Bees and Honey
The well furnished home food garden has always and still should include at least one hive of honeybees. But this is easier said than done, so learning that bees were part of Bill’s dowry may have been the thing that clinched the deal, back when we were courting. Fast forward 16 honeyed years: I’m writing a N.Y. Times bee story and in the course of research discover - who knew? – that this little insect may well be the canary in the agricultural coal mine.
Honeybees don’t get much press compared to, say, petroleum, but their pollination services are just as crucial as fuel and fertilizer to about 15 billion dollars a year in crops, from almonds and alfalfa to sunflower seeds. More bees are needed in each place than any one place could provide, so tens of thousands of hives get loaded on trucks, taken to fields or orchards in bloom, then packed up again and hauled elsewhere.
These migratory honeybees are essential to agribusiness monocropping, which could not exist if it had to depend on local pollinators. That’s why the bees have been getting their 15 minutes of fame* – a mysterious affliction called CCD ( colony collapse disorder) has destroyed so many colonies it’s threatening a major industry. Farmers are paying much higher prices for hive rental while also worrying there may be shortages that can’t be overcome, even with expensive imports.
More than you really want to know is posted, with running updates at beeculture.com, but the very short version is:
*CCD probably isn’t new; reports of similar, albeit far smaller, epidemics go back at least as far as 1898.
* CCD is almost surely not one disease or pest or insecticide but rather some unknown combo thereof that exploits the weakness of bees stressed by profoundly unnatural ways of being kept and used. No study has yet revealed a single insult that is/was the tipping point. Each time a likely culprit is fingered, further investigation confirms that it is at best only part of the puzzle.
* Domestic honeybees are livestock: living creatures raised and used by humans. What do we know about them compared to what we know about chickens and cows? Zilch. What are we likely to learn soon? Also zilch, in part because there is no massive bee industry to lobby for public funds or undertake its own research.
The internet allows posts like this to go on at enormous length, but that doesn’t mean they should, so here are a few visuals from our own
Home Grown Honey Harvest, October 7, 2007
Bill checks to see if there’s any honey in the frame ( a pre-built foundation for the bees to start from).
I always thought smoke made the bees think the hive was on fire, so they were too busy worrying about the house to sting anybody. Beekeepers just say it calms them, with the same result.
They don’t stay calm long; you have to extract the honey someplace they can’t get to, in this case the barn.
This is Bill’s honey extractor, a galvanized antique called the Root Novice. Modern extractors are steel or plastic and this is probably the place to say that honey is more or less self-sterilizing. It’s so sweet bacteria can’t grow in it and so low in water content yeasts won’t grow either. The reason you can’t give it to babies is that it can contain spores of anaerobic bacteria like botulism. The acid in all human digestive systems that process solid food prevents those spores from growing, but new people who still drink all their nourishment don’t have that protection.
After each cell is filled with honey, the bees cap it with a wax lid. You have to slice off the lids (with a wicked sharp, thin-bladed knife) before you can extract the honey.
Bees gather honey from one source at a time. If you want to name the honey for its source – check out the list at honeylocator.com - you have to harvest it before the bees move on. The dark patch looks sort of like buckwheat but I’m sure it’s not. Doesn’t matter, whatever it is will just add complexity to this year’s vintage.
Frames are held upright by arms in the extractor. Turn the crank and the arms whirl around, flinging the honey out by centrifugal force, same as in a salad spinner.
Honey isn’t the only thing that gets flung; the colander catches things like stray bits of wax and the occasional unfortunate bee that didn’t respond to the smoke.
After collection, the honey is poured into sterilized jars. Over the next couple of weeks, any tiny impurities rise and form a thin layer at the top. For gift-giving, we take the layer off. For us, we just leave it as an extra seal until we want to use the honey.
Before the equipment is washed and stored, it’s put outdoors for the bees to clean. They will retrieve almost all of the honey to add to their winter stores.
* Fifteen minutes seems to be about right. Bees are as gone from the headlines as they are from all those dead hives. Tune in next February for a brief flare-up, when almond orchards will need a surge from an army so grievously depleted it may not have enough troops.
Henry Lipiec Said,
October 17, 2007 @ 7:38 am
Leaving gear out for cleaning by “robbing ” is not to be encouraged as it encourages the bees to rob any weaker hives in the vincitity and also is a potential mechanism to spread infected honey eg AFB, Chalk Brood etc. Better to let drain overnight in a bee free area and then clean.
leslie Said,
October 17, 2007 @ 8:21 am
Thanks so much Henry, I’ll pass your advice along to Bill, who is in charge of all this.
