During these difficult months of Covid 19 caution and distancing, I wanted to write about something sweet—don’t we all need a little sweetness about now? So I called a few local beekeepers about their work with bees. Honeybees are just one type of bee. There are over 20,000 bee species worldwide, and about 4,000 species in North America. Most bees don’t live in hives or make honey—that’s the specialty of the honeybees. But all bees do the critical work of pollinating as they gather nectar. Bees pollinate 80 percent of all flowering plants, including about 75 percent of the fruits, nuts, and vegetables grown in the United States. Honeybees pollinate just under half of that 75 percent.
Beekeepers in northern Minnesota share a common challenge: keeping their hives alive through the harsh winters. Bees maintain a temperature of 92-93 degrees in their central nest regardless of the outside temperature. Drones leave the hive before winter, but the queen and worker bees remain. Worker bees born in the early spring live about 4 weeks and are constantly being replaced. But worker bees born later in the season are called “winter bees” and live much longer because they have more fat in their bodies. Bees don’t hibernate, so they’re active all winter, and they’re cold blooded, so they stay warm by clustering in a ball and feeding the larvae. They must have enough to eat or they will die. The preferred food is their own honey and the pollen they’ve gathered. Some beekeepers overwinter their hives inside a building for protection from cold wind and snow. Some leave the hives outside but cover portions of it in black paper to absorb the sun’s heat and transfer it to the hive. The bees stay in the hive during the winter except for “cleansing flights” to excrete bodily waste.
Janna Goerdt of Fat Chicken Farm successfully overwinters her bees in neighbor Ed Kuehl’s Morton building. She keeps 3 hives of “Minnesota Hygienic” bees, a strain developed at the University of Minnesota to be better at removing parasites. Matt Pliml who tends bees at his parents’ Wild Winds Farm near Cook had to start over with new bees this spring—last year’s breed was too aggressive. He’s trying Saskatraz bees this year, a new variety that’s supposed to be winter hardy and less aggressive. He tends 12 hives in three locations.
A hive consists of one queen bee who can live 3-4 years, thousands of female worker bees who live 4 weeks in the spring but up to 6 months during the winter, and several hundred male drones whose only job is to mate with the a queen, for a total population of 20,000 to 60,000 bees at the hive’s busiest time during the summer. The queen goes out on a mating flight and mates with drones from another hive, then comes home and stays put. The queen can lay up to 2,500 eggs a day during the height of the season. Worker bees feed her and care for her. They are also the ones who forage for nectar and pollen by visiting 50 to 100 flowers during each trip from the hive. They collect pollen on their legs and nectar in their stomachs and return to the hive to store the pollen, mixing it with honey to make “bee bread,” their summer food supply, and process the nectar into honey. It takes nectar from two million flowers to produce one pound of honey. Collectively, the worker bees fly 90,000 miles to make that pound of honey.
Honeybees also make propolis by mixing saliva and beeswax with the sap of poplars and evergreens. Propolis is an amazing substance—it is antibacterial, antiviral and antifungal—it keeps the hive sterile. It’s also a sealant that bees use to cover unwanted openings in the hive. Some beekeepers gather it and make a medicinal propolis tincture. When applied to wounds, it acts as an antibacterial bandage, sealing over the wound. Honey itself has been used medicinally for centuries, particularly in wound care, in treating diarrhea, in preventing infections, and as an effective cough remedy. And the world’s oldest known alcoholic beverage, mead, is made from fermented honey and water.
Bees seem like a miracle insect. But there are problems too. Bears, racoons, and skunks are predators. And mites: the varroa mite is the bane of beekeepers. All of the northern beekeepers I spoke with have dealt with mites. One treatment consists of gently raising the temperature in the hive to 107.6 degrees Fahrenheit which will kill mites but not bees. There are also chemical treatments using either synthetic or natural ingredients. And an oxalic acid vaporizer used over several weeks can kill mites. Some beekeepers suggest making the bottom of the hive out of screen so that when the bees groom the mites off, they fall down through the hive and out through the screen. Besides mites, there is also colony collapse disorder, with no sure cause. And then there are neonicotinoid insecticides, widely used residentially and in agriculture, which are suspected of harming bee populations.
Healthy bees are fascinating to watch, and to listen to. An average bee weighs 0.00025 pounds, or about 15 pounds for 60,000 bees. Their wings beat 11,400 times per minute—that’s why we hear a buzz when they fly by. They fly at about 15 miles per hour. They make beeswax using special glands on the underside of their abdomens. And they communicate with each other by dancing! When a bee finds a good nectar source, she flies back to the hive and performs a dance showing the location of the nectar in relation to the sun and the hive. A honey bee’s brain is about the size of a sesame seed, but it can learn and remember things, calculate distance and foraging efficiency. And honeybees don’t naturally sting unless they’ve been threatened.
The beekeepers I talked with like honey, but it’s more than that. Janna Goerdt told me “I like honey well enough, but I really keep bees because I like being around bees. The best thing about beekeeping, to me, is watching bees go about their business, and marveling at how wonderful they are. The honey and pollinating benefits they provide are just a little bonus.” Matt Pliml maintains three locations of hives and notices how different the honey tastes depending on the flowers that are available. He feels a sense of accomplishment at the end of the season when the colonies have thrived. In 2019, he harvested 30 gallons of honey.
If you want to support beekeepers, you can often find their honey at farmers markets. Matt’s parents sell his honey at the Cook Area Farmers Market and Janna sells hers at the Tower Farmers Market. If you want to support all of those other wild bees that make our food possible, leave the dandelion blossoms for them—it’s one of the earliest foods they can find.