Beekeeping: A Brief Overview
Apiculture: Beekeeping – A Brief History
Apiculture is the science of beekeeping. Humans have collected honey from wild bee hives for more than 8,000 years, as shown in Mesolithic rock paintings dating from 6000 B.C.E. By 2500 B.C.E. Egyptians were keeping bees in artificial hives and since the 1600’s A.D. beekeeping has expanded to nearly all places in the world where plants grow (Crane, 1983: 5). The European honeybee (Apis mellifera) has prospered so well that it has become the source of most of the world’s honey and the pollinator of several commercial crops (Crane: 1983). Hives exploit the honeybees’ natural tendency to build nests in cavities, and allow apiculturalists to easily move (via boat, wagon, truck) and manipulate bee colonies. This mobility has allowed beekeepers to introduce honeybees around the world: The first hives were brought to the New World during the 1620’s by European settlers (Crane, 1999).
Primitive hives were made of hollow logs, holes built in mud walls, or cones of mud, earthenware, or thatch (Gary, 1992). A modern apiary hive is a series of stacked boxes. The bottom box serves as the brood chamber where larvae develop; the upper boxes provide a space to store honey. Each box contains eight to twelve frames, which are set so they approximate the distance between combs in a natural hive. Bees then build their comb on the frames, which can be removed individually. Beekeepers remove the wax caps that cover each cell of the comb and let the cell’s contents drip out by gravity, or use a specialized machine to spin the frames and draw the comb contents out by centrifugal force. The honey is then filtered and stored. Honey quality is determined by its flavour, clarity, and color (Gary, 1992).
The Products of Apiculture
The most widely cultivated and economically important bee species is the European honeybee (Apis mellifera), but beekeepers also keep a range of other species from the subfamilies Apidae (honeybees) and Meliponinae (stingless bees). Honeybees gather large amounts of flower nectar and pollen. They transform nectar into honey by evaporating water through fanning the nectar with their wings, and by adding enzymes produced by specialized glands on their bodies. Finally, the bees usually seal the finished honey in the hexagonal cells of their comb. Pollen is a source of protein, fats, and vitamins for the bees; carbohydrates from honey provide vital energy. While gathering pollen and nectar, bees cross-pollinate flowers and allow or improve the production of seeds and fruit. Economically, honeybees are more valuable as pollinators than as honey producers. Farmers rent more than one million colonies each year to pollinate crops valued at more than $10 billion. Unlike other pollinating insects, bees can be easily moved to agricultural fields where crops need to be pollinated (Gary, 1992).
Most beekeepers maintain hives for honey, but bees also produce other useful products. Beeswax from cell caps and old combs is used for high-quality candles, pharmaceuticals, lotions, and friction-reducing waxes for skis and surfboards (Winston, 1998). As well as honey, several other bee products are sources of food for humans. Bee brood (young bees that are housed in the brood comb of a hive) is consumed as a form of meat in many non-European countries. Food additives for humans and domestic animals are made from bee-collected pollen and from royal jelly which bees produce as food for their larvae. Several bee products are also used as medicines. Since the 1930’s, researchers have been refining extraction techniques to collect bee venom because bee stings can relieve the symptoms of arthritis, rheumatism, and other diseases. Propolis, a glue-like plant resin that bees use to maintain the comb, is used in cosmetics and healing creams and may have antibiotic or anaesthetic properties. “Propolis was formerly an ingredient in some varnish, including the varnish on Stradivarius violins” (Bishop, 2005: 239).
The Honeybee Colony
Honeybees live in hives or colonies. A small hive contains about 20,000 bees, while some larger hives may have over 100,000 bees. Hives include one queen, hundreds of drones, and thousands of worker bees. The worker bees are female, but they do not breed. The queen bee is female and creates all the babies for the hive. The drone bees are male and do not have stingers. Bees communicate with each other about food sources using dances and tiny hairs on the bee’s head pick up vibrations from other bees. Bees use the sun in navigation (Taylor, 1984).
The honeybee’s hive has cells made of wax. This is where the queen bee lays her eggs. She can lay 1500 eggs in one day. When the larvae hatch, they are fed by the worker bees. The workers collect pollen and nectar from flowers. The pollen is used as a protein source and the nectar is an energy source. Some of the pollen lands on the pistils of the flower and results in cross-pollination. This is important for some crops and flowers. The relationship between the plant and the insect is called symbiosis (Winston, 1987).
