I was sitting here putting together my post titled "MORE (CREEPY) INFO ON HONEYBEES" ( http://www.rumormillnews.com/cgi-bin/forum.cgi?read=99759 ) earlier which is included in this thread and I thought, "God, I wish an actual beekeeper would write in because I want to know what he or she might have to say. Thank you, God! :-) This beekeeper's practices sound reasonable and sane to me.
I have no experience with beekeeping and I am reporting what is being sent to me by readers in the interest of all perspectives.
My original post and resulting thread:
http://www.rumormillnews.com/cgi-bin/forum.cgi?read=99499
By the way, I like honeybees and enjoy watching them. I see lots of honeybees in the warmer months where I live and have not yet ascertained if there are any beekeepers near me. So far my queries have come up negative.
I've included this reader's email below. Thank you, Reader, for your well written reply! What I would like to ask is what are your thoughts about the "Colony Collapse Disorder" which has been reported? Is it really happening as reported and do you have any thoughts as to why?
Intuit
Re: MORE (CREEPY) INFO ON HONEYBEES
I am a beekeeper and would like to address some of the items mentioned in "creepy". Beekeepers have a large investment in time and money for their bee management and as such are deeply interested in their well being and welfare. The layman not familiar with honeybees views the animal unit as the individual bee but the actual entity is the colony. A three pound package of bees cost around $50 and if these are used with their queen for establishing a hive in standard hive woodenware one can easily have 250$ invested and will not see any excess honey for at least one year.
Royal jelly and venom harvesting are rarely done as the quantities are very small. Honey and wax are the prime products. Propolis [the substance that the bees use to glue things together] is also rarely obtained. It is sometimes used in specialty polishes and finishes. In 40 years of this endeavor I have never known anyone to harvest propolis, venom, or royal jelly in any capacity other than just to see if they could do it.
"Queen bees are artificially inseminated with sperm obtained from decapitated bees", other than laboratory operations or experimentation with hybrid types, beekeepers do not inseminate their queens. The techniques require large amounts of skill and special equipment. Beekeepers do not inseminate their queens, they mate in the air naturally with local drones and after returning to the hive after this mating flight rarely, if ever, fly again. A colony of bees will kill off all the males before cold weather sets in each year, they tear their wings off and drop them away from the hive.
Swarming is the reproductive act of the colony. This takes place under varied conditions but two primarily, 1. over crowding of the hive and, 2. failure of the queen in producing eggs. Clipping the queens wings or marking her with a paint drop is known to trigger swarming and beekeepers try to avoid these actions. Those with thousands of hives sometimes will clip the right wing to indicate even years and the left side wings for odd years. This way they know immediately how old a queen is as some commercial operators replace queens every other year. Although they live for 3-5 years, swarming of a hive greatly reduces the population weakening the colony as well as lowering honey production, when older queens are replaced swarming takes place. Maintaining a stable, large hive population is beneficial to the colony. Bought hybrid queens can easily cost $12-18 apiece and the next generation will mate naturally thereby altering the original genetic make-up and voiding any attempt to maintain a pure type. Most beekeepers raise their own queens.
Smoking bees calms them and if you routinely crush and mash bees during manipulations you will be severely attacked and the bees will become so agitated that they can not be worked with. All the veils and bee suits don't help when 20,000 bees are flying around your head and looking for any opening to get you.
"Artificial feeding", more like feeding Ensure to a dying patient. Bees are fed but nearly always when the colony is weak and has little or no food stores. Winter feeding is common and any beekeeper worth his salt makes sure that they have plenty of honey and pollen stored up for winter. Nectar flows often fail and the only thing between the bees and death is a beekeeper with some dry sugar. Occasionally pollen traps are used on very strong colonies to obtain some pollen which can be then fed to weaker hives needing this extra protein for rearing their young.
With current environmental adversities, diseases and mites, a swarm that escapes from domestication is doomed. Their survival rate is virtually nil after a few months on their own in the wild. Just look around during the spring and summer and you will see less honeybees that ever before. They are dying out and beekeepers watch over their charges with their health and welfare foremost in mind. Yes, we take some honey and wax but it's a symbiotic relationship, at this point in time they need us more than ever.
