Beekeeping

I should start by admitting that an article on beekeeping was not my idea.  One of my fellow Garden Shed writers suggested the topic, and frankly, I doubted that it would be of interest to most gardeners — mostly because that was my dubious reaction.  Oh boy, was I ever wrong.  I dutifully set up an interview with the leaders of the area beekeeping community —  Ken and Karen Hall — and after a minute or so of chatting with them, I became utterly fascinated by the connections between gardening and beekeeping. 

I thought I knew all about pollination, but somehow I hadn’t quite grasped what a miracle it is for life on earth.  When bees come into our yards and fields, they are seeking food for their own survival; by doing so, these tiny creatures move pollen from one flower to another, making possible new fruits and seeds when pollen from a male organ of one flower is dropped on the female organ of a nearby flower.  This marvel of reciprocity between plants and pollinators is more than a miracle; it’s essential to life on earth.  And it makes gardening possible!  I will never gaze at bees buzzing around my plants in the same way ever again.

It was the interconnectedness of gardening and beekeeping that led to the Halls’ involvement with bees.  It all started when Karen, an avid vegetable gardener, learned that bees could improve her garden’s yield. Eager for more cucumbers to pickle, Karen mentioned this to Ken, and he, in turn, mentioned it to a colleague who kept bees. The next thing you know, Ken had brought home a hive, and the rest is history.  The Halls have been keeping bees for 28 years now.  

The Halls do much more than simply keep bees; they teach a yearly introductory beekeeping class through Albemarle Parks & Recreation, serve as mentors to new beekeepers, and provide education to the public, including school children.  I’ve witnessed just how fascinating the Halls’ presentations are to kids, who can barely take their eyes off the glassed-in “observation hive” of live bees that the Halls bring along.  Karen Hall also maintains the “Swarm List” — a service to members of the public who discover honey bees swarming on their property (more about this later). Both of the Halls are officers of the Central Virginia Beekeepers Association.  

The western honey bee (Apis mellifera) is a non-native species that is managed for its pollination services to agriculture; thus, the honey bee is considered to be “domesticated” — like cows and sheep. In fact, the so-called western or European honey bee was brought to North America — to Jamestown — in 1622.  This species of bees is preferred for commercial farm pollination because the population of their hives is unusually large; a single hive may have tens of thousands of individuals.   

Honey bees are social animals, with three social castes within a hive:  queen, worker, (female) and drone (males), each having particular roles to play in the functioning of the hive.   As I learned from the Halls, a hive is one amazingly complex operation which requires communication among its members.  

Ken Hall described a particularly thrilling type of honey bee communicative behavior.   If a worker bee finds a promising site for forage, it is able to share this information with other workers back at the hive.  How?  By performing the “waggle dance” — which signals not only the direction of the flowers from the hive, but also the distance from the hive! Having always thought of bees and other insects as rather mindless, instinct-driven creatures, I was more than a little surprised by Ken’s description of this dance.  Back home, I followed up with some research on the topic, and discovered that the waggle dance is only one of a number of forms of communication engaged in by honey bees.  To read more about their behaviors and their division of labor, see the references at the end of this article, especially “Honey Bees as Pollinators, Their Habitats and Products,” University of Missouri Coop. Ext. (2018) and “Pollinator Declines,” Penn State Ext. (discussing hygienic behaviors of honey bees as well as a comprehensive analysis of the dramatic population decline that began in 2006).

 

Honey bees engage in some other behavior that was news to me: swarming.  Swarming is the process by which some members of the hive, including the “old” queen, leave and set up a new home elsewhere, thus becoming “feral” bees.  For an exhilarating description of this process, read “Frequently Asked Questions about Honey Bee Swarms,” Clemson Coop.Ext.  As the Halls put it, the departing bees “go from domesticated to feral,” and unfortunately, “unmanaged feral colonies have an average life expectancy of only about 14 months.”  

 

How does beekeeping relate to gardening and food production?  

