Published: March 14, 2008 03:58 pm            

All the buzz

Cullman County beekeepers prepare their bees for the spring honey season

news@cullmantimes.com



Early spring is a critical time of year for North Alabama beehives according to Cullman County Beekeepers Association President Phillip Garrison. Beekeepers have a checklist of things to do to prepare bees for the honey-producing season.

“In February and March when the days start getting longer, it is vital that beekeepers check honey stores in the hive regularly,” said Garrison. “This is when people lose hives if they are not careful. It is especially important this spring because bees didn’t produce as much honey last year with the drought affecting most flowering plants. Flowers don’t release as much nectar, which bees use to make honey, in a drought year.”

Beginning in February, the queen bee starts laying a lot of eggs, 2500 a day. The queen needs a lot of carbohydrates during this time and the larvae she produces consume large amounts of honey as they grow.

“Usually it takes 60 pounds of honey for a bee colony to survive from September to March,” said Garrison. “There is no honey flow in those months so bees rely on the stores they have built in the hive the previous season. Then in March the demand on the honey stores multiplies so fast that beekeepers really have to be cautious so they don’t run out.”

If the honey does run out, keepers can add a syrupy sugar-water mixture to the hive to tide the bees over.

Beekeepers also start putting ‘supers’ on the hive around the end of March to collect honey when bees start producing a surplus.

Next on the checklist is replacing old queen bees.

“A lot of people are getting their new queens delivered around the first couple of weeks of March,” said Garrison. “They can check and see if their queen is failing. They have to examine the hive and check whether there are not enough baby bees, or larvae. You can tell if it is really spotty the queen is beginning to fail. You have to try to replace the old queen before she leaves the hive. If she leaves and the bees swarm her, the honey leaves.”

After about 4 years in a hive queens stop laying eggs in early spring, lose weight and leave the hive. Sixty percent of the hive leaves with her in a swarm. Inside the parent hive at that time, a new queen about to hatch out. The old queen lays an egg just like any other and the worker bees make that egg a queen by feeding it a substance they produce called royal jelly.

When old queen leaves the hive, the beekeeper can permanently lose 60 percent of his or her bees because the worker bees that leave with the queen start forming a new hive elsewhere. When they swarm, the worker bees suffocate the old queen to make way for the new ‘queen trail’. But there is a way beekeepers can avoid this swarming which can lose them a significant number of bees permanently.

“Queen bees come with a different color marking on their back every year, so you can tell how old each queen is,” said Garrison. “If the queen is beginning to fail, Beekeepers have to order a new queen from a queen breeding service and introduce her into the hive. I usually order my queens December 1st to get them delivered on the second week of March. That way, I can have all the hives going when honey starts to flow. Queen breeders have thousands of customers, so the earlier you call, the earlier you get your queens delivered. December 1st is the first date you can order them.”

New queens generally cost $20 and can be ordered from several breeders in Alabama including Tim Hartwig who lives in Cullman.

Garrison orders 40 to 50 queens at a time every year. He has 85 hives placed all over Cullman County in groups of ten to twelve.

“That way if disease hit, I wouldn’t lose all the bees at once,” he said. “It is also good to produce different kinds of honey from the different areas.”

Local crop farmers make use of Garrison’s bees too. He rents out hives Gary Mitchell and Ronald Graham who grow watermelons and farmers who grow other crops. When the flowers are starting to bloom, farmers ask Garrison to bring the bees. He closes up the hives at night and trucks them to the field. They stay there six to eight weeks until the flowers stop blooming.

“Watermelons need to be pollinated 15 times to produce good fruit,” he said. ‘And when I bring the hives, there are 50,000 bees per hive right there in the field to do the pollinating.”

Garrison’s hives normally produce 4 to 6 thousand pounds of honey a year, but produced much less in 2007.

“The bad bee season last year is going to have an effect on plants and vegetables this year,” he said. “Plants were not pollinated right because they didn’t put out enough nectar for the bees. If you see an apple that isn’t shaped right, it wasn’t pollinated correctly last year.”

Garrison also keeps cattle and has chicken houses. He sells honey from his Vinemont home and at Conoco North, Federer Fertilizer, Southern States Farm Store, Berkeley Bob’s Coffee Shop and the Festhalle farmers market.

Cullman County Beekeepers Association has 40 members who meet five times a year to discuss updates and train new beekeepers.

Call Phillip Garrison at (256) 734 5963 for more information



Observation Hive

Charles Werner of Werner’s Outdoor Store was a beekeeper for 15 years, but now has only one hive. He keeps a glass fronted observation hive in the store for interested customers. The hive is in the wall of the store with an opening so the bees can get outside but can’t get into the store. Schoolteachers from local elementary schools regularly take their children on fieldtrips to see the beehive at Werner’s Store. Werner also has beekeeping start-up kits and said a lot of people ask him for advice on the subject. He said the observation hive is a good learning tool for people thinking about taking beekeeping up as a hobby.

“In the last two years I have sold 40 or 50 hives to local people,” said Werner. “There are a lot of people who keep just one hive to help their vegetable garden and flowers grow, and for honey for their own personal use. One hive can produce more honey than a family could eat in a year.”



Facts about Bees and Honey

Unlike most other sweeteners, honey contains small amounts of a wide array of vitamins, minerals, amino acids and antioxidants

Effective anti-microbial agent, useful in treating minor burns and scrapes, and for aiding the treatment of sore throats and other bacterial infections

One-third of the human diet is pollinated by insects, 80% of which are honeybees.

Alabama crops totally or mostly dependent on honeybees for pollination: watermelons, apples, blueberries, cantaloupes, peaches, pumpkins, blackberries, grapes, persimmons, strawberries, cucumbers, honeydew, pears, plums, sunflowers, and vegetable seed.

Because mites have killed most wild bee colonies, dependence on managed honeybees for pollination of crops and wildlife has grown.

        

• Click to discuss this story with other readers on our forums.