Bees turn the nectar into honey. Workers must visit over four thousand flowers to make just a tablespoon of honey. Beekeepers must be very careful when they remove honey from the hive. They try not to hurt the bees. The beekeepers give sugar syrup to the bees to replace the honey that they take (Bishop, 2005).
Value of Bee Pollination
The exact dollar value of pollination is difficult to determine. However, the contribution of bee pollination to the production of agricultural crops is considerable. Without this contribution, modern agriculture would be seriously affected. There are areas where it is almost impossible to place a dollar value on bee pollination (Gary, 1992). One is the contribution that pollination of plants makes to wildlife food production. Another is the natural beauty resulting from pollination of wildflowers. Many shrubs and countless annual plants reproduce by bee pollinated berries and seeds, which provide food for birds and other animals (Crane and Walker 1984). Ornithologists may suggest that humans “feed the birds in the winter,” but the birds also depend upon naturally grown seed and fruit resulting from bee pollination.
The beekeeper with a small-scale operation is very valuable in providing honeybees for this unmeasured contribution to pollination, because there are many small-time, hobbyist beekeepers spread throughout the province that increase food production for wildlife. Thus, it is difficult to place a dollar value on the enjoyment created by birds, wildflowers, and wild animals for the nature enthusiast.
There are a number of trends in beekeeping research and management practices that point to a diversified pollination management system as one of the best ways to increase the beekeeper’s income and improve the grower’s crop yields and income. The single most significant trend affecting commercial pollination today is a shortage of bee colonies (Winston, 1998: 52). Tracheal and varroa mites have taken their toll, and growers from the almond orchards of California to the blueberry fields of Maine are reporting considerable difficulty obtaining sufficient bees to pollinate their crops. In order to alleviate the crisis Winston (1998) proposes that the research community needs to document how certain improvements in pollination management can increase bee visits to flowers, thereby improving fruit set, crop yields, and, ultimately, profits to growers. Beekeepers need to be willing to implement new techniques that both intensify and diversify their management systems.
Many crops grown in Ontario are pollinated by bees and depend totally or partly upon bees for complete pollination according to the Ontario Apiculture and Pollination Research and Services Committee (Government of Ontario). Of the bee species known to man, the honeybee (Apis mellifera L.), is the most important pollinator due to its abundance and manageability by beekeepers. Other species of bees such as leaf cutter bees in the western U.S.A. and Canada provide pollination services in some areas, but their population numbers are variable and difficult to manage. Also populations of other bees have been depleted by present agricultural practices.
Value of Honeybee Pollination to Canadian Agriculture
The estimated total value to Canadian agriculture is estimated to be about $782 million. This is approximately eight times greater than the annual farm value for honey and wax, which had a value of $93.5 million in 1998. The value of honeybee pollination represents 21% of the total farm value of approximately 26 selected crops (Government of Ontario).
Provincial values for pollination provide an estimate of the benefit of honeybees to pollination in each province. Provinces with high production of highly dependent crops show the highest values even though they do not have the highest populations of honeybees. This explains the higher demand for colony rentals in Ontario and British Columbia (Canadian Honey Council).
According to the Canadian Honey Council, approximately 93,000 rentals of honeybee colonies for crop pollination took place in 1998, mostly for apple, blueberry and canola production in Quebec, Ontario and Alberta. The estimation of a cost/benefit ratio for apples in Quebec indicated that for each dollar spent in rental fees, producers realized a gain of $185. Because of low blueberry production in Quebec due to a killing frost in the spring of 1998, the cost benefit ratio was approximately $5 compared to $41 in 1990. Quebec apples had a cost benefit ratio of $185 in 1998, compared to $192 in 1990.
The 1998 value of honeybees as pollinators for Canadian crops was assessed to be $782 million, up from $444 million in 1990 according to provincial apiarist Doug McRoury. This estimate is conservative; as many minor crops were omitted and as values may be estimated lower than the actual value. Therefore, the vital importance of honeybees to agriculture, not only as honey producers, but also as pollinators, is clearly demonstrated.
The Value of Bees and the Problems Facing the Beekeeping Industry
The art of beekeeping is not much different than any other art or craft. It is clear in concept, deceptively easy to learn, and enormously complex and subtle for those who prove its depths. Contemporary beekeeping is still simple in theory, but it has become more complex in practice because the bee diseases and parasites beekeepers have to deal with have increased in number and severity.
