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The Real Buzz On Bees

Last modified on 2009-05-15 23:52:34 GMT. 1 comment. Top.

Anyone who couldn’t “bee” at the KCAA meeting this week missed an outstanding presentation delivered by two of our state’s best known beekeepers.  Dave Hunter of Woodinville provided information on the mason bee while Paul Lundy of Kingston brought his extensive knowledge on the honey bee.

Paul Lundy With Bee Buddies

With a nationwide average of a 36 per cent collapse of bee colonies (CCD) this past year (and some areas reporting between 50 and 80 per cent) the pollination of crops, plants, trees, and flowers could be in jeopardy if there is further escalation of this problem. Economic and nutritional devastation, particularly from crop failure, could become monumental. Scientists are trying to isolate causes from among about a dozen possibilities but it’s also likely that it could be a combination of factors.  Global climate change, pesticides and herbicides, mites, parasitic wasps are all among those being considered. Very recently a particular parasite was isolated in one study as a cause of a colony collapse and it was successfully treated and eliminated.

Dave Hunter Makes His Point

Dave Hunter’s passion is mason bees and he’s been raising them for 18 years.  Also known as the blue orchard bee or the Osmia Lignaria, Hunter says the Mason bee is one of the most significant pollinators to be found.  Unlike the highly structured honey bee colonies, each female mason is a queen who also performs all the tasks, including those usually assigned to worker bees in the honeybee colony.  And she is kind of a messy little bee as she rubs her abdomen on pollen, hoping to have it stick to her bristles.  But as a result, she has pollen falling off on everything as she makes her way back to her hole.  Hunter gives the pollination  of an almond tree as an example of how few mason bees (about  7) are needed compared with a honey bee (about 545).

While the honey bee is active up into October, the mason bee is only active in April and May so it’s most effective in pollinating early crops like cherries, almonds, pears and blueberries.  It’s also a very gentle bee, seldom stings and is indigenous to 46 states.  Starting a colony is easy too – any hole in wood that’s about 5/16ths in diameter can be used but holes drilled in wood blocks with straw or rolled up parchment paper or tubes with inserts are most effective. They prefer warmth and dryness and Hunter suggests having a block 6 – 7 feet high under an eave with a southern exposure.

Hunter is so interested in perpetrating mason bee colonies in the Puget Sound area, he currently works with 110 partners with whom he’s helped establish colonies.  And he’s looking for more.  He will assess your property and its needs then provide bees and advice to get it started.

Paul Lundy has been an 11-year honeybee keeper and sells his honey at Pine Cone Gifts in Kingston under the name Myra Springs.  He says the shop carries honey from five local beekeepers and completely sells out of the entire product. Lundy brought a glass-enclosed frame with a number of active honey bees as part of his “show and tell” presentation.

Honeybees are larger than mason bees but there are only four genetic strains in the world so they have become somewhat more prone to genetically based strains of disease.   The queen honeybee can  produce up to 2000  eggs per day in her well-ordered hive that also consists of drones (who die following mating) and the amazing worker bees who do a variety of specified tasks such as construction, guard, housekeeper and most importantly, the collection of pollen and nectar.  A queen can live from 3-5 year and a new queen is specifically selected by the workers from larva and fed only “royal jelly”.

Honeybees pollinate by wing vibration and the Backyard Beekeepers Association states that honey bees account for 80 per cent of the world’s pollination.  By contrast to the mason, the honeybee starts pollinating in May and continue into the first part of October.  In the autumn, a new queen will take half the colony and form a new hive to winter over.

Both men emphasized the importance of bee keeping and pollination in the world of crop fertilization as well as flower and plant propagation. One web site estimated that there is a 15 billion dollar industry in commercial bee pollination.  So “bee” good to your bees and consider keeping some hives if you have crops, particularly those that are fruit bearing. Or keep some for honey production if you’re interested in the thriving local honey business. Because of additives, antibiotics and other substances added to honey that comes from China and Taiwan and other unregulated countries that’s  sold to some large national commercial honey companies, a huge interest has been generated in buying honey produced locally by locally known and trusted  beekeepers.

