Kim Flottum

It's getting difficult to trust the safety of anything coming out of China anymore, isn't it? You’ve read on this site about a variety of products that were made in China ... toys, pet food, milk and the like, all of which have been found to have been manufactured using products or chemicals that are just plain dangerous. It's a long list and stretches back years before they started reporting about them here.

For most of those years beekeepers in the U.S. have been aware of problems with some of the Chinese honey that’s been imported into the U.S. And lately, beekeepers have known about Chinese transshipping, which is sending Chinese honey into the U.S. from a second, or even third country to avoid having anybody know it was originally from China. The Chinese exporters transship it through other countries to avoid paying tariffs and to reduce suspicion that it was contaminated with antibiotics, a problem common with Chinese honey.

Customs officials and FDA have occasionally intercepted loads of this not-so-sweet product that they knew had problems but their actions have gone mostly unnoticed. And the companies that imported the funny honey and have the honey confiscated are never identified. Why is that, do you suppose?

Anyway, over the New Year’s Holiday, the Seattle Post Intelligencer, a Hearst-owned newspaper (like The Daily Green), released the result of a multi-year, multi-state, multi-country, multi-agency investigative report on this problem. Andrew Schneider, the PI reporter put together a series of articles that outlined the problem, the players, and the results of illegal, contaminated honey entering the U.S. And in the process he resurrected a phrase beekeepers have known for years – laundered honey. Moreover, he detailed the techniques used ...

You can’t find a cure until you know what the symptoms are exactly, and now, finally, we do.

We’ve mentioned Jerry Bromenshenk here before. He’s involved in more projects than most and has even more on the back burner waiting for some of his time. He’s been involved with Colony Collapse Disorder from the very beginning, and has kept his nose to that grindstone ever since. He and his colleagues at the University of Montana, the U.S Army’s Edgewood Chemical and Biological Center, his own company Bee Alert Technology, and BVS, Inc. have ferreted out an amazing amount of information on this Disorder. Not yet the final answer, but they are much closer to understanding the problem than even a few weeks ago.

One windfall of all of this is that they have figured out how to examine honey bee samples for essentially every disease and problem that has been documented and do it rapidly and inexpensively. This service is just coming online for beekeepers and it will be a boon for them without question. Already this is showing beekeepers what management procedures are effective in both the short and long run, thus enabling them to make cost effective, efficient and healthy decisions regarding how they manage their bees.

Already the beekeeping community is more aware of the best management practices over time to combat the worst of the regular pests and diseases bees have, and this year, it appears so far anyway, the almond orchards should have an ample supply of bees for pollination. Of course it’s only late December and bees are fickle, fragile creatures ... and in bee time, it’s a long way to February.

These discoveries ...

Like swallows to Capistrano, or the geysers in Yellowstone, the predictability of seedless mandarin orange growers and beekeepers banging heads in December is becoming very, very predictable. It was almost exactly a year ago to the day that we first discussed this situation but here’s a short recap if you didn’t read it then and don’t want to read all of that past stuff now.

Beekeepers in California have been placing their beehives in the citrus belt part of the state forever. They stay for three to four weeks making orange blossom honey, building up, getting fat and sassy, enjoying the good life. Citrus growers benefit some from this arrangement with increased yields, but citrus trees tend to be pretty self sufficient with or with out bees, so the growers don’t mind much. And the bees and the beekeepers have been pretty happy with this arrangement. There was, as I understand it, some time ago, disagreements over pesticide applications and bees in the groves (citrus plantings are called groves, not orchards for reasons I don’t know, but if you do, fill us all in), but they have been resolved and bees pretty much go where they want, when they want.

Until recently. ...

The USDA Animal Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) hasn't, as far as I know as of Sunday, made a decision on whether to allow Australian honey bees to continue to be sent to the U.S. or not. We reported on this issue a few days ago when it finally came to light that it was the worst kept secret in two hemispheres that a new species of honey bee had been discovered in Australia as long ago as May, 2007. That bee, Apis cerana, is otherwise known as the Asian honey bee. We have what is known as the European honey bees.

Now there's not really a problem with this bee in and of itself. They are smaller than our European honey bees, and they are pretty easy to tell apart. Except there's this trade contract we have with Australia that says that if they have it, they can't send bees to the U.S. It's that simple.