By now you may have heard that one-third of our food supply depends on honeybees for pollination.  In the U.S. there are fewer than 2,000 commercial beekeepers, a number that is concerningly small to those in-the-know like the Halls.  These commercial bee operations move about the country, taking their hives to farms and orchards from Florida to California.  You’ve no doubt heard about the needs of almond farms in California.  From the Halls, I learned that there are about 700,000 acres of almonds, and that at least two hives are needed to pollinate a single acre; thus, this crop requires about 1.4 million hives.  

The U.S. crops that are currently highly dependent on honey bees are:

• alfalfa 
• almonds
• apples
• avocados 
• blueberries 
• blackberries
• cherries
• citrus (oranges, limes, etc.)
• cranberries
• cucumbers
• melons
• raspberries
• squash (including pumpkins and zucchini) 
• strawberries
• watermelons. 

 

The Halls explained that home gardens also benefit from the presence of honey bees, which boost yields, producing more and larger fruit, flowers, and vegetables.  To learn more about the pollination services of both honey bees and wild bees, check out this Penn State article: “Who Are Our Pollinators?” Penn State Ext. (“With the recent declines in honey bee populations, researchers are looking more closely at wild bees and the work they do in agricultural crops.”) 

Is beekeeping difficult or time-consuming? Ken’s initial answer to this question was “It’s easy to get started, but harder to keep going.”  On the other hand, both the Halls enjoy the fact that, in beekeeping, “you’re always learning.”  Part of the work involves monitoring for and treating diseases and parasitic mites.  Most of us are aware of the large losses suffered by honeybees due to “Colony Collapse Disorder” beginning in  2006, but for the Halls, keeping up on the research on this topic is another opportunity to learn.  Ken was also careful to point out that he has a full-time job, with beekeeping fitting nicely into the “side hustle” category.  

How do plant choices affect honey bees?

Beekeepers must not only watch for and treat mites and diseases, they must also keep an eye on the nearby sources for nectar and pollen that are essential to bee nutrition and health.  Pollen is a honey bee’s source of protein; carbohydrates and some other nutrients come from plant nectar.  The pollen from some plants is more nutritious than that of other plants; in addition, some varieties of plants provide more nectar and pollen than others. The nectar is also “stored in the pantry”  — i.e., the honey bees use it to make honey to meet their nutritional needs during the winter.  

Thus, beekeepers are vitally interested in the plants that feed their hives, especially early and late in the season. No surprise then that Karen Hall is a big fan of early spring bloomers like snowdrops, crocus, and hellebores, as well as flowering trees and shrubs. It is trees and shrubs that primarily meet the early spring needs of honey bees, with plants like clover taking over later in the season.  If you’re looking at add plants that support pollinators, you’ll want to consult one of these helpful plant lists:  

• “Blooms for Bees:  How to Provide Pollen and Nectar Sources,” Rutgers
• “Plants for Year-round Bee Forage,” University of Georgia Bee Program

The University of Georgia is a leader in the field of bee research — along with Penn State and the University of Florida — and comes highly recommended by the Halls.

I now understand why we should all be interested in honey bees and the role they play in feeding us.  And I’m eager to learn more about how scientists are working to understand the health hazards faced by honey bees as well as what we can all do to prevent the ongoing declines in bee populations.  

 

SOURCES:

“Honey Bees as Pollinators, Their Habitats and Products,” University of Missouri Coop. Ext. (2018).

Pollinator Declines,” Penn State Ext. 

Pollination Basics, University of Maryland Extension (2023)

“Social signal learning of the waggle dance in honey bees,”  Science 379,1015-1018.(Shihao Dong et al, 2023)

The Honey Bee Dance Language,” NC State Ext. (2016)

“Dismantling Babel: creation of a universal calibration for honey bee waggle dance decoding,”  ScienceDirect (Animal Behaviour, 2019)

“Honey bee waggle dance calibration,” https://www.schurch.ento.vt.edu/project/waggle_calibration/

“Blooms for Bees:  How to Provide Pollen and Nectar Sources,” Rutgers

Honey Bee Pollen Timing Chart/ Clemson Ext.

“Characterizing the floral resources of a North American metropolis using a honey bee foraging assay,” Ecosphere (2020)

Pollinator Declines,” Penn State Ext.