As the pollination season approaches, The Advocate sat down with Everett Kaser, president of Linn Benton Beekeepers Association (LBBA), who began his beekeeping experience through Oregon State University.
LBBA, in the words of Kaser, is a “collection of beekeepers” from both counties with the raison d’être of education of primarily the beginning beekeepers and the public in general, while offering more advanced knowledge for non-beginners. The group meets regularly, except in December when honey bees are hibernating.
Advocate: When and how did you get started in the field of beekeeping?
Kaser: I’d been interested in beekeeping ever since I was a teenager,but only got started about 9 years ago (I’m 68). I’d never encountered any beekeepers, got busy with ‘life,’ and then I saw a news article in the local paper about a Master Beekeepers program that was starting via OSU and the Benton County ExtensionService. That finally kicked me over the edge.
I realized there was a large beekeepers club in Salem (the Willamette Valley Beekeepers Association), and shortly after that some folks started the [LBBA] in the Corvallis/Albany area
Advocate: What is the status of bees’ survival in Oregon?
Kaser: Bees are doing reasonably well. The “big scare” over the past 10-20 years was primarily caused by three different things that all combined to cause large numbers of “colony loss.”
1) Pests: primary among which is the varroa mite.
2) Pesticides: both large scale farmers and backyard gardeners use pesticides to keep destructive insects off of crops and flowers. Many of those kill honeybees just as well as the pests the people are trying to control.
3) Nutrition: as farming has become increasingly large-scale, you end up with “monoculture farming,” where large swathes of land have a single plant growing on them. Just as humans need a wide variety of nutrients to prevent various diseases caused by malnutrition, so do honeybees, and monoculture farming reduces the variety that they need.Put all three of those together, and you end up with what used to be called (before the causes were fully understood) “colony collapse disorder,” or CCD. It’s rarely referred to it that way anymore, because the root causes are better understood.
Advocate: How many bee species do we have in Oregon?
Kaser: There are over 20,000 bee species around the world, over 4,000 in the United States, and over 500 in Oregon. That’s one thing the Oregon Bee Project is trying to ascertain via the Oregon Bee Atlas. But it’s an ongoing endeavor.
Advocate: Are all bees pollinators? Kaser: Yes, because they all eat pollen.
I suppose out 20,000, there may be some that live off of other things than pollen, but pollen (and hence, as a side-effect, pollination) is a staple for most of them. That’s one of the growing concerns: honeybees are a big concern for humans, because they are ‘manageable’ [and] they produce honey, but there are many other bees that also pollinate and are critical to our biodiversity and the success of our crops and flowers.
Honeybees are the only ones that suffer from the varroa mite problem, but all of them suffer from pesticides and monoculture farming.
Further, different bees pollinate different things. Different species have developed different physical features that allow them to feed from different flowers, so none of them can feed from all flowers. So, for example, while honeybees can feed off of blueberry blossoms, they’re not very efficient at it, as they can’t get into the blossoms easily, and their tongues are not long enough to reach down into the blossom. Other bees, however, can feed off of them fine.
Advocate: Which ones can sting?
Kaser: Honeybees, definitely.
Terminology, though, can be confusing. Yellowjackets are generally referred to as wasps, not bees. Beekeepers, at least, like to differentiate wasps and hornets from bees. Scientifically, they all belong to the same kingdom, phylum, class, and order.
Beekeepers generally like to refer to bees, wasps, and, hornets. Of the thousands of bee species, most of them don’t sting – although some bite. Of those that sting, most of them do it only in defense. For example, most honey bees won’t sting you unless you start messing with their hive, and even then their aggression varies with the season (they get much more defensive in the summer and fall, when food sources are scarce), and different colonies will be more or less defensive, depending upon their genetics.
In the extreme, you have Africanized bees (known in the popular press,of course, as Killer Bees, because, of course, everything has to be dramatized and sensationalized, just like Murder Hornets). Africanized bees are very defensive. Fortunately, we don’t have them here in Oregon.
Most bees, and even most wasps, won’t sting you if you leave them alone.
Advocate: When we talk about beekeeping do we always mean honey bees?
Kaser: In general, yes, because they’re the only bees that keep a colony going year-around.
Did you know there are only three types of “social insects” that keep a hive going all year round? Honeybees, ants, and termites. Others, in general, lay eggs that survive the winter to hatch in the spring, or create a bunch of ‘queens’ (like yellowjackets) that will find some place (like a woodpile, etc.) to ‘hibernate’ for the winter, to emerge in the spring and start a new colony.However, there are different ‘degrees’ of ‘keeping’. Many people will put up ‘houses’ for mason bees to provide them with good, easy to use places to lay their eggs. Mason bees are native bees that are great pollinators, but don’t produce honey and don’t keep a hive going all winter. But helping them by providing an easy to use place to reproduce is a ‘form’ of ‘keeping’ that helps maintain our pollinator diversity.
Advocate: What do you think the general public should know about bees?Kaser: Where to start? The most important things are probably:
1) Bees (not just honey bees) are critical to the success of many of our crops.
2) A diversity of bees is critical to the success of our crops.
3) Our ecosystem is complex, interdependent, and our success depends upon its success.
4) Bees are not to be feared. If you leave them alone, they will generally leave you alone.
Honeybees have a direct benefit to humans [by making honey], but a successful diversity of pollinators is important to more than just the pollination of our crops. The ecosystem (which includes us) feeds on itself, and if one part fails, that will cause a chain reaction of failures rippling through the ecosystem.
Knowledge, awareness, and respect are key.
By Joanna Rosińska
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