What the U.S. is really worried about is not these new bees so much as the pests and predators that come along with these new citizens of that country. What viruses, diseases and other nasties lurk within is what everybody is worried about ... well, there are some other issues. Like, what is Australia doing at all its other ports to make sure this won't happen somewhere else; what is the beekeeping industry in that area; how are the captured bees being analyzed and for what problems; and how confident, really, are the Australians that they have contained the spread of this new bee? ...

Note: As this post is "going to press," as we used to say, The Beekeeper has heard that the USDA will ban bees imported from Australia. The information hasn't yet been substantiated.

Last time I alluded to the fact that pollination could be imported.

"Impossible," you say.

"How could it be?," someone asks.

"Not a chance in h***," I hear.

Wrong, all wrong. The U.S. has imported pollination from off shore for the past 3 years or so. Really.

Here's how that works. ...

The United States normally consumes somewhere between 400 - 450 million pounds of honey each year, but produces between 150 and 200 million pounds. This year's crop will be in the 150 – 175 million pound range when all is said and done. Just so you know, five years ago a 240 million pound crop would be considered normal.

Some fraction of U. S. produced honey is used in the less expensive, somewhat generic tasting industrial market – Honey Nut Cheerios for instance. We use about three times as much industrial honey as table honey ... maybe even more. We import a significant amount of industrial honey.

Table honey, by comparison, is a good tasting, high quality and more expensive product. Table honey is generally produced from more common and popular floral sources such as clover, basswood, orange blossom, alfalfa and the like, and certainly the exotic varietal and artisan honeys qualify here. But we don't produce enough for that top end market so we also have to import table honey from various countries also.

This overall reduction in honey production is due to a variety of factors but certainly includes fewer beekeepers focusing on this aspect of their business. Rather, they are putting most of their efforts into the more profitable, but more difficult pollination business, and production of table honey, thus not competing with less costly imported honey in the barely profitable industrial honey market. Then there are the continued losses each year due to varroa mites, pesticides and colony collapse disorder. As a result of reduced domestic production a couple of things have happened, one of which is that, happily, the price of table grade honey has increased substantially due to reduced supply but continued demand. Interestingly, this has caused some beekeepers to again look at increasing their production of that of honey rather than push their bees through the pollination grist mill again ... because beekeepers can be flexible to some degree the scene is always changing.

Overall however, domestic production for both table and industrial honey is slowly declining while demand for both of these products continues to gradually increase, especially for industrial grade. To make up the difference imports – no surprise - are increasing. ...

This Christmas season you might just find you have a beekeeper, or a beekeeper wanna-be on your shopping list. And since you don't know a whole lot about bees, beekeeping and what they use and need, we're here to lend a helping hand.

Beekeeping equipment can't be had at your local Sears or Wal-Mart, so either you know about a nearby beekeeping supply outlet, and there probably is one, or go online and see what's available there. One way to find if there's a local outlet is to find a local beekeeper. Bee Culture's web page has a service we call Who's Who, which will put you in touch with beekeeping groups in your state. Find the nearest one and touch base to see if there's something local.

If there's not, and that's a good bet, google one of these national companies, or all of them, to see if you can find what you are looking for...try Better Bee (NY), Brushy Mountain or Miller (NC), Mann Lake or B&B (MN), Dadant (IL), Kelley (KY), Rossman (GA), Blue Sky, Simpson's or QueenRite (OH), GloryBee or Ruhl (OR) -- or simply put in 'beekeeping supplies.'

You will find many small, local companies this way so try them all. But there are also suppliers that are specialists and don't handle everything for everybody, and may not even show up when googling bee supplies, though most advertise in the national Beekeeping journals. Send me an email and I'll send you a sample magazine to browse.

One thing to keep in mind about online shopping are the freight costs...you may find a widget you want for less money halfway across the country, but the freight will kill you.

OK, now you know where to look, what do you get that beekeeper in your life?

Let's start with the beginners...those enthusiastic, passionate and eager starters who don't have bees yet, but plan on getting started next spring. My advice, first off, is to get a gift certificate, because that just-starting-out beginner doesn't even know what he or she wants yet. Yes, they need a hive, bee suit, good books, hive tools of all sorts, and certainly bees...but what they end up with may be very different than what you get them, and if they don't know, how could you know?

You may have to ask a question or two to see if they already have anything, but that's OK. Or ask one of their friends, or spouse, and see if you can find out.