Think he probably is aware of the dangers as he’s attentive to when and where he puts out the gear, to maximize the likelihood it will be cleaned by the bees that made it.
Meanwhile, please explain to us outsiders how making honey available encourages bees to rob weaker hives. Intuitively, it makes sense ( draws outsiders to the hives just harvested; creates a taste for easy eats in the original bees ) but I’m not sure I understand how one would prove such a thing without marking bees to see who’s robbing who.
thanks again
Leslie
Mark Tomlin Said,
March 9, 2008 @ 3:48 am
Hi Leslie
I am in the process of trying to get a hand operated 2 frame honey extractor working that I have had for years. While trawling the web for information I came across your page with Bill operating the exact same extractor as the one I am trying to fix. The reason that it is not going is because the small bevelled pinion gear is missing and was when I purchased it. I am about to make a replacement gear and have been trying to establish how many teeth it would have.
My conclusion so far is that it would have 12 teeth giving a 1 : 5 ratio which does not fit with any of the information that I have found. A.I. Roots books talks of 1:3 ratio (20 teeth) but to achieve that ratio by my calculations the gear would be too large to fit, so it would be good to have the number of teeth confirmed.
I have estimated the gear would be about 20 mm high (3/4 inch) and has a 7 degree taper.
The other measurement that would be most helpful is the diameter of the gear at the widest end given that the gear is tapered.
It would be greatful if any of this information could be supplied.
Regards
Mark
Auckland
New Zealand
Bill Said,
March 11, 2008 @ 8:30 pm
Hi Mark,
I know it has got to be close to the honey harvest down under because it has been so late winterish cold up here: snow, ice, and the bitter north wind that cuts right through the house. And my barn is like ice, but I went out to check the Root Novice and…
Cheers! You hit the measurements right on the button. The tapered gear does have 12 teeth. It is about 3/4 ” high (with the teeth themselves being about 5/8ths of an inch in height). The diameter of the largest (lower) end is about 1 3/16ths of an inch. The measurements are all approximate as I could not undo the housing so had to squint between the housing itself and the large vertical gear,
As to the taper, I must confess to being – as the extractor states- a complete novice in such matters.
You might be interested in the provenance of my extractor: I got it from a blind beekeeper about 30 years ago. He managed about 20-30 hives, and could tell their health by the smell and sound. And I have to assume he had a rather gentle touch when it came to manipulating the chambers and frames.
I came to know him from one of my students who was a Pennsylvania Dutch conscientious objector to war and was assigned to work in a facility near the apiary. He –my student- was so impressed that first he, then I also became beekeepers. (My first package was $15.15 from Sears Roebuck and Co., delivered by US Post. Last year a package cost $85 and involved two auto transits as the Post won’t deliver them any more.) And it has become much more problematic to keep hives alive over the winters what with the diseases and all.
But the extractor is a honey. Even blind men can use it! I am confident that you too will find it elegantly simple. The only problem I have had was in spinning too hard on the first side allowing the heavy back side- still loaded with honey- to break through the foundation and reinforcing wires. Silly energetic me! Once the front is spun out, however, the second side can be run more forcefully.
Good luck in your foundry and apiary.
Bill
Mark Tomlin Said,
March 12, 2008 @ 3:28 am
Hi Bill and Leslie
Thank you both for your replies and the information it has made the task of making the pinion a lot easer.
My extractor also has a some what interesting past. I have had it for about 17 years, it was one of the items that were sold off when the psychiatric hospital that I was working at as a gardener was being closed down. The hospital in its hay day was like a small town with everything service you could imagine, including an apiary. By the time I worked their the hay days were well and truly over. I purchased it with the intention of one day getting back into bees. The last time I kept bees would be back in 1987, then I had 4 hives in the back yard but with the increasing urbanisation around where I live made it increasing difficult to continue. Getting the extractor working is one of the step in getting back into bee keeping another is moving.
I will have to get use to a different way of keeping Bee from 1978 as we now have varroa mite no these shores since 2000. Until then the use a chemicals in the hive to control disease was not allow. Now it has become a necessity. I heard on the radio the other day that bees are now completely reliant on humans for their continued survival, which is a little sad.
On that sobering note I will say thanks once again for the information and head off to start working out how to construct the pinion.
Regards
Mark
Auckland
New Zealand