Buzz! Beekeeping

 

Some of our honeycomb from 2016.

I love beekeeping. My mother was a hobbyist beekeeper for many years. We had two or three hives in front of our big red shed at home. My biggest fear in life was walking by the beehives while pushing the red Honda lawnmower out from said big red shed was getting stung. I would have to slow walk the mower by the entrances of the beehives because the bees zip back and forth, bringing back their nectar, pollen, and pitch, and the bees resting in the grass several feet in front of the beehives. You did not want to run those bees over, unless they were drones in the fall.

My mom covered in angry bees

I will be doing ethnographic research in Alaska and Utah to see what are the differences in beekeeping in both states. For example, at the end of every year, we have to take a Shopvac and suck out all the bees because it is too expensive to overwinter them in our greenhouse. Trust me, we have tried. They fly out in the middle of February and March when it is sunny, and die when they urinate in midflight and freeze to death. What is life like for a hobbyist in  the rural-wilderness interface in Alaska? What is it like for a beekeeper in rural-agricultural Utah? What is it like to be commercial in Alaska versus Utah? What is it like to move and to be a perpetually nomadic beekeeper, moving back and forth  from Utah to California? What are the cultural, political, and geographic differences between the three places? Does this facilitate or hinder beekeeping in these places? What are the differences in research due to climate? Are there budgetary considerations?, What are some of the different pests in both locales?, What ones are common to both, and what ones are different? (bears?) and so much more. I want to see the dynamic, if monotonous work of apiculture in action. We have been beekeeping as a species since we started harvesting honey from hives over 11,000 years ago, and using domestic hives for the last 4,500 years.

A swarm of hives

It is a dynamic as old as time, but now is under threat from Colony Collapse Disorder, the loss of good meadows for foraging, mites such as varroa, and invaders such as Asian Giant Hornets. It is also a hard time to be a farmer, even more so to be a beekeeper. The synergy of pollinator and pollinated that has existed since the Early Cretaceous Period when flowers and their accompaniers first evolved is being broken, homogenized, and lost. It will be interesting to see what happens next with beekeepers, bees, and the technological advances needed to combat the loss of pollinators around the world.

Varroa mites eating a pupae

The second topic I will be considering on my blog will be domestic extremism. How do we overcome the gap between rural and urban voters? How do we overcome the recent gap between the white working class and our political elites? With secession from the state capitol in the wings in rural Oregon, how do we prevent a Balkanization of the United States? Those are questions I would like to answer here as well: how we got here, where are we going, and what can we individually do about it in the last great hope for democracy.

My dad fighting a bear off the beehive.

My first interview will be with a local beekeeper in Cache Valley, who I have just gotten in contact with. He is the head of the Cache Valley Beekeeper's Association.

Bibliography

Goulson, Dave. “Decline of Bees Forces China’s Apple Farmers to Pollinate by Hand.” China Dialogue, October 2, 2012. https://chinadialogue.net/en/food/5193-decline-of-bees-forces-china-s-apple-farmers-to-pollinate-by-hand/.

https://www.howstuffworks.com/about-dave-roos.htm. “How Beekeeping Works.” HowStuffWorks, September 17, 2018. https://animals.howstuffworks.com/insects/beekeeping1.htm.