Humans have exploited bees for honey and wax since the dawn of human existence, and in the last 150 years have developed sophisticated management systems to ensure that bees produce copious amounts of honey and pollinate billions of dollars worth of crops every year. There are thought to be six million beekeepers worldwide, and the number of managed colonies easily reaches 50-100 million (Winston, 1998: 2). The diverse ways that bees are kept is a testimony to human ingenuity and to the role science can play in improving the human condition, for it is through scientific research that many of the management techniques were developed that allow for the exploitation of this unique organism.
During the last few years beekeepers have been badly affected. Increasingly aggressive pesticides and the decline of biodiversity in agricultural landscape with the resulting loss of important blossoming crops have further weakened bees and beekeeping (Malone, L.A. and Pham-Delegue, 2002). With the release of genetically modified plants (GMO’s), apiculture would again be threatened. On one hand, beekeepers fear that they will be made liable for the fact that their bees will carry genetically modified pollen to fields in which conventional or organic plants are cultivated. While on the other hand, their honey would be unintentionally contaminated with GMO-components. Both fears were eventually realized and resulted in an economic disaster for most small apiculturists who were no longer allowed to export their honey to Europe (Parent, G. & Pearson, 1995).
The truth is that honeybees need to be understood and appreciated by more people. They live in colonies, with all the bees acting as a whole organism, rearing their young and producing honey to continue their survival (Winston, 1987). In the process, their role in pollinating our food supply, and their impact on agriculture and the North American economy is enormous. Internationally recognized bee expert Thomas Seeley, whose lecture I attended at McMaster University, stated that according to a study by Cornell University in 2000, honeybees pollinated agricultural crops valued at more than $14.6 billion per year.
This sounds great, until you learn the honeybee population is being threatened from different angles, and the impact is already being felt. Reports on honeybees worldwide indicate that 90 percent of domestic and feral honeybee colonies have been lost in the past 17 years (Calamai, 2005). This past year, there was a crisis in California because there were not enough bees to pollinate the almond crops. Farmers had to import honeybees from Australia to meet demands of pollination. A similar situation was experienced in Dufferin County where several of the local beekeepers, who needed to replace bees that had been lost over the past winter, were told by their suppliers that they would not be receiving the bees that they had ordered because they had been sold, instead, to American beekeepers at a higher cost so that the almond orchards could be pollinated.
The factors for this decline in population are many, from the loss of natural habitat to the invasion of the parasitic varroa mites, and, more recently, the small hive beetle. Air and water pollution, genetically modified organisms (GMO’s), plus the use of pesticides and herbicides are also linked to declining honeybee health.
Even though beekeeping has become much more challenging in recent years, requiring a new vigilance against intruders to the hive, honeybee hives have been cropping up in backyards across the country. There are few casual beekeepers, as the activity is driven by passion for the bees, the products and the environment. Backyard hobbyist beekeeping offers some hope for the declining bee population, as well as the ecosystem and food supply that depend on it.
A burgeoning interest in backyard beekeeping has the potential to bring new life to home gardens, and support for local farmers. Local beekeeping associations offer a forum to discuss subjects of interest to beekeepers, as well as their concerns.
There are many different approaches to practicing beekeeping. The majority of these are conventional and turn to chemical treatments for parasites and viruses. Organic and naturalistic approaches to beekeeping, from treatment to hive design, encourage the honeybees to rely on their natural instincts, instead of being manipulated by man. This in turn develops stronger bees (Winston, 1998).
Mankind can learn a great deal from honeybees, as the individual bees work together for the good of the whole colony. Honeybees represent a highly organized society, with worker bees evolving through specific roles during their lifetime: They act as nurses, guards, housekeepers, comb builders, royal attendants, undertakers, and finally as foragers. The queen bee lays all the eggs in the hive and can live for several years. Worker bees are all female and live for only six weeks during the busy summer and for four months during the winter months. Drone bees are male bees; their purpose is to mate with the queen during her mating flights.
Honeybees don’t require a great deal of time, but they require love and understanding. They are very gentle creatures, unlike the unpleasant and often malicious yellow jackets. They will not sting unless protecting their hive from an aggressive intruder, or if they are stepped on while foraging.
Keeping honeybees is simple and inexpensive after the initial start up cost. According to the Ontario Beekeeping Association all that is needed is a hive placed in a good location, (preferably two so that it is possible to compare one with the other), and a willingness to monitor and encourage the bees. A hive and tools can cost between $110 and $170. A three-pound package of honeybees, numbering 12,000 with a queen, can cost $60 to $90.
