Reverie in Bee
Stephanie Catlett, Catalyst Editor
Tucked into the rolling countryside just outside Toledo, Iowa, lies an idyllic apiary, an organized chaos of raspberry bushes and Iowa wildflowers, puffs of clover and purple coneflowers with their round noses in the air. A sweetness wafts on the breeze as Graphic Designer Peter Eko-Acquah and I wander down the garden path to the front lawn where our tour of Bee Plantation begins.
Steve and Jananne Koch are the owners and operators of Bee Plantation, an almost otherworldly hideaway where they raise up to 450 honeybee colonies each year. A former employee of John Deere, Steve dreamed of leaving his job as factory worker, knowing that “there had to be a better way.”
That “better way” turned out to be raising bees. Bee Plantation honey has graced the shelves of New Pioneer Food Co-op since 1974. “We needed someplace to sell our honey,” notes Steve, “and we’d heard about this little outfit in Iowa City. I told (former grocery manager) John Higgins, ‘I’ll supply my honey as long as you need it’ … and as you’ve grown, so have I.”
As the couple’s adorable granddaughter, Blaze, skips ahead, our group wanders to the small white outbuilding where Bee Plantation honey is processed. This time of year (mid-July), Bee Plantation collects mostly clover honey. Peter, Jananne, and I don our white bee suits and veils and traipse down to the nearest cluster of multi-colored boxes stacked five to six high. These fourteen colonies house worker bees, drones, and queens who live in an intricately synchronized world of mating, raising larvae, collecting pollen, and performing colony maintenance and upkeep.
Jananne uses the hive tool, a flat metal plank with a hook on the end, to lift a honeycomb frame from the top of the colony. Bees store their own honey supply at the bottom of the hive, and any extra honey available for human harvesting is stockpiled at the top. Bees require at least fifty pounds of honey to survive the winter, and it is rare for bees to endure this harsh season in Iowa.
Approximately twenty bees swirl lazily around Jananne as she holds up the frame of honeycomb for Peter and I to admire. In colder seasons, the Kochs use a smoker to sedate the bees when they harvest the honey every two weeks or so. In warmer weather like today, however, smoking is deemed unnecessary and Jananne declares, “I don’t like to stress them out too much!”
We stand a safe (we hope!) distance back as Jananne explains that this particular comb is not yet ready for harvest, since it is only 80% capped. Bees fan the air with their wings to bring the honey to a level of 80% moisture and 20% sugar, and when a comb is full of perfectly tempered honey, bees “cap” the comb with white wax to seal in their crop.
Worker bees can cover an area of up to two miles searching for nectar. “Bees recognize their own colonies” Steve explains, “just like when you were a kid and you would go to visit a friend, the first thing you notice is how their house smells different from yours.” Queen bees also exude pheromones to attract workers back to the hive.
Tending bees is a tenuous and often frustrating profession, and the threat of Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) is constantly eminent. In 2006, Colony Collapse Disorder appeared on the scene as beekeepers reported losses of 30-60% of their hives. Colony collapse has affected Bee Plantation this year & last. The Kochs lost 90% of their colonies and made up the numbers with replacement bees from California.
The cause of CCD has not been pinpointed to one specific factor, although contrary to popular belief, cell phones have been definitively ruled out as a cause. Jananne relates that, “Bees under severe stress due to noise, smells … or construction can become very stressed. And just like people, when they’re stressed they get sick.”
The USDA backs up this idea that stressors such as over spraying of pesticides, parasites or pathogens, viruses, varroa mites (parasites that transmit bee viruses), poor nutrition, pollen or nectar scarcity, and exposure to contaminated water supplies may be the combined cause of CCD.
“The bees just left and never made it back” Steve notes, “It seemed like they simply disappeared—it (CCD) was called the ‘disappearing disease’ for awhile.” Abandoned colonies are left with a live queen, few adult bees, and no dead bees in or near the hive. Beekeepers use replacement bees to supplement their hives after incurring losses and so far, CCD has remained a manageable, if troubling, phenomenon.
Back at the processing facility, Steve breaks off a piece of comb and hands it to me to sample. The taste of the still-warm-from-the-outdoors honey explodes in my mouth in an excruciating sweetness unlike anything I’ve ever tasted. Such a quality product can only come with years of experience and a dedication to working with nature to maintain happy and productive colonies.
Our visit to Bee Plantation ends with a tutorial from Jananne on the lives of queen bees. “Bees,” she explains, “are true feminists.” Workers and the queen perform most of the key tasks in honey production, with drones (male) bees existing solely to mate with the queen, dying shortly after their mission is accomplished. “Drones even get kicked out of the hive in winter, when food supplies are scarce,” explains Jananne.
Queen bees live a pampered life. Larvae chosen to be queens by the worker bees are fed a diet of nutrient rich “royal jelly” for three days. After three days, the new queen is moved to a large “queen cell”, and is fed royal jelly continuously for twenty-one days. Once the queen hatches, she mates and returns to the hive. Here, she spends her days sitting in a bed of royal jelly, laying eggs all day, every day for the rest of her life.
The Kochs make every attempt to keep their bees native, over-wintering them if possible. “Economically speaking, a good colony that winters over can be split into two or three more colonies” Steve explains, “Iowa queens are more likely to survive the winter, as well.” At Bee Plantation, queens have been reported to live for up to and over five years!
As Peter and I head back to New Pioneer, our heads are swirling with all we’ve learned about nature’s favorite sweetener and the near-magical processes that must be in place to create the golden perfection that is Bee Plantation honey. As the weather begins to turn cool, add Bee Plantation honey to hot teas or blend honey with butter and spread it on cornbread, as Steve would recommend. Buzz on over to either Co-op location and pick up a jar of this versatile, all-natural, and just plain yummy Iowa honey.
Once fully-capped hives are harvested, the frames of honey are moved into the outbuilding for processing. Capped frames are inserted into a machine that scrapes the caps off of the hive, opening up the comb and allowing the fresh honey to run freely. The wax caps are melted down separately to make candles and other wax products.
After the caps are removed from the combs, the frames are placed in a large stainless steel drum. This machines spins out the frames to remove every last drop of honey. The honey then drains out into a sump tank, a square tub inset into the floor, where it is filtered to remove any imperfections and the remaining wax.
The final step in processing is for the pure filtered honey to move from the sump tank into a large vat for testing. Steve tests the moisture of the honey using a refractometer. The ideal moisture level for honey is 18.6%. This year has been an unusually wet year, so Steve blends spring and summer honey with less-moist fall honey to achieve the perfect moisture balance.
Sources:
Questions and Answers: Colony Collapse Disorder, United States Department of Agriculture, www.ars.usda.gov/News/docs.htm?docid=15572&pf=1&cg_id=0
Colony Collapse Disorder, A Complex Buzz, United States Department of Agriculture, www.ars.usda.gov/is/AR/archive/may08/colony0508.htm?pf=1
Organic Farming Has Potential to Reverse Honeybee Losses, The Scoop – May 2008 Organic Center Newsletter, www.organicconsumers.org/articles/article_12141.cfm.