Show Me the Honey

by Dave Doroghy

  When it comes to being on time, and beekeeping in general, why is it that I always show up a day late and a dollar short? We shamefacedly arrived at the hotel just after 9:30 AM. There were already over 200 beekeepers comfortably settled into the convention’s first plenary session: a high-quality power point presentation on how global warming is affecting bee colonies. Jeannie and I tiptoed into the room, slouching like juveniles as we slid into a couple of seats together near the back of the room.

  When it comes to climate change and bees, you can take an educated guess that any presentation won’t be a happy news story. It’s hard to distill the tail end of the 45-minute presentation, but here goes. The rise in temperatures is disrupting the sensitive timing of when bees pollinate plants and flowers. Plants are now blooming earlier in the growing season, before the bees have a chance to pollinate them. Hundreds of thousands of years ago, Mother Nature designed the whole pollination–blooming scheme to be a synchronized effort, and global warming is affecting this delicate sequencing. It’s not good. The bees may be doomed soon, along with the plants that require their pollination.

  I listened to the last of the climate change presentation in the vast ballroom while stealing looks at the sea of beekeepers. Many of the men had beards and wore baseball caps with colourful logos of fertilizer manufacturers emblazoned on them. Waiting in line for a coffee at the 10:30 break, I couldn’t help but stare at the hard-working hands of the beekeepers in front