A Mason Bee Condo

For more information on Westsound Beekeepers go to: www.westsoundbees.org or call Paul Lundy at (360) 297-6743. For more information on mason bees, Dave Hunter can be contacted at huntersmasonbees@comcast.net or call (425) 481-8757.  Web sites for more bee information:  www.beediverse.com www.pollinatorparadise.com www.backyardbeekeepers.com www.Xerces.org

Finally, thanks once again to Chris Henry of the Kitsap Sun for her well researched, front page articles about our insect friends. Here is the library of her recent articles.

http://www.kitsapsun.com/news/2009/may/13/kitsap-bee-population-still-buzzing-despite/

http://pugetsoundblogs.com/south-kitsap/2009/05/14/reporter-braves-bees-for-your-viewing-pleasure/

http://www.kitsapsun.com/videos/detail/bees/

http://www.kitsapsun.com/photos/galleries/2009/may/13/kingston-beekepers/

It’s Springtime and a Farmer’s Thoughts Turn To Pollination?

Last modified on 2009-05-07 16:04:31 GMT. 1 comment. Top.

The next meeting of the KCAA will be held on:
Tuesday, May12, 7:00 pm
Norm Dicks Center
345 Sixth Street
Bremerton, WA

One of the most critical challenges facing all farmers these days is the crisis affecting bee populations. While there are other pollinators that interact with the plants bees are by far the most important to the majority of fruits and vegetables grown for human consumption. In recent years some scientists estimate that the bee population has been decimated, losing as much as 2/3′s of bees raised commercially and possibly a similar number in natural hives.
No bees, no food.

Sharon Howard and Sally Lorree, president of the Peninsula Fruit Club, have arranged for two expert speakers to educate us on this topic. Dave Hunter and Paul Lundy will be sharing their experience and research in this area.
What started out as a backyard hobby 18 years ago has shifted into a commercial mason bee producing business.  Dave strives to be as current with the latest studies, practices, and trends of the mason bee through continual conversations with the nations leading scientists.

Dave Hunter, Bee Man

In his presentation, you’ll increase your practical knowledge of the mason bee’s advantages to your orchard or backyard:
·         He encourages the backyard gardener on best practices to increase their mason bee population
·         Through comparison to the well known honeybee, you’ll learn why the mason bee is such a different and more efficient pollinator on certain crops
·         He provides tips to the smaller orchard owner on how to pollinate with mason bees
·         There are a variety of mason bee “huts/blocks” available.  What are the advantages of each and why?
·         We have a few NW pests to the mason bee.  Learn how best to manage them

Dave’s a UW graduate in Civil Engineering, was the director of real estate for Airborne Express and DHL, is a certified Project Manager Professional, and now has shifted focus to help create a commercial mason bee industry.  And through all of this… his wife and children still love and support him.

Paul Lundy

Paul is the editor of the Washington State Beekeeper Association newsletter www.wasba.org , chair of the State Master Beekeepers Committee, which creates the testing curriculum and provides standards for beekeeping education in Washington State. Paul is also a Washington State Beekeepers representative for area 1b serving King, Kitsap, Jefferson and Clallam counties. Locally, Paul is a member of West Sound Beekeepers www.westsoundbees.org and Chimacum Grange Beekeepers, teaching beginning beekeeper classes in each association. He has been a beekeeper since 1997. Paul loves nature, honey bees, beekeeping and educating the public about the joys of pollinators and beekeeping. Paul & his wife Lisa raise honey bees and produce much of their own food.

Paul is also a facilities management professional with over 20 years experience directing the operations of bio-pharmaceutical and bio-technology companies. Currently, Paul is a Senior Director of Facilities for the cancer therapy bio-pharmaceutical company Seattle Genetics, located in Bothell, Washington.

Paul’s presentation will cover pollinators that play an important role in agriculture and are major  pollinators in ecosystems that contain flowering plants. Paul will cover the life cycle of bees and what you can do to encourage pollinators in your area. Bumble bees and honey bees will be the main topic of the presentation.

Bee There!

Special Training From Bio-Dynamic Farmers

Last modified on 2009-03-10 18:01:38 GMT. 0 comments. Top.

Biodynamic Training Offered By Bio-Dynamic Farmers

These are classes we are offering in March and April at our biodynamic farm in southwest WA, Friendly Haven Rise. If you are coming from a distance you are welcome to stay over in our roomy farmhouse. We have two classes back to back next weekend — Birds and Bees — and if anyone on this list would like to take both, we’ve got room for sleepovers. We’re 1 hr 45 min south of Olympia and 35 min. north of Portland.

