All the buzz ... Beekeepers begin late summer honey extraction

By Lauren Radomski (Contact) | The Daily Journal

Published Saturday, September 6, 2008

Forget Labor Day barbecues and back-to-school prep: The end of summer means area beekeepers are busy extracting honey from the hives they’ve tended all year.

“The bee business is like any other business,” said Mark Troje, a beekeeper out of Miltona. “This is harvest time now.”

Minnesota beekeepers are well into extraction season, spending roughly six weeks between mid-August and late September collecting honey from their hives.

Troje and his wife, Barb, keep 1,200 hives in Douglas and Otter Tail counties, as well as Valley City, N.D. In the bee business for 28 years, Troje said he’s learned to tell when the honey flow is ready — a stream that can continue for two months.

Many beekeepers remove honey from the honey comb using a mechanical extractor. After removing the wax caps that cover each honey comb cell, the beekeeper can use the extractor to spin the honey comb and extract the honey using centrifugal force. The process keeps the comb from breaking and allows it to be re-used by bees.

“It’s like farming — some years are better than others,” Troje said of honey production. “This is a down year for Minnesota.”

It all depends on Mother Nature, he said. This summer may have been too cool — “The hotter the summer, the better the summer for the bees” — and the absence of blossoming basswood trees didn’t help either.

Not to mention the effects of Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD), the name for the mysterious disappearance of honeybees around the country. The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) first received reports of disappearing bees in October 2006, when some beekeepers noticed losses of 30 to 90 percent of their hives.

According to the USDA’s Agricultural Research Service, the main symptom of CCD is a hive with a queen but no or few adult bees. No dead bees are visible and often there is still honey in the hive.

At a glance:

A few facts about bees and honey consumption, courtesy of the 2000 NOVA program, “Tales from the Hive:”

• The average American consumes a little over one pound of honey a year.

• In the course of her lifetime, a worker bee will produce 1/12th of a teaspoon of honey.

• In a single collecting trip, a worker will visit between 50 and 100 flowers. She will return to the hive carrying over half her weight in pollen and nectar.

• Workers in a hive fly 55,000 miles and tap two million flowers to make one pound of honey.

• Theoretically, the energy in one ounce of honey would provide one bee with enough energy to fly around the world.

• Most researchers believe the honeybee originated in Africa and was introduced to the Americas by European colonists.

• In one day, a queen can lay her weight in eggs. She will lay one egg per minute, day and night, for a total of 1,500 eggs over a 24-hour period and 200,000 eggs in a year. Should she stop her frantic egg-laying pace, her workers will move a recently-laid egg into a queen cell to produce her replacement.

For more information on “Tales from the Hive,” www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/bees.

Roger Paler of Fergus Falls is among the Minnesota beekeepers who’ve felt the effects of CCD. A beekeeper for about 10 years, Paler said the roughly 20,000 bees he’s kept in the past have produced 100 pounds of honey annually, half of which he’s sold from a roadside stand. Paler isn’t keeping a hive this year, but recalls missing bees in the recent past.

“Two years ago I lost most of my bees — they just disappeared,” he said.

But like many beekeepers, Paler isn’t ready to throw in the towel; he says he plans to keep hives again in the future.

As for the Trojes, they’re wrapping up extraction locally before leaving to start the process in Valley City next week. In November, the couple will transport the hives to California, and in late winter, the queens of each colony will begin to lay eggs in individual honey comb cells. The Trojes will live in California from February through April, bringing their bees back to Minnesota in the spring.

Bee myths:

Fascination with bees is nothing new. In fact, according to Insect Vista, myths about bees date back to ancient times.

• The Romans believed a swarm of bees was bad luck. Bees were believed to be divine creatures which originated directly from the gods.

• In ancient times, it was believed that bees were attracted to the sounds of clanging metal, thus bees were associated with the love of music.

• Bees are symbolic of sexuality, chastity, fertility, purity and care. They are also considered to be an image of a human soul due to their natural ability to find their way home from great distances.

• Jupiter was said to have been fed and protected by bees when he was hidden in a grotto by his mother Rea, on Ida Mountain.

• According to legend the first beekeeper was Bahus (god of wine), who domesticated them during his travels in Frakia.

• The Hindu gods Vishnu, Krishna and Indra were referred to as “nectar born ones” (Madhava) and were often represented as bees perched on a lotus flower.

• The Egyptian sun god Re was believed to have created bees and humans from his tears. Burying the nobility in honey was a common practice in Eygpt as a form of embalming the dead. The Eygptians also placed bees and honey in tombs as offerings to spirits of the dead.

• St Ambrose of Milan is the patron saint of beekeepers and it was said that as a child, his father found the sleeping boy covered in a swarm of bees.

• Mead or honey wine is one of the oldest alcolholic beverages in the world and was drunk in countries such as Ireland, Ethiopia, India, Germany and Greece. Because mead was believed to be the drink of immortality, bees were legally protected in Ireland.

• Bees, supposedly being capable of "virgin births", became symbolic of the Virgin Mary.

• A long believed myth about bees is that they do not sting at night, which in fact is incorrect ,they will sting at anytime for protection.

For more information on bees and other insects, visit www.insectvista.com.

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