There is enormous satisfaction in watching honeybees on a warm spring day, coming and going, collecting pollen to feed their young and nectar to make their honey, improving our world in the process. There is a sense of peace gained from beekeeping, as well as a connectedness with nature that has no comparison according to many of the beekeepers that were interviewed. As with the rest of life, there is enormous joy and sometimes heartbreak in beekeeping. And, there is magic when inspecting a hive and holding a frame filled with gently buzzing bees and glistening honey. Who doesn’t love honey?
Threats to Apiculture
Cultivated bee colonies are susceptible to a number of diseases, parasites, and insect predators. Honeybee populations declined dramatically across the United States during the 1990’s, when tracheal and varroa mites destroyed up to 90 percent of hive populations in some areas. Another recent and widely publicized threat to apiculture comes from Africanized bees, Apis mellifera suctellata. This subspecies of the European honeybee commonly takes over the hives of its more docile European relatives. Africanized bees were imported from Africa to Brazil in 1957 with the hopes that their hardiness in tropical conditions would improve the Brazilian apiculture business. Unfortunately, some colonies escaped captivity and founded populations in the wild or took over other cultivated hives. The bees steadily spread northward into the United States, reaching Texas in 1990 and continuing to move up both coasts. The presence of Africanized bees in a hive makes beekeeping difficult because they are aggressive toward handlers, tend to swarm and leave the hive, and produce less honey than European honeybees. These bees are famous for their easily provoked mass stinging, which can be lethal to humans and other animals and has caused the deaths of several people.
Public concern over Africanized bees in the United States has led to increased insurance liability for beekeepers, since they have had to pay more insurance because of the risk of keeping hives that may be taken over by Africanized bees, hence posing a threat to humans and animals in the area. Beekeepers in regions of Venezuela where people have been killed by Africanized bees have had their hives burned and been physically attacked by other citizens, regardless of whether their hives housed the Africanized bees that caused the problem. Many beekeepers also voluntarily destroyed their hives because they were unable to handle the more aggressive bees.
Globalization has opened up new markets for honey and bee products but it has also resulted in the spread of a parasitic mite which threatens both domesticated and wild bee populations and, consequently, the effective pollination of many crops worldwide. International trade in live bees, unrestricted movement of hives and lack of beekeeper awareness are largely responsible for the increasing occurrence of varroa jacobsoni, the Asian predatory mite. In the last thirty years, the varroa has spread beyond the Asian continent, where it is indigenous, to Europe, North and South America and North and South Africa. And, in April this year, despite strict legislation to prevent the live importation of bees, varroa was also reported in New Zealand. Australia remains the only continent free of varroa and has extensive monitoring and quarantine procedures in place to prevent the entry and spread of exotic Asian bees.
The varroa mite is an indigenous parasite of Apis cerana (oriental honeybees). Wherever colonies of these bees are kept in the region, there is a possibility of infestation, although, through millions of years of being parasitized by the mite, some degree of resistance appears to have developed and most colonies are seemingly unaffected. Colonies heavily infested with varroa produce little or no honey but beekeepers are more likely to lose entire colonies as the bees naturally abandon hives or nest sites to rid themselves of mite-infested broods.
It is the European honeybee (Apis mellifera) that has proved particularly susceptible to the parasitic mites and associated secondary diseases, and varroa now poses a significant threat to beekeepers worldwide. In addition, feral bee populations in many regions have been virtually eliminated and a wide variety of crops, dependent on pollination from bees, are threatened by these losses.
Beekeeping offers a unique perspective for exploring the numerous ways in which humans interact with, understand, and manage nature, as well as the economic importance of bees. A unique feature of beekeeping is that it can be hobby or occupation. Whether beekeeping is pursued as a hobby or as a profession, it is a crucial aspect of modern agriculture consisting of sophisticated management systems that have been developed to ensure that bees produce large amounts of honey and pollinate billions of dollars worth of crops each year (Winston: 1998).
Globalization
Sustainability requires the protection of all species and all people and the recognition that diverse species and diverse people play an essential role in maintaining ecosystems and ecological processes. Pollinators are critical to the fertilization and generation of plants. Biodiversity in fields provides vegetables, fodder, medicine and protection to the soil from water and wind erosion (Winston, 1998).
The global free-trade economy has become a threat to sustainability. The very survival of the poor and other species is at stake not just as a side effect or as an exception but in a systemic way through a restructuring of our world-view at the most fundamental level. Sustainability, sharing and survival are being economically outlawed in the name of market competitiveness and market efficiency.
