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High Country News -- March 19, 2007: The Silence of the Bees

High Country News -- March 19, 2007: The Silence of the Bees

The Silence of the Bees

FEATURE ARTICLE - March 19, 2007 by Hannah Nordhaus

Scanning electron microscope image of a bee loaded with pollen. DARWIN DALE/PHOTO RESEARCHERS INC.

The perilous existence of a migratory beekeeper amid a great bee die-off

By the time John Miller realized just how many of his bees were dying, the almonds were in bloom and there was nothing to be done. It was February 2005, and the hives should have been singing with activity, plump brown honeybees working doggedly to carry pollen from blossom to blossom. Instead they were wandering in drunken circles at the base of the hive doors, wingless, desiccated, sluggish, blasé. Miller is accustomed to death on a large scale. “The insect kingdom enjoys little cell repair,” he will often remind you. Even when things are going well, a hive can lose 1,000 bees a day. But the extent of his losses that winter defied even his insect-borne realism. In a matter of weeks, Miller lost almost half of his 13,000 hives — around 300 million bees.

When it happened, Miller was in California’s Central Valley, where each February, when the almond trees burst into extravagant pink-and-white bloom, hundreds of beekeepers descend with billions of bees. More than 580,000 acres of almonds flower simultaneously there, and wild pollinators such as bumblebees, beetles, bats and wasps simply cannot transport enough pollen from tree to tree. Instead, almond ranchers depend on traveling beekeepers who, like retirees in Winnebagos, winter in warm places such as California and Florida, and head north to the Dakotas in the summer, where fields of alfalfa and clover produce the most coveted honey.

This annual bee migration isn’t just a curiosity; it’s the glue that holds much of modern agriculture together. Without the bees’ pollination services, California’s almond trees — the state’s top export crop — would produce 40 pounds of almonds per acre; with the bees, they can generate 2,400 pounds. Honeybees provide the same service for more than 100 other crops, from lettuce to cranberries to oranges to canola, up and down the West Coast.

Miller likes to call the annual pilgrimage of the beekeepers the “native migrant tour,” and he likes to call himself the tour’s “padrone.” He has thinning brown hair and an eternally bemused expression, and he never stands still. He is an observant but rebellious Mormon, and he doesn’t look the part of the flannel-and-rubbers-clad beekeeper: His usual uniform includes surf shorts, a baseball cap, running shoes and a race T-shirt. (He has run 25 marathons.) Miller, who is 52, is not the biggest beekeeper in the United States, nor is he the most politically connected — South Dakota’s Richard Adee, with his 70,000 hives, wins that distinction.

SWARMING

Bees increase the number of their colonies by swarming. In early spring, numbers of young bees are reared until the hive becomes crowded. Then drones are reared, and queen cells are built. The old queen and a part of the bees leave the hive to seek a new habitation. The hive, however, is left full of brood which is hourly hatching, and soon becomes as populous as ever. A young queen hatches in about eight days after the old one leaves, and if she is permitted, will destroy all the other embryo queens. If the bees, will to swarm again, they prevent her from doing this, and then second, and third, and often more swarms come out, led by these young queens.

A swarm of honey bees will settle on a tree branch or bush etc. whilst a few scout bees locate a new home. It is at that stage that a beekeeper can oftentimes collect the swarming bees by putting a suitable container such as an empty beehive below the settled swarm and encourage them to use that as their new home if the queen will accept it (if you are not an experienced beekeeper it is very much recommended that you do not attempt to capture a settled swarm of bees yourself). Find out more about bees here

NOVA Online | Tales from the Hive

NOVA Online | Tales from the Hive

• Anatomy of a Hive
  A hive is more than just a buzz of activity. The social organization rivals that in the best-run corporations, with each bee and each cell possessing a rigidly specific function. Have a look at the physical, behavioral, and social infrastructure inside a bees' nest.
  
  
• The Buzz About Bees
  Did you know that on average it takes the nectar from 10 million flowers to make one liter of honey? That a worker bee can carry half her weight in nectar and pollen and still fly? Beguile yourself with these and other fascinating facts about bees.
  
  
• Dances With Bees (Hot Science)
  As viewers witnessed in "Tales From the Hive," individual honeybees will perform a specialized, wing-fluttering dance to inform other bees of the distance, direction, and richness of a new source of nectar. In this interactive feature, try your hand at successfully interpreting such a bee ballet.