Have You Thought About Raising Bees?

Bees are dying all over the word. Mites, viruses, parasites, bad weather, pesticides, lack of forage, and who knows what else, are conspiring to decimate the bee population. With bees in mind, maybe this is the year to learn more about organic lawn maintenance and skip the chemical sprays. 
          Meanwhile, interest in beekeeping is growing among green gardeners living in North Shore communities. On tax day, April 15th, some members of Go Green Northbrook went on a field trip to Highland Park's Heller Nature Center.  We joined several other folks from the northern suburbs who wanted to watch and learn about bees from naturalist, Leah Holloway, Heller's Head Beekeeper. Among Leah's many responsibilities, she is in charge of maintaining all the hives. 
          After a long, difficult winter, hives can die from the cold or run out of their supply of honey and starve. So even though it was chilly, the day was planned around preparing a batch of sugar water to feed the bees. The sugar water helps build up the bees' strength -- and provides a bridge between the end of winter and the blooming of flowers. This year it seems like winter won't end. And the flowers are taking forever to come up. 
          The sugar syrup recipe is fortified with lemongrass and other herbs to strengthen the bees' immune systems. A small amount of lemon juice per pound of sugar is added to help breakdown the sugar molecules to make it more like nectar, which is easier for bees to digest and put to use in the hive. Here are some links so you can learn more about feeding bees: Bee Hive Journal and The Bee Works.

Leah Holloway's friendly face greets the volunteers as they arrive at the Heller Nature Center. If you want to become a volunteer, call Heller @847-433-6901 to sign up. Before you volunteer, read some interesting FACTS about honey bees. Here's a TED talk about bees that discusses the slow, but relentless demise of bees over the last fifty years -- HERE. 

To start working around the bee hives, the volunteers have to climb into their bee suits. So we follow Leah outdoors to the new, critter-proof metallic container, where the bee supplies are kept.

          The Heller bees are very generous with their payback to the beekeepers. Every summer, honey from the hives is bottled and sold to the public. Proceeds from the sale of honey help support Heller's beekeeping and education programs.

                                                                    

It's been a long winter. There are just a few honey sticks left for sale. 

The feeder boxes stored on the left will hold the sugar syrup, which the bees access from inside the hive, through the bottom center of the feeder box. Opening the hive to put the feeder box in place takes effort with a pry tool, because the bees seal up any spaces with propolis or Bee Glue -- a resinous mixture the bees make from sap and other botanical sources. It's a natural disinfectant and antibiotic. According to Leah, Bee Glue works better than some commercial products.

      Volunteers eagerly start climbing into the bee suits. Not because they're flattering. As you might expect, anyone working around the hives is required to wear protective covering. Bees don't take kindly to human disturbances, no matter how well intended. Here's a LINK to an online store that prides itself on cheap bee suits, in case you want to get your own. Or need a good costume for Halloween.

Below is a view of the inside of a feeder box. There are many kinds of feeder boxes. With just as many opinions about which ones are best. Here's a LINK to give you an idea. At Heller, the center of the box is screened to separate the bees from the sugar syrup -- to help protect them from falling into the liquid on either side and drowning. Unfortunately, this still happens from time to time.

After the bee suits come the gloves. The protective gloves fit high up on the arms, over the elbows. There are elastic bands on the bee suit sleeves that stretch over your thumbs to keep the sleeves from riding up when the gloves go on. Here's another LINK to an online store that carries a range of equipment and supplies you'll need. Just remember, no matter how much equipment you wear, you'll probably get stung anyway. It goes with the territory.

GGN's Barbara Gerleman models the latest in leather accessories for the fashionable beekeeper. We finally found a place to stash her handbag, so she wouldn't have any stray bees flying out of her purse on the way home. Next time she'll probably keep it in the trunk.

GGN's Merilee Novinson is sealed up nicely inside her bee suit. No tiny openings where a bee could crawl in. We noticed that the additional warm clothing needed on the cool, damp, spring day made the fit of everybody's bee suit kind of snug.

Time to carry the feeder boxes out to the hives. If you're curious about what's happening to kill off the bee colonies, here's another LINK that talks about the problem.

On the walk to the bee hives, we pass a cabin designed by famous landscape architect, Jens Jensen, originally used as a children's playhouse. It was donated to the Heller Nature Center by a local resident. 

      The feeder boxes will be placed at the top of the hive, underneath the cover. Here's a link for beginners that shows the parts of a beehive. Here are two descriptions about what bees go through to survive the winter 1) how the bees keep warm in the winter and 1) what is a winter cluster? 

As part of Heller Nature Center's mission to educate, Leah begins to prepare their traveling bee exhibit for display. It is built to allow a good view into the workings of a hive.

She will fill the yellow container with sugar syrup once the syrup has been made. Next, she'll move one of the surviving colonies into the traveling exhibit. Of the eighteen hives they had last year, three survived the winter, which is not bad, given the stress bees are under and the harshness of the past winter.

Leah takes apart the exhibit hive in preparation for all the bees that will follow their queen, who will be moved to her new home, once the sugar syrup has been added.

She slides clear panels into place so anyone who views the traveling hive can easily see what the bees are doing inside the hive.

After setting up the first hive, it's time to make the syrup. Water straight from the hot water heater is added to sugar, followed by the special mixture of herbals essences [Pro Health] and lemon juice. The beekeepers at Heller used to make everything from scratch. but the cost became prohibitive, so they switched to ready made products.

Leah holds the lemon juice which makes the sugar more digestible for bees. The sugar should only be white sugar. No brown sugar or molasses. In the recipes we read, we noticed there are different ratios of sugar to water, depending on whether the syrup is used in the fall or spring or to stimulate brood rearing.

          The water should be close to boiling temperature to dissolve the sugar. Some recipes suggest bringing the water to a boil, turning off the heat, then adding the sugar. After combining all the ingredients, it's time to stir and stir and stir.                         

Lemongrass oil, spearmint oil, and lecithin are just a few of the ingredients in the Pro Health supplement added to the sugar syrup. There's also a mild laxative. During the winter the bees will leave the hive to evacuate their digestive systems, if it gets warm enough. However, following our recent cold winter, they may not have been able to leave very often, if at all. Enough said.  

The sugar syrup is poured into the container in the exhibit hive before the queen bee is moved into it.

The top of the hive is removed and the search for the queen begins. Once she has been found and moved to the exhibit hive, the rest of the colony will follow her distinctive pheromone. You may be able to see the bees piled in their winter cluster, bunched together for warmth inside the hive. After using a bee tool to open up the hive, Leah and the volunteers start moving the honeycombs and other infrastructure.

Needless to say, stirring up the hive with the bee tool is a process that annoys the heck out of the bees. But that's what the bee suits are for. If you're interested in trying your hand at beekeeping, we recommend signing up to be a volunteer at Heller Nature Center. You can also find starter kits HERE. And get your very own copy of Beekeeping for Dummies HERE.

You'll probably also want some remedies for bee stings, so here's a link from WEBmd.  If, instead of beekeeping, you want to plant flowers that attract bees, check them out HERE. Finally, you could start a Go Green Northbrook Beekeeper Team. And raise bees with other Northbrook residents. Just a thought. 

          We'll leave you with some pictures of flowers now blooming in Merilee Novinson's legendary yard. And a gentle reminder to plant some flowers that attract bees, plus a request to stop using pesticides and herbicides.