Beekeeping Books

Books are always a good investment, and there are a couple of kinds, of course...good reference books, and good how-to books. If you check bee suppliers, Amazon and your local bookstores, you will probably notice that most of these feature only three or four books that everybody else does...that should tell you something.

Because I am just a tad prejudiced I tend to favor the ABC & XYZ of Bee Culture as a good reference book. There's nothing else like it, really, that's up-to-date and full of information. Check it out if that's the kind of book you are looking for. It is available in many places, and for a variety of prices.

As far as a how-to for a beginner, several come to mind...for inexpensive, try Starting Right With Bees, or First Lessons in Beekeeping. For more expensive, and more information, try The Backyard Beekeeper, or Beekeeping For Dummies. These, too, do well, and offer much more information. I'm pretty sure your beginner will be investing in several books in the next few years so no matter what you choose, it will end up being one of many.

There just aren't many books for the experienced beekeeper any more. Amazon has a few titles but they are dated. One, another, which I tend to favor only because it's the only one like it, strictly focuses on producing, harvesting and processing artisan and varietal honey. Called the Honey Handbook, it's not out yet but will be right after the first of the year. You can preorder it in most bookstores or online.

Other Apiary Supplies

But there's more than books for the beginner. There are tools that all beekeepers need more than one of. Like paint brushes for painters. All suppliers sell hive tools, usually three or four kinds, sizes, shapes and colors. Every beekeeper should have three or ten of these because they are so easily lost. And they are cheap. Consider hive tools, but don't worry too much about which kind because they are all useful. Maybe shy away from the real expensive models because no matter how much they cost, they all get lost.

Smokers, too, are needed by every beekeeper, and there are several varieties available. Know that all smokers are not created equal. If you insist on getting one look at the biggest you can get, not the smallest...then compare prices by companies. Lean toward the more expensive models, no matter the style you choose, because with smokers you get what you pay for. My favorite is one with a slanted cone shaped nozzle rather than a rounded top, but that tends to be more habit than anything else. But if in doubt, think again about that gift certificate. In fact, this technique works for nearly every tool you might consider.

Note that nearly every supplier sells a Beginner's Kit. Save your money. They look good and you may think you have solved all your problems with one purchase, and if you compare prices you'll see that if you had to buy all the parts and pieces separately you would save some money. But right off, you don't know which direction your beginner is going to go...assembled or not, eight or 10 frame, full bee suit or skimpy veil, big smoker or small, and do you already have the book they send along with the kit? No, beginner's kits are not for gift giving.

Say, what about a magazine subscription? There's two out there...Dadant's has one, and ours is the other. You know where I stand, but there really is a difference. Ours tends to be more for beginning and sideline beekeepers, the other one, The American Bee Journal, tends to lean more for scientific and commercial beekeepers. But really, they are more alike than not.

What about the already-beekeeper? More of the same is good advice here because they have already chosen the kind of equipment they like. The boxes they keep bees in wear out and need replacing. And it you take a quick peek you can see what size they use...and there's three...to keep it simple: big (called deeps), medium (called, ummm mediums) and small (called shallows). If you don't have a clue, you can never go wrong with an already-assembled medium or two or three, but if you can, check first.

Hive tools, smokers (get one that looks like the one they have now, only get the big one), good leather gloves, a beesuit like the one they wear everyday (it may just be a veil and helmet), some of the emergency smoker fuel... all will come in handy sometime, even if they don't use them routinely.

Consider too candle and soap making supplies for the crafty beekeeper...who knows, you might get something back down the road.

Something most folks don't ever think about is a year's membership in their favorite beekeeper's association, be it local, state or national. No beekeeper ever knows it all and every beekeeper will benefit from attending a few meetings during the year.

One thing not mentioned...bees. If you know a little about this subject you can find your local bee supplier and get a gift certificate for a package of bees, or maybe just a queen or two for next spring. The tricky part of this is what kind of bees does your beekeeper use...just like dogs and cats and cattle, there are different races of bees, and they are used for different things. That's why, again, a certificate might be a good idea.

Well, these are a few ideas of what to get the beekeeper in your life. If you're really stuck and really want to help out, send me an email with a bit more information about your beekeepers and maybe I can help.

In any event, enjoy the trip through all those on-line catalogs (you can, by the way, call each supplier and get a real catalog, if that makes you more comfortable).

And no matter what you end up doing, you'll learn a lot more about keeping bees than you thought, and you'll appreciate much more what your beekeeping friends do.

