July 2007
Buzz Kill
Can urban beekeepers save the world?
By Niki Stojnic | Illustration by Justin Freet
Approaching Dawn Corl’s cozy plum home — nestled in a tree-lined, Seattle neighborhood on a sunny morning — it’s clear something unusual is abuzz in this sliver of urban jungle. A sign on the door warns “Beware of bees,” and inside, a colony of said bees points the way toward a vibrant backyard where more of the hive lurks, awaiting unsuspecting visitors.
Of course, the European bees don’t really lurk so much as meander peacefully. Still, they’re often misunderstood — visitors mistaking them for yellowjackets, or fearing their stingers. But Corl’s bees are an industrious, tranquil bunch, cohabiting in her yard with four rabbits and Homer, an excitable gray terrier. They glide from the colorful stacked wooden boxes that house their hives out of Corl’s leafy garden and into the city, dusting their legs with pollen and collecting nectar from fruit trees, clovers and blackberry bushes — ensuring spring flowers morph into summer fruit, and honey production gets underway.
Corl, a cheerful woman with wiry salt and pepper hair, discovered beekeeping entirely by accident. About two weeks before her 40th birthday, browsing a bookstore, she picked up A Book of Bees by Sue Hubbell. “The first sentence was, ‘I didn’t keep bees the first 40 years of my life and those were the bad 40.’ I read it and became fascinated with bees, just the biology of them. And then there was the ego thing: ‘Am I brave enough to do this?’ She was, and though she really only thought she’d keep one, perhaps two, colonies (it’s a colony if it has a queen), she giggles, “stuff happened.” One colony swarmed and turned into two, it swarmed again and the rest is history. She now has four, which is the maximum number allowed in Seattle.
Corl is part of a growing swarm of “urban beekeepers” — city-dwellers who have carved out a niche for these honey-producing busybodies in neighborhoods where nature is usually limited to a couple of pets and plant life.
Free to Bee You And Me
There’s no doubt that honeybees are intrinsic to our breakfast, lunch and dinner tables — and that’s not counting honey, which itself is used in myriad ways medicinal to edible. More than 100 crops rely on pollinators, according to the Xerces Society, with honeybees being the most important managed pollinators. Most of the public took this for granted until about a year ago, when bees and beekeeping shot into the news thanks largely to “colony collapse disorder,” or CCD, the name given to the nationwide mystery of honeybees leaving their colonies, never to return. What happens to them — death by cold, exhaustion, other; and why — infection, pesticide poisoning stress — is the source of intense debate.
That maladies befall honeybee colonies regionally, as they might in any other agricultural niche, isn’t news. What’s different now is that the CCD problem, which tops a laundry list of other, less-publicized bee plagues from loss of habitat (think suburban sprawl) to mite infestations, is happening across the country. The economic implications of a honeybee shortage on commercial beekeepers vary depending on the crop, but the industry that stands to lose the most are California’s almond growers, which alone require 1.3 million colonies of bees, according to a study from the USDA Agricultural Research Service — that’s about half of all the honeybees in the U.S. The growers began importing bees from New Zealand and Australia in 2005 to keep up with their increasing bee needs. The study notes that in the last three months of 2006, beekeepers on both coasts and in between reported 30 percent to 60 percent losses due to CCD, and points to evidence that CCD has been breaking out sporadically for three or more years.
Back in Washington, bee losses have not hit shortage levels. And there is an ocean of difference between commercial beekeepers and hobbyists, who have their own perspective on CCD and the attention it has garnered.
“I think it’s aliens,” jokes Corl in a nod to what she considers some of the more ludicrous causes theorized for CCD, such as cell phone radiation. She gets serious, however. “I think it hit the commercial keepers in different parts of the country harder, but it is worldwide, which makes it very interesting.” Two linked theories have the most weight with her so far: “Some of the systemic pesticides we’re using are actually weakening the bees in very significant ways.” Weak immune systems, she says, make the bees more susceptible to an HIV-like retrovirus, which has been found in some colonies.