Capturing Golden Sunshine

These are short descriptions. If you’d like to see more, visit
www.FriendlyHaven.com/classes.html

1. Backyard Chickens
2. Bees: The OTHER Way
3. Making Non-dairy Fruit Kefir Soda
4. Glorious Eggs
5. Grow Exceptional Food: High Nutritional Density Gardening

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1. Backyard CHICKENS from A to Z
March 14 or Apr 11
10-4 $75

Eggs from your own chickens are the healthiest, freshest eggs you’ll ever eat. And once you try them you’ll finally know how good an egg can taste. This class will teach you all you need to know about chickens to keep them happy and healthy in your backyard whether that’s in the city or the country. Enjoy fresh eggs from your feathered flock. Take home all you need to start, including chicks and the right equipment for them. Learn all about hen health and caring for them, different kinds of coops and nesting boxes, fencing so they’re safe, even how to raise them so they enjoy interacting with you. We even provide phone support once you get your birds home!

* Taught by Brenda Wilson, passionate chicken lover with 40 years of bird raising and teaching experience.

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2. BEES: The Other Way
March 15 or Apr 26
10-4 $50

This class is for both beekeepers and folks who want to know how to provide a better environment for pollinators so they can stay healthy and continue pollinating everything in sight. Everything is done with respect and appreciation for these marvelous little bee-ings.

Lots of info on
* Organic and biodynamic care
* The roles of the bee family
* Catching wild swarms
* Preventing CCD and bee diseases so your
bees are truly healthy
* Developing a caring relationship with the hives
* Taste different kinds of honey and pollen
* Medicinal gardens to help bees stay healthy
* Different hives (lang, top bar, warre, tree trunks, skeps)
* How other cultures care for their bees

This class is designed to give you an understanding of what bees need and want and how to provide for them with kindness and love. Taught by Jacqueline Freeman, lover of bees.

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3. Make Non-dairy FRUIT KEFIR SODA
Tues. March 17 6:30-8:30 at the farm $20
or Sat. March 28 11 – 1 in Portland $25

Kefir is known worldwide for promoting longevity and good health. Learn to make healthful juice drinks that are filled with probiotics and tasty, too. This beverage is fruit-infused, naturally carbonated, healthful, inexpensive and oh-so refreshing. Class includes LOTS of samples, history, creative demos and kefir crystals so you can make them yourself. Forever.

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4. Glorious EGGS: Fabulous Ways to Prepare and Eat Them
Sat. April 4 3-6pm $40 (bring an appetite!)

Spring is EGG SEASON. Seems our hens lay a new one every few hours. What shall we do with them all? Join local sustainable chef Chris Musser for an all-about-eggs cooking class. We’ll make two simple appetizers, a finger-lickin’-good mayonnaise, a versatile no-crust quiche, fragrant curry and an impressively delicious vanilla and chocolate custard, all featuring eggs from our own hens.

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5. Grow EXCEPTIONAL FOOD
Saturday, April 25 at the farm (35 min. N of Portland)
or Sunday, April 26 in Snoqualmie (30 min. E of Seattle)
9-4 $100 ($175 couples)

In this workshop you will learn something that’s hard to figure out these days — how to grow food with extremely high nutritional density. Learn to nourish your soil so your soil can nourish you. A balance of theory and practice helps you understand precisely what your soil needs to help it and you to flourish. Healthy soils not only grow healthy people, they grow healthy, pest-free plants, a win-win all around.

Topics include:
* The soil food-web is and how to nourish it
* How to use soil testing to organically amend imbalanced garden soil
* Increasing plant vitality with foliar fertiliziing and microbial innoculation
* Improving soil health in established gardens with top dressing
* Save money by making your own inexpensive compost tea brewer
* The value of effective microorganisms and sea minerals
* Increasing microbial diversity and numbers
* Using a refractometer to determine brix and monitor your garden’s progress

Taught by Steve Divers, a national soil, crop and compost consultant who’s been speaking about and creating organic soil fertility since the 1980s. Well known as a insightful researcher and knowledgeable organic/biodynamic farmer, Steve was Senior Agriculture Specialist for the National Sustainable Agriculture Information Service (ATTRA) and a member of the Science and Technical Advisory Committee for the Organic Center. He helps gardeners and farmers raise soil fertility far beyond current norms.

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Call to reserve a space 360-687-8485
www.FriendlyHaven.com
Email us for carpools & simple driving directions at friendlyhaven@gmail.com

All About Bees and Honey In Kitsap

Last modified on 2009-02-09 23:29:02 GMT. 0 comments. Top.

Classes and Starter Kits Available For Beginning BeeKeepers

With the country abuzz about the collapse of an estimated 30 per cent of bee colonies in the country and the importation of Chinese honey that contains additives and whose bees have been treated with substances that are not legal here, it’s wonderful to know that there are thriving local hives and colonies here in West Sound. You can buy honey directly from local beekeepers or local brokers who purchase only from locally known sources.