Learn to make the scrumptious lemon beehive cake above. Photo courtesy of Williams Sonoma

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In the spirit of Michael Pollan's open letter to the Farmer In Chief, here's a short note to the incoming Administrator of The Environmental Protection Agency:

Hello,
I send this before your name has been announced, and probably before you have accepted the invitation by the President-elect to run this organization. The people in Washington D.C. that suspect they know have listed many outstanding, capable and caring people as possible candidates. Kennedy, Nichols, Sussman, Renstrom, Learner, McGinty and Jackson have all been mentioned ... but even if you are not one of these I am quite certain that you were chosen because you, too, have excellent credentials, the proper experience and the right attitude to run this Cabinet-level agency. People like Rucklehaus, Rielly, Costle, Thomas, and Browner have protected the best interests of the environment and the people of this country, while not seriously impeding the businesses that share these same resources. Some before you have favored the environment in the extreme, some have given in to businesses. In retrospect I think most left their jobs with the country, and usually the environment a better place. At least they all said that that is what they wanted to do when they took their oath of office. I trust you will do the same.

The accomplishments made since your Agency was founded by Richard Nixon nearly 40 years ago are staggering, including the phase out of leaded gasoline, safe drinking water, the PCB ban, asbestos cleanup, wetlands protection, FIFRA, passive cigarette smoke laws, lead based paint restrictions, FQPA, the clean air act and now even nanotechnology reviews. And these are only the highest of the highlights. Your Assistant Administrators and Regional Offices will bring you up to speed on what has been done regarding the 30 or so major areas your agency deals with on a regular basis. But it is the future that you must focus on, and though I know you have much to do, above all please do not forget to do exactly what the title of your Agency says it is supposed to be doing ... You are the person in charge of PROTECTING OUR ENVIRONMENT.

To that end, some of what your new boss has in mind is carefully spelled out. His major campaign issues were health care, energy independence, climate change, and now, certainly, the economy. Moreover, his environmental/agricultural focus centered on maintaining a safety net for family farms, strengthening anti-monopoly saws, regulating CAFOs, COOL labeling, establishing more organic agriculture, setting aside more land, and getting more young people into the field. ...

April may have been the cruelest month in 1922 when Eliot wrote The Waste Land, but November is the cruelest month in 2008 as beekeepers, almond growers, pollination brokers, scientists and reporters hold their breath to see if this November Colony Collapse Disorder will rise again and be counted. November is the month it begins to creep, especially in the holding yards of California. So far its presence hasn’t been overwhelming, but it has shown up, mostly in operations arriving just this month from the east coast. But it isn’t limiting itself to just California, as usual, so beekeepers everywhere are making lists and checking everything twice, or more often, to make sure their bees are doing what their bees are supposed to be doing.

One scientist speculates that the previous two years have, in a twisted sort of way, been beneficial to the beekeeping industry if for no other reason than beekeepers are working hard at maintaining healthy colonies. Carefully they are watching nutrition levels in their bees, timing mite treatments better, doing everything possible to stem the tide of Nosema cerane, the gut-infecting disease that’s been causing all manner of problems the past couple of years, and to reduce as much as possible their exposure to any and all pesticides in the agricultural environment they are required to live in.

All of these precautions have paid off to some degree for most beekeepers, as it seems, so far, the incidence of CCD has been reduced. But this is a sly and sneaky monster so no one is taking the lull so far for granted, and everyone is holding their breath.

Still, all the precautions in the world have not stopped the reoccurrence of this malady ...

This has nothing to do with CCD, but everything to do with the beekeeping life. If you want a serious, and pretty straight forward summary of what CCD is doing at the moment, where it has been and where it may be going (and don’t want to click through the past dozen or so articles that have been here and covered most of this already, click on this link Penn State link and disregard the rest of this article. The author has talked to almost all of the right people and tells a pretty good story. It’s thoughtful, sensitive and matter-of-fact. There’s nothing new because there’s nothing new at the moment, but it does fill lots of space ... all three parts of it. It deserves a place in the archives here somewhere.

But here’s the thing. Beekeepers, for the most part, are pretty much unaware of CCD. Depending on where they are right now, they’re finishing up this season’s work with the bees by feeding or moving to winter grounds, getting ready for winter where they are, moving to California for almond pollination, harvesting and processing the last of the honey crop for the year, marketing what they’ve harvested, finding pollination contracts to prepare for next spring, fixing or building equipment, making more honey far in the south, or simply taking it easy, finally.