“I think the degree of loss, at least in this area, has been exaggerated,” she says. “There are plenty of bees in this area that have survived the winter. I don’t think we’re going to starve, I don’t think it’s the end of food as we know it.”
Michael Thompson, who co-founded the Chicago Honey Co-op four-and-a-half years ago, agrees. “We go through cycles of losing our bees, and it usually has to do with the parasitic mite. There have been equally important and destructive things happening to bees [over the years] but the public has never picked up on it. To me it means the popularity of beekeeping has exploded. This is a sexy subject.”
The Secret Life of Beekeepers
Indeed, Thompson, who’s been teaching beekeeping in Chicago since the 1970s, has watched its popularity skyrocket. “In the beginning I had two students, a father and son. Now I teach the class once every winter, limit it to 20 students and always have to turn people away.” Bees have been a lifelong love for Thompson, who grew up in Kansas and semi-rural Missouri, and parlayed his fascination with social insects into tending his first hive at age 10. Today he has two bee farms in the city and one in the country, and theorizes that the locavore movement is responsible for renewed interest in beekeeping. “I think it has a lot to do with people caring about the environment. It’s about being aware of your surroundings,” says Thompson.
Honeybees and their keepers thrive in cities where regulations aren’t too constricting. In Seattle, the main points allow up to four hives behind a six-foot barrier or 25 feet from the adjacent property line. And while the West Coast is often the first to adopt the latest eco fad, other cities, including Chicago, have embraced beekeeping as part of a well-established trend towards urban agriculture. Thompson’s Chicago Honey Co-op provides jobs and training at its bee farm in the once-economically depressed, slowly revitalizing North Lawndale neighborhood. On top of City Hall, a 30,000 square foot rooftop garden includes beehives, which Thompson helped install and still maintains. The hives are part of a wider city greening program that Mayor Richard Daley has proudly spearheaded and in doing so, brought honeybees into the community spotlight.
San Francisco has perhaps the most lenient city regulations: There aren’t any, according to Paul Koski, who teaches classes with the San Francisco Beekeepers’ Association. “I think it’s a testament to the job that we do to minimize problems,” he says. “We prevent restrictive regulations that way.”
If there is a nuisance complaint, club members are quick to relocate a hive.
“It’s important in urban beekeeping to be good neighbors and to keep bees well-managed so they don’t become a problem.”
A science teacher for the last 30 years, Koski took up beekeeping in his spare time 15 years ago. He estimates the club manages about 50 hives around San Francisco: a couple in Golden Gate Park, others in community gardens and on city watershed property. He says that the urgency of colony collapse disorder hasn’t hit urban beekeepers, at least on the West Coast, the way it has commercial keepers. Possibly because city beehives are smaller in numbers and more isolated, their hives are not moved to different crops through the season, and consequently don’t have the same stresses that might contribute to massive CCD outbreaks. But Koski is cautious, adding, “That may change, maybe we just haven’t experienced it yet.”
Most beekeepers seem to agree that challenges, beyond the biggies such as mite infestations and the dreaded CCD, are pretty straightforward and have more to do with the processes outside of the handling of honeybees — such as putting honey in jars or lifting the honeybee boxes (called supers).
“It’s hot, heavy work,” says Thompson. “You have to not mind getting dirty and sweating a lot. You need a good back, since you’re lifting hundreds of pounds a day, good eyesight, so you can see the eggs, which are like tiny grains of rice.”
A Flying Swiss Army Knife?
On an unseasonably hot spring Saturday, at the Puget Sound Beekeepers Association’s apiary tucked next to the greenhouse in the 230-acre Washington Park Arboretum, a small work party is in progress. Apiary manager Bruce Becker is painting new supers. John deGroot, donning protective gear — a billowy nylon jacket and a hard hat with a mesh veil around the face, is only too happy to show and tell while inspecting hives.
