second-generation apiarist. He and his
wife, Mary, have operated Lost Lake Apiaries for about 15 years. They
oversee anywhere from 800-1,000 hives during the year.
“There’s always something to work on,” Edwards says. “And during the
winter, you’d better be building up your equipment, or you’ll be in
trouble.”
On this April day, Edwards and his friend and fellow beekeeper, Larry
Winkel, are dividing hives. Both are wearing the familiar protective
clothing, including leather gloves.
“What we’re doing is manipulating the size of the hive,” Winkel says.
They do this to prevent the bee colony from getting overcrowded and
dividing itself by swarming.
They each pry the lid from a box, using a bellows to blow a special
smoke at the bees, which distracts them enough so that they aren’t
bothered by the intrusion. Bees instinctively go into an emergency
mode when they encounter smoke, eating as much honey as they can in
case they have to flee the hive.
Photo by Esther K. Smith
Bees hover as Bill Edwards,
above, examines a frame from his hive before moving it to another box.
Below, a set of hives in an orchard on Cooper Spur Road.
Photo by Kirby Neumann-Rea
With a hive tool, which resembles a
putty knife with a scraper at the other end, the men methodically pull
out a frame, shake loose some of the bees by tapping it against the
box side, then examine it for a queen.
“We want to make sure the queen stays in the box,” Edwards says. “When
we finish the new box, we’ll put a new queen in it.” The queens can be
purchased for $14 apiece.
When they are satisfied that the comb is healthy and there is no queen
present, they move the frame into a new, empty hive.
A standard bee box has about 10 removable frames inside, on which the
bees build cells for the eggs the queen lays, and to later store up
food for the colony in the form of honey. On each frame you can see
the different stages in the bee’s life cycle: egg, larva, pupa, and
adult bee.
“Look, there’s a bee chewing its way out right now,” Edwards says.
Indeed, one of the capped cells is moving and a set of mandibles
chomping away.
This time of year there is very little, if any, honey in the combs.
Most of the pollen and nectar being gathered now is being used for
food for the newly hatched larvae and pupae, who will develop into the
workers and drones that will keep the hive humming all summer.
The queen’s whole purpose in life is to lay eggs, and she can lay
1,500 to 1,900 eggs a day. The eggs and subsequent larvae are fed and
tended by the worker bees until they reach the pupa stage, at which
time the workers cap over the cell and wait for the adult bee to
emerge 12 days later.
“This is what you want to see – big, fat slabs of brood,” Edwards
says, when he finds a frame with a large, solid section of filled-in
and capped cells containing the pupae, which is called brood. Queens
that lay eggs in a patchy pattern are not considered good queens.
Photos by Esther K. Smith
The queen bee makes her rounds, above. She is the larger,
amber-colored bee to the left of the others.
The capped-over cells in the comb are called brood. Below, Edwards and
Larry Winkel divide hives to
prevent overcrowding and future swarming.
Once the new box has enough filled
frames from the original box — each box ending up with some filled and
some empty frames — Edwards and Winkel place a special screen, called
a queen excluder, over the top of the original box and place the new
box on top of that.
“The worker bees can get through the screen but the queen can’t,”
Edwards says. “They’ll go up and take care of the eggs and larvae and
cap them over, and then after a few days we’ll say, ‘Thank you very
much!’ and pull it off and put it on its own pallet.”
At this point the new queen is introduced. She comes in a little
screened container called a “candy cage.” One end has an exit tube
that is filled with a plug of sugar, and once it is placed in the hive
the workers will eat away at one end and the queen will eat away from
her end, until the way is clear for her to exit.
“If we get in there a few days later and they haven’t managed to open
it, we’ll let her out,” Edwards says.
Dividing the hives is not only helping to prevent swarming, but it is
also helping Edwards build his hive numbers back up after a disastrous
winter.
“This winter I lost about 500 hives to mites,” Edwards says. “It’s not
the mite level that killed them; it’s the viruses that go along with
them. I’ve had pretty good winters but his winter was the worst by
far. I bought some starts (four frames of bees and a queen) since I
lost so many — this is the first time I’ve had to buy bees from
someone else to build my hives back up.”
A lot of farmers and growers depend on those hives. Edwards provides
pollination services for cherry crops in The Dalles and pears in the
Hood River Valley before moving on to the Willamette Valley for the
carrot seed, berries and meadow foam.
“Shortly after that, we’ll take some to do the clover seed in Eugene
and Silverton, then they go to Madras for seed crops there,” he says.
He doesn’t get much call for setting hives in apple orchards.
“Except maybe for the ‘king bloom’ — the first bloom that opens;
that’s all most of them want,” he says, referring to the apple
growers. “Otherwise they just have to do more thinning.”
He does his own hauling for local clients, but when he ships his hives
to California for prunes or almonds, they travel on a semi-truck. “It
takes about two semi-loads to ship them,” he says.
Renting hives at $35 each when you need one per acre may be expensive,
but farmers know that good pollination can increase their production —
up to 300 percent, according to some estimates. When it comes to
pears, the OSU Extension Service recommends three hives per acre.
According to the Extension Service, pear blossoms are relatively low
in nectar and the nectar has a low sugar content, to bees prefer to
visit other kinds of flowers.
Edwards points to some glistening nectar in one of the frames.
“They’ve found quite a bit of nectar today — probably off the vine
maples or big-leaf maples,” he says. As the year progresses, nectar
will be more abundant.
“You need temperatures of about 70 degrees to get nectar,” he adds.
“The honey usually starts around June. When the wildflowers and wild
grasses come along the honey really starts flowing.”
Honey is part of Edwards’ business, though he says that most of it is
shipped in 55-gallon drums to factories back east.
“We sell a little of it around here, at fruit stands and such,” he
says.
Now and then Edwards will get a call from the sheriff’s office or
people who know him to deal with a swarm of bees.
“There’s no money in it; it’s basically a public service,” he says.
“This is what we do, so it’s sort of our duty to handle that stuff —
at least that’s the way I feel.”
After honey is harvested in the fall, things wind down for Edwards
until winter, when he builds boxes and gets ready for spring. He also
drives a snowplow for the Oregon Department of Transportation from
November to March.
Which brings him back to the “bee season.” Examining hives, repairing
hives, dividing hives, and hauling them from farm to farm — staying as
busy as his bees. |
