The buzz about bees

Beekeeper David Berry with a few tools of the trade: hive, bee-smoker and veil. PHOTOS BY ROB BENCHLEY Did you know that one third of the human diet would disappear without honeybee pollination? Or, that bees fly approximately 12 to 20 miles an hour and forager bees must collect nectar from 2 million flowers to produce a single pound of honey?

Extra chairs had to be brought in when at least 100 people came to a recent Brown Bag Lunch lecture at the Whaling Museum to hear David Berry, owner of Nantucket Honey Bee Company, share copious information on the details of beekeeping in a broad and sometimes humorous presentation.

Berry, who spoke on the importance of honeybees to humans and nature in general, is one of about 30 beekeepers on Nantucket, including Jim Gross, a board member of the Massachusetts Beekeepers Association. Both men have many hives and not only produce honey to sell, but offer a range of services including swarm removal from homes and businesses, and in Berry's case, hive placement and management, beekeeping instruction, colony production and Queen bee breeding, to name a few of his specialties.

Jim Gross holds up a honeycomb. Berry, who spent 10 years working as an investment manager in New York City, said he felt detached from nature in that urban environment. Always fascinated by bees because of their complex societies, he decided to start keeping his own in Connecticut eight years ago. He had summered on the island most of his life, but three years ago moved here year-round, with his bees, and now has 20 hives scattered from The Creeks to Polpis, and on two small farms.

"Keeping bees has opened my eyes to other things in nature that we take for granted, like what is growing and blooming. I am delighted to see a society that has no jealousy or conflict. I wish there was such a thing in the grand society," he said, adding, "When you become active in something you enjoy you become philosophical."

Jim Gross has 15 hives on his Wauwinet area property that pollinate his wife Laura's extensive garden and their apple trees, but said he just "gives them a box to live in."

"They travel two miles [to find nectar]," he explained. "They are a wild animal."

The finished product: one pound of honey. Gross started keeping hives 15 years ago after he contracted Lyme disease twice and experienced uncomfortable stomach problems as a result of the infections. His doctor told him to eliminate cigarettes, coffee and alcohol from his lifestyle because they were producing acidity in his system.

"I became a tea drinker, but finding good honey for tea is hard. I used to go away to get honey from a beekeeper, but while my wife was researching [her book] "Dear Mr. Jefferson: Letters from a Nantucket Gardener," she found a magazine called Bee Culture about honeybees. Since we have a big garden, I ordered all the parts to begin my operation," said Gross, who was in a short film a couple of years ago titled "Every Third Bite."

"The whole deal with bees is that every third bite of food you eat is pollinated by a honeybee," he explained. "If all the honeybees went away we'd be eating gruel."

During his talk, Berry told the audience about how hive boxes are stacked and the purpose of each container. The smallest top boxes are where honey is produced, but keepers do not remove all of the honey because the bees use it as a winter food source and usually require 40 pounds per colony to survive cold, flowerless months. To stay warm in the winter, the bees form into a ball within the hive and flex their wing muscles to produce heat averaging 90 degrees.

Each bee in a colony has a particular task to carry out in maintaining a healthy hive. There is just one queen per hive, who is the largest bee and solely in charge of reproduction. Queens can live two years or longer and lay up to 3,000 eggs per day in the spring and summer. Drone bees are males without stingers and primarily hang out, eat and fertilize virgin queens.

Worker bees are non-reproducing females, and as their name implies, do all the chores including foraging for nectar and pollen to bring home. Workers collect pollen in tiny "baskets" on the backs of their legs. They become covered with pollen while dipping their tongues into the honey-producing nectar at a flower's center, then use their legs to rake the pollen into their natural carrying cases.

They also feed the queen and her larvae, clean the queen, guard the hive entrance and fan their wings at lightning speed to "air-condition" the hive and evaporate the water content of nectar so that it can become honey. Queens are fed "royal jelly," a secretion from the head glands of young worker bees. Workers may receive a taste of jelly when they are just growing, but mainly eat "bee bread," a combination of honey and pollen. If a worker bee defends the hive or itself by stinging an intruder or personal menace, it will die.

Bees communicate through the excretion of pheromones, a chemical that lets them know they are in the correct hive. Another form of communication comes through a "waggle dance" performed by foraging bees to alert other foragers about newly discovered flower patches.

Bees have been producing honey for some 150 million years, but certain bugs and modern practices created threats to their survival. Berry explained that prior to the 1980s there were few challenges to bee health, and most hives were left to function with little human oversight. The combination of a worldwide spread of exotic pests such as mites that attack bees, and increasing use of pesticides began to make bees vulnerable to disfigurement and death.

Berry raises Russian bees that are more resistant to chemicals than other bee types, though he said they are "a bit more ornery and aggravated" in their personalities and not necessarily best suited for novice keepers.

The most important factor in keeping bees is maintaining a watchful eye on the health of the hive so the colony does not fall ill from neglect, said Berry. Keepers who no longer want to care for their bees are urged to call him or another keeper such as Gross who will assist in finding them a new home rather than allow abandonment to spawn disease that might harm other hives.

"It's a wonderful hobby," Gross said of beekeeping. "Once you get comfortable with the bees you look at nature in a whole different way."

To order a honey delivery from Gross, or enlist his services call 508-228- 4038. To buy Berry's honey, seek help with hive placement and management or ask about his other services call 917- 697-5089. I PHOTOS BY ROB BENCHLEY