Biotech agri-businesses produce genetically altered seeds dependent on specific pesticide brands (Smith, 2003). The rapidly disappearing profession of beekeeping provides a glimpse into problems faced by family farmers trying to survive in a global economy which has come under corporate control.
Although pollination by honeybees is vital to agriculture, honeybees no longer survive here in the wild. Since arriving with a swarm of shipboard bees, the South Asian bee mite has moved across North America in the last decade, destroying every wild hive in its path. Bee survival now depends on treating hives with chemicals to which the mites are becoming resistant (Winston, 1998).
Several countries want to export non-native honeybees, a practice long banned in the U.S. due to biological risk. Transporting live plants and animals outside their native habitat promotes the spread of pests, as the devastation caused by the bee mite clearly demonstrates. Under World Trade Organization rules, however, the burden of proving specific risk falls on U.S. beekeepers unable to underwrite a costly legal battle. As in agriculture generally, honey has become a globalized commodity. Agribusiness producers in Argentina, one of the world’s largest exporters, are flooding the global market with honey harvested by underpaid workers. In Argentina as in the U.S., the small producers are being driven out of business (Winston, 1998).
A Powerless Subculture
Beekeepers might be better off if mites were the only problem. If that were the case, then they could work harmoniously with chemical companies to find a better mite-fighting insecticide. But when pesticides and possibly genetically modified organisms (GMO’s) are also part of the problem, the politically weak and unorganized beekeepers are pitted against both farmers and the chemical-agriculture industries.
Most of the problems associated with beekeeping are not well known to the public. Yet it stirs the blood of beekeepers and farmers like nothing else. The Nature of Things hosted by David Suzuki, the well-known scientist/environmental activist, created a window into the beekeeper’s world, revealing how this subculture has struggled to survive within agriculture.
There are a host of other problems ranging from the small numbers (there are just 1,600 commercial beekeepers in the country according to the Canadian Honey Council), to worldwide economic forces, to the independent nature of the beekeepers themselves. Their powerlessness shows in many ways, but nowhere is it more apparent than in their efforts to control the use of chemicals.
Despite agriculture’s dependence on bees, beekeepers lack clout with most farmers and regulators – and often, chemical companies and aerial sprayers consider them a nuisance (Winston, 1998). First, not all farmers depend on bees; some crops, such as corn, are wind-pollinated. Second, beekeepers don’t own the land on which their “livestock” feed. They are most often squatters on the corners of farmers’ fields, providing honey to the farmer in return.
Paul Kelly, apiarist for the University of Guelph, says beekeepers also have plenty of things to worry about besides pesticides and miticides including what he refers to as the “queen” problem. “Beekeepers have reported that a higher percentage of egg-laying queen bees seem to be dying off soon after introduction into a hive. Researchers speculate that inbreeding may be producing queens that don’t give off the right pheromones”, says Kelly. “Those odours direct the hive’s behaviour, including the essential task of feeding the queen.”
But beyond biology there are complex economic forces at work in the beekeeper’s world. Most beekeepers are undercapitalized and part time, existing on the fringes of agriculture. In an industry that has become more and more competitive and complex, most beekeepers lack economic sophistication; they charge growers too little for the use of their hives and they undercut each other’s prices to get into the fields, says Kelly
When hard times hit, they may cut back on providing their hives with extra food, usually sugar water and protein, to get through the winter, or on buying pesticide strips to protect hives from mites. Additionally, the industry was hurt by the dumping of cheap Chinese and Mexican honey, and also through the loss of federal honey price supports which drove some beekeepers out of business. Nationwide, the number of managed hives has dropped from a high of 5.9 million in 1947 to 1.9 million by the end of 1996.
Into the future
In many regions these bees face danger on several fronts. These include: the required use of systemic pesticides for pest management both within the hive and on the crops from which bees forage, when alternative, environmentally benign treatments could be used to replace harsh and potentially deadly chemical methods, the potential threat genetically modified organisms (GMO’s) pose for bees and other pollinating insects, and the impact of imported pests and the reasons these importations have been, and continue to be problematic. Thus, beekeeping and bee research can provide a basis for exploring much broader social and environmental issues by elaborating on the function of apiculture and the increasingly complex social and environmental constraints that beekeepers face.
Most beekeepers are resigned to living with tough economic conditions, mites and pesticides. “It’s a labour of love”, says Kelly. “No one in their right mind would get into this as a business venture.”
