Directing Sunbeams

“The keeping of bees is like the direction of sunbeams.”

                                                              Henry David Thoreau

On a beautiful spring Saturday, a flatbed truck rolled into the Delaware Valley with over 7 million honeybees.  Jim Bobb, Proprietor of Worcester Honey Farms, was at the wheel, exhausted from his all-night journey from Baxley, Georgia.

Back at his farm, dozens of people had already assembled, enjoying the warm sunshine, chatting with the easy affability of those who enjoy a shared passion.  Like junkies on a street corner, we were all waiting for just one thing - our packages.

A package is a small wooden box containing three pounds, or approximately 12,000 bees, enough to kick-start a hive.  After a package is installed, the queen, together with a few of her attendants, will hang protected in her own little box for three days, until the worker bees can get used to her pheromones.  Once the workers accept her scent, she will be “released” from her box by the beekeeper and become the new De Facto Queen of the Hive!

Picking out a lively bunch!

The bees being brought to the farm were Italians, a race known for their gentleness, industriousness and abundant honey production.  In addition, Northern Italy shares the 40^th parallel with the Mid-Atlantic, making this race of bees perfectly suited to our regional weather conditions.  

As one of Jim’s students, I had volunteered to help distribute packages to the beekeepers arriving throughout the afternoon and had a chance to ask people why they kept bees. Interestingly, many of them shared my own personal reasons.  I have often been asked if I do it for the honey? Or wax for my encaustic paintings?  Although those things will be very nice, the truth is that I do it for the enjoyment and stewardship of the bees themselves.

A fellow hobbyist

In 2011, I conducted a large market research study on consumer attitudes about organic food. Through this research, I learned about Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD), a phenomenon where hundreds of millions of honeybees have mysteriously disappeared, leaving their brood, honey and even their queen behind.  National Agriculture Statistics report that honey-producing hives around the world have declined by 50% since 1980 and that this phenomenon has reached epidemic proportions since 2008.

The famous Albert Einstein quote came to mind, “If the bee disappeared off the face of the earth, man would only have four years left to live.” A range of explantations for this phenomenon include pesticides, genetic modification, commercial beekeeping practices and even radiation from cell phones preventing bee’s navigation.  No one really knows for sure.

What we do know is that private citizens, with even one or two hives, can greatly support the bee’s recovery.  This idea has gained momentum in recent years, with thousands of hobbyists starting hives, from suburban gardens to urban rooftops.  One retired gentleman exclaimed as I handed him his package, “It’s so little to give back when you think how much these little critters give to us!”

Beekeepers heading home to install their hives

My hive goes Live

So, with our packages installed, now we wait. Will the weather cooperate, allowing the worker bees to get a head start on the season’s forage? Will they succumb to disease or other perils of the environment? Last year was my first attempt at beekeeping and my hive was lost to Varroa mites, a virus considered the world’s most destructive honeybee killer. I’m hoping for better luck this year.

I think Thoreau had it right, beekeeping is like directing sunbeams. We give them all the support we can, but in nature, as in so many things in life, it is out of our control. The author Sue Monk Kidd, who wrote The Secret Life of Bees, also gave some good advice,  “Above all, send the bees love. Every little thing wants to be loved.”

As I write this post, I’m heading out to give my bees a little bit of love.  Stay tuned.

My little hive

“I like pulling on a baggy bee suit, forgetting myself and getting as close to the bees' lives as they will let me, remembering in the process that there is more to life than the merely human.”

                                                Sue Hubbell, A Book of Bees