But I don’t want to talk about any of that, either. Here’s one of the best things about being a beekeeper ... not the best maybe, but certainly one of the best. Honey.

I have to travel quite a bit for my job. That gets old sometimes what with the hassles of air travel anymore, but those annoyances are far outweighed by the good people I get to visit with when I arrive. I go to beekeeping meetings, visit beekeeping operations to cover stories or current news, or set up shop and sell the books we publish. I’ve been fortunate in that regard and have met hundreds, probably thousands of beekeepers over the years. And I collect the honey they produce. Right now I have 17 different kinds of honey sitting on my kitchen table, ready to eat. I have honey from Arizona, Oregon, Ohio, Florida. Maine, North Carolina, Georgia, Michigan, Wisconsin and some places I can’t remember.

And the honey in Arizona is not the same by any stretch as the honey from Wisconsin, Florida, Maine, Oregon or South Dakota. And this is what I want to share with you ... the great hidden secret of artisan and varietal honeys. ...

Is this for real?

There is, perhaps justifiably, some amount of skepticism concerning the actual reality of Colony Collapse Disorder in the beekeeping world. That skepticism extends to much of the world for that matter. True, lots of bees have died in the past couple of years both in the U.S. and around the globe. But identifiable things keep coming up to explain (some, most, all – take your pick) of those deaths.

For instance, the recent flap in the U.K., where beekeepers marched on 10 Downing Street and Parliament demanding more money for bee research and firing off their smokers is one good example. They admitted, quietly, that the bees that died and the honey crop that didn’t materialize there last season were mostly victims of poor weather.

Huge bee losses recently in France are suspected to be due to misapplied pesticides, and significant colony losses in Spain are being blamed on that new Nosema disease that’s not so new any more.

Even here in the states, some beekeepers can quite clearly point to something explainable causing their colony losses ... even when those losses are large and have not been seen in such portions previously.

But at the same time, some of these losses are not explainable and there seems no reason they should occur. Even after samples have been examined and a multitude of sins are exposed, these sins alone do not explain the evacuation of adult bees from hundreds, sometimes thousands of colonies in an operation.

If this were the first time this or a similar set of circumstances had occurred perhaps we would have a different perspective. Sadly, it is not. ...

The other day I wrote about recent research into bee problems, and their discussion at an international conference in the U.K. On a more aggressive front, beekeepers in the U.K. have had about enough of government talk, and are going to take to the streets to get those in charge off the dime and take some action.

For the past six months The British Beekeepers’ Association has been letting the world know that they and their bees are having problems. Articles in the press, interviews on radio and TV both national and local ... they’ve let the public know there’s something going on that’s going to affect the public, and something needs to be done. Plus, associations and even individuals have carried a petition demanding government action on the matter and now have over 100,000 signatures. Funding for additional research has been promised by some businesses with more to come it is expected. End phase one.

Phase two. Take to the streets.

On Nov. 5 hundreds, maybe thousands of British Beekeepers will demonstrate in front of 10 Downing Street with their smokers lit and placards on high demanding more action from the government to fix the honey bee problem. After the smoke-in (does that bring back images of the 60s or what?), the beekeepers will head over to Parliament to ...

Recently there was a meeting of European and U.S. Scientists studying Colony Collapse Disorder held in London at the International Conference of the Society of Invertebrate Pathology. The conference was held at the University of Warwick, organized by Rothamsted was sponsored by vita-europe, a company that produces products that aid in honey bee health.

Unexplained colony deaths this past season, coupled with an extraordinarily poor honey crop in the U.K. this year led Max Watkins, the Technical Director at Vita to call the meeting, and to explore further what is going on. Even though poor weather certainly had something to do with the situation, in Max’s words "an array of unexplained research findings indicates a more sinister and long-term challenge."

He goes on, "Although I firmly believe that varroa (mites) is at the core of the problem, the developing interplay of other factors while unsettling for beekeepers, is fascinating yet perplexing for researchers. The answers can only come from a thorough scientific approach.

"Investigations are underway across the globe and many suspects and accomplices are under suspicion – viruses once of little consequence are not becoming more prominent killers, but a clear pattern is elusive. One novel line of enquiry in Israel is focusing on 'gene silencing' in an attempt to suppress the expression of bee viruses in the honey bee genome," Max summed up.

Summaries from recent work discussed the role of viruses in Colony Collapse Disorder, stressing that ...