Honeybees are the stuff of legend, history and the occasional horror movie. But for homeowners and urban farmers, their presence can make the difference between enough cucumbers to make gazpacho or no cucumbers at all.
Apis mellifera
Honeybees, as we have come to know them, are not native to North America, having come here with our earliest European ancestors. They are colonial insects, choosing to live in large hives that contain tens of thousands of workers, many drones and one queen. All the workers are female but the queen is the only fertile female in the hive. In temperate zones, she begins laying eggs in late winter and can lay a thousand eggs a day. At the height of the colony’s growth, it may contain as many as 50,000 bees.
As the colony grows, it may become necessary to split the hive. This happens during swarm season (usually late April to mid-May) when the colony raises a new queen, freeing the original queen to leave with about half the workers and drones. This gives the colony enough room to expand. A careful beekeeper will keep an eye on the size of the colony and add additional bee boxes to prevent swarming.
Bees have been in the national news lately because of a phenomenon that has come to be called "Colony Collapse Disorder" or CCD. Beekeepers began to notice their bees disappearing, leaving queen, brood and colony, never to return. The beekeepers noted that the affected hives, once emptied of their inhabitants, were not robbed of honey by nearby colonies. They stood as silent sentinels to a frightening problem: what is devastating bee colonies all over the world?
The cause or causes of CCD are still unconfirmed and each beekeeper and apiarist has their own pet theory. Cell phone towers, genetically modified crops, viruses, pesticides, parasites — no one cause fits all situations and scientists are frantically searching for answers and remedies. This much we do know: more than a third of all human food relies on pollination by the European honeybee. That includes not only the fruits and vegetables themselves, but also the grain used to feed livestock.
The most important work of these busy insects is not honey production but pollination. Each spring, beekeepers load colonies onto flatbed trucks and roll them to apple and almond orchards and fields of cotton and berries, traveling from the Carolinas to California and Texas. With a dwindling population of bees to do the work, and no mechanized alternative to the natural pollination process, these tiny workers are carrying a heavy load on their fragile wings.
When they aren’t helping the crops along, bees tend to their own cottage industries. In addition to honey, bees produce propolis, pollen, royal jelly and beeswax, all valuable agricultural products in North Carolina. Bees make propolis — sometimes called "bee glue" — by gathering resin, and use it to seal up unwanted cracks in the hive body. Humans have found that propolis has anti-microbial properties and some people swear by it as a boost to the immune system.
Bee pollen is sometimes touted as a "super food" and is said to alleviate a number of conditions, including allergies. Royal jelly is a compound produced to feed the queen and is used, along with beeswax, in cosmetics and dietary supplements. And while most of us know honey as a superlative sweetener, for centuries is has also been used throughout the world as a burn treatment and wound dressing due to its antiseptic properties.
It is fascinating to watch beekeepers work through their hives. Whether dressed in the traditional white attire or in a makeshift veil and jeans, the gentle give and take of insect and keeper is a symbiotic dance almost as old as humankind itself. In the mountains of Western North Carolina, old-timers talk about colonies kept in "bee gums" — a section of a hollow tree with a colony of bees inside it. And most of us are familiar with the conically shaped basket called a bee skep. But with the development of modern hive equipment in the 19th century, the traditional skep is no longer used for bees. Instead, it’s employed as a charming piece of garden décor.
The average home gardener in North Carolina can make a welcome place for bees in the backyard. Honeybees have a three-mile foraging radius, so it isn’t necessary to become a beekeeper to do your bit for this vital species. Just as you might design a portion of your garden to attract songbirds or butterflies, you can add certain flowering plants to your landscape for honeybees. Clover is a favorite, but more conventional choices for the home gardener include herbs like rosemary, thyme and borage, and flowering annuals like zinnias, sunflowers and coneflower. And, of course, bee balm.
Keep in mind that pesticides will affect both unwanted and beneficial insects, and honeybees are no exception. To encourage visits from these golden-winged wonders, keep your use of toxins to a minimum — or eliminate them entirely, particularly during peak bloom season.
Visit your local tailgate or farmers’ market and take advantage of local honey. It’s healthful and delicious and your purchase supports people in your community who are working to save the honeybee. While you’re there, engage the beekeeper in conversation. Beekeepers love to talk about their craft, so you’ll learn about this important pollinator and producer — apis mellifera, the honeybee.
is a grand name for so tiny an insect — though the bee’s size belies its importance as a pollinator and a producer of that sticky golden wonder: honey. Apis is Latin for "bee" and mellifera means "honey-bearer." Outdoors, we most often think of them for the stinger they also bear and are told as children to never swat a bee if we don’t want to feel the result.