Kitsap honey harvesters

The Queen of honey and beekeeping here in Kitsap County is 79-year-old Barbara Stedman.   Barbara and Al Stedman (who died this past November) began their venture into honey bees about 38 years ago when he retired from the then Puget Sound Naval Shipyard.  It soon grew from a hobby to a full time business and Barbara also retired from her job as director of the PSNS Children’s Services to help out with the bee business.

At one time they had about 500 hives flourishing on their three acre plot on Anderson Hill Road but now the majority of her time is devoted to brokering honey, making and ordering bee supplies, and ordering bees from California for those who want to start colonies.

“A beginning three-pound packet of 10,000 bees, including a queen runs about $70,” says Stedman.

Throughout all the years of the business, Barbara Stedman has continued to maintain direct customer honey sales seven days a week in a little shed out behind the house.  She also has a small gift shop next door. Bees wax candles, pollen and even honey candy are also available here.  At any given time there are at least five kinds of honey in the shed, depending on the season and production of the bees. Her son, Paul Mottner is now helping her with the business

“I buy my honey only from local sources where I know how they keep their hives and make their honey,” says Stedman.  She says she has about 70 barrels currently on hand and her honey is carried at Helen’s Health Food, Farmer George’s, Willow’s Naturally on Bainbridge Island and is used at Silver City Brewery and Restaurant.

Stedman is also the education chair of the 60-member West Sound Beekeepers Association, an organization she and her husband founded, and it will soon be offering beginner bee keeping classes on the third Tuesdays of the month at Stedman Bee Supplies, Inc, beginning February 17 at 6:45 p.m. and running through October 20. It is located at 3763 NW Anderson Hill Road, Silverdale, WA,Telephone 360-692-9453.

Paul and Lisa Lundy have been bee keepers since 1997 when they started their first colony in Seattle before moving to Kitsap County.  He said the impetus for him to get started was having fruit trees that weren’t getting pollinated.

“I got hooked immediately on bee keeping and haven’t looked back,” said Paul.

He also added that, since moving over here, and with a lot of help from Clint Dudley, Kingston Farmers Market manager, he has really gotten into producing his own food, including vegetables, chickens and eggs.  He and Lisa are now producing three to four hundred pounds of honey a year in 10 hives with about 50,000 bees under the name Myra Springs honey – it’s sold at Sack’s Feed and Pine Cone Gifts in Kingston. He says he really enjoys teaching others about the joys of bee keeping and honey production.

David Mackovjak, vice president of West Sound Beekeepers, has only been keeping bees for about three years but as a recent retiree from the Navy, he remembered a class he had taken ten years ago at M.I.T. on beekeeping and says he became fascinated with it then.

His six hives are located with a three mile radius of his Olympic View home and his honey is made from local wildflowers in the spring and blackberries in June and July. He doesn’t sell his product but uses it for his own consumption and says he gives a lot away.

“Some people even take their hives up to the mountains so the bees can get fireweed,” says Mackovjak.

David Mackovjak

Mackovjak is also very interested in educating people about bees.  He talks of the perfect heating and air-conditioning bees perform in the hive all year round to keep the queen at exactly the right temperature and the 21 days it takes from the laying of an egg to a mature bee.  And he talks of the fascinating way the bees set up residence by drawing up the comb in a block with frames. He says West Sound Beekeepers is also very active in working with WSU to do research on the collapsing of bee colonies.  He says various theories have been set forth, including proliferation of certain mites, low level pesticides and nozema disease.

Mackovjak also mentions that there are commercial pollinators living here too who take their bees to various places to pollinate trees around the west, beginning with almond in California and ending with apples and peaches in Washington.

West Sound Beekeeper president George Purkett of Port Orchard has been keeping bees about 15 years and has raised up to ten colonies.  He talks about the some of the lesser known health benefits of bee products – it’s called apitherapy and employs the use of bee products, including, pollen, royal jelly and venom in the prevention cure and treatment of diseases.

“Some of the resins bee collect from certain plants have antibiotic properties and can even be used on open wounds,” says Purkett.

George Purkett

Purkett urges anyone who has an interest in bees, their products and beekeeping to attend the February 17 meeting at 6:45 for beginning classes or just come to the business meeting that follows immediately afterward.  For more information go into the West Sound Beekeepers web site at:  www.westsoundbees.org or call David Mackovjak at:  (360) 698-5228.  The web site also has a full list of resources for would-be bee keepers.