Guardians of bees and the environment

The first monthly meeting of the Tuscarawas County Beekeepers Association Inc. was held recently at the Grace Lutheran Church Outreach Building in Dover. The educational program for the evening was a round table discussion on getting your bees through the home stretch of winter.

Club members Ray Wirt, Seth Angel and Dan Andrews led the discussion. Unfortunately, with the extreme cold the area experienced, it hasn’t been a good winter for bees. Some members lost many hives because of the cold. Food was available inside the hives, but it was too cold for the bees to get to it.

Members also discussed how last fall’s drought affected colonies. With less water, many flowers did not bloom and bees had fewer resources to store for winter. Beekeepers can supplement feed inside hives when needed.

Beekeepers will try a variety of techniques to bring back the hives with a new colony. The combs and bee boxes can be reused.

“If you get into spring and a swarm finds it, they can move in, or you can go find a swarm and you can use that box to then house that swarm,” Wirt said. “You can also do bee management, things like making splits in your colonies, because springtime is when the bees are going to be at their most productive.”

Spring is also when nature is most helpful to bees.

“There's good nectar flow. You've got good pollen and the temperatures warming up,” Wirt said.

There are other ways to restore colonies including splitting the colonies and resources and letting bees make their own queen or purchasing a queen or buying package bees.

Winter isn’t the only thing that can cause trouble for beekeepers. The discussion continued into parasites like certain mites that can kill entire hives of bees if they aren’t kept in check. Remedies old and new were considered.

Despite all the problems, beekeepers are a hardy group, all find bees fascinating, and they appreciate the rewards of their work. According to ancient rock paintings found in Spain, beekeeping dates back to at least 7,000 BC.

Seth Angel remembered one interesting member of the group.

“He used to come to the meetings, and he was in his 90s; probably had been keeping bees for 75 years. Almost every meeting, he said, I learned something new about bees this month,” Angel said.

“Well, that's my joke, because anybody who says they know everything about beekeeping is a liar,” Wirt said.

Bees are also considered livestock and are regulated as livestock in Ohio.

“If you want to go get antibiotics for your bees, you have to go to the vet and get a veterinary feed directive for certain things,” Wirt said.

Bees are responsible for pollinating 75-80% of the world’s supply of food.

“Bees pollinate all that food across the world. If you don't have honeybees, we don't have a lot of food,” Brenda Cameron, president of the Tuscarawas County Beekeepers Association, said. “I think we do it because we love bees. We love the environment.”

One item that people might not think about as needing to be pollinated is almonds.

“If you like almonds that's a whole big deal right there,” Wirt said. “That's billions of dollars’ worth of nuts that they produce in California.”

Without bees, people are not going to enjoy foods like melons, squashes, berries, and many other fruits and vegetables.

With beekeeping, the financial return is modest compared to the value members feel from contributing to environmental efforts.

“I think my best year, I probably produced somewhere between 800 to 850 pounds of honey,” Wirt said.

Before he got to that point though he slowly increased his number of hives and always reinvested what he earned back into the hobby.

Beekeepers also like being able to use the honey produced from their hives.

New beekeepers are welcome to join the Tuscarawas County Beekeepers Association as they work to help each other be good stewards of the earth.

Upcoming meetings and topics include: March 12, mosquito spraying and other environmental issues; April 9, how to catch a swarm; May 14, pollinator plants and what and when to plant; June 11, using nucs in your apiary; July 11, no meeting, club picnic; Aug. 13, bee stings and reactions; Sept. 10, necropsy of a deadout; Oct. 8, to be determined; and Nov. 12, winter management open discussion.