He removes the hive cover and puffs some smoke over his bare hands and in the bees’ direction, which masks his scent and stimulates them to go feed on honey, calming them. Then he uses a metal hive tool to gently pry apart and lift out each frame. There’s a larger, blocky, stingerless drone, who lives to mate with the queen, ambling amidst many female worker bees, some with yellow and orange pollen clinging to their legs, others who are communicating the location of food by vibrating their bodies and moving in a figure eight pattern.
Eventually, a few frames in, deGroot spies a queen, about one-and-a-half times longer than the others, marked with a pink spot for easy visibility. “Some people have called honeybees a flying Swiss Army knife,” says deGroot, whose enthusiasm for his hobby is clear even through these oft-repeated lessons. “The back pair of legs have stiff hairs [to catch] the pollen, the middle pair of legs have a notch that acts as a pollen press, they can put a wad of pollen in there and clamp down and pack it. On the front pair of legs, you have a notch, the antenna cleaner. Since the antenna is their source of hearing, smell, and everything, it’s really important.”
Some urban beekeepers, like Thompson, say there’s no question that city agriculture, which includes community farms and beekeeping, is far better than conventional agriculture these days, since rural soil has been sapped of the nutrients and microorganisms that keep it “alive.” Not long ago, Thompson, then working an organic farm in north central Illinois, was startled by what he found: “I picked up the soil and not one thing was moving. I’ve been working soil my whole life. When you pick up soil that’s alive, you should see something moving. The land had been basically destroyed.”
Fortunately, Illinois’ early agricultural roots have left Chicago city bees an abundant legacy of white clover, as well as native linden trees. These plants are the makings of some of the best honey, contends Thompson. He likens honey to wine — both derive their flavors from the unique chemistry of the region they come from.
“I always say beekeeping is part of every culture in the world except the Arctic,” says Thompson, “It pervades all cultures at least as old as the Egyptians, as old as agriculture.” In the U.S., where honeybees aren’t native, beekeeping has a shorter, but no less illustrious history, having been introduced to the American colonies at their founding. The mid-1800s saw the introduction of groundbreaking techniques and equipment that opened the door to commercial beekeeping.
Relax to the Hum of Honeybees
Contemporary beekeepers, like Corl, seem to gravitate towards thoughtful, meditative hobbies. “It’s very similar to music in that you’re so involved in it, so concentrated on it, the rest of the world goes away.”
Others, such as Becker, who was first intrigued by honeybees as a child growing up on Bainbridge Island, undaunted by an inaugural sting in the eye, have dabbled in candle making and other crafts. Corl’s husband, Jerry Mixon, runs a business removing unwanted honeybees and hornets from places as varied as Amtrak trains and sailboats.
Often, says Corl, Mixon talks people into keeping their honeybees, and even their yellowjackets, hornets or other stinger-armed insects. Perhaps that, along with the hum of honeybees in Corl’s backyard and increasingly in other urban green spaces, offers hope, if not an antidote, to the steady drone of concern over the future of beekeeping.
“I don’t think the bees are going to disappear, the food system isn’t going to fail,” says Thompson. Instead, he hopes that more environmental awareness, along with growing interest in honeybees, continue to bring nature into urban areas.
“The most rewarding aspect of urban beekeeping is that you get to live close to where you’re working and to be working outside,” he says. “I love that. I see cranes and peregrine falcons overhead. There’s a peacefulness about it too. You’re kind of moving in slow motion.”
Koski finds joy in watching a bee colony grow and thrive. “There’s such a complex social network that goes on in a hive,” he says. But being able to share his enjoyment and understanding of honeybees with the public is equally gratifying. “I find it rewarding to be able to educate the public, dispel misconceptions and fears and to show people that beekeeping is not a death-defying activity.”
The tide certainly seems to be turning in his favor. “I think there’s a trend towards recognizing honeybees are an asset to the environment and the natural world,” contemplates the San Francisco beekeeper. “Not something to be afraid of, or to be squished and killed.”
This is the first time Seattle-based freelance writer and editor Niki Stojnic has ever been instructed to “avoid looking like a bear” for a story — so far, the bees haven’t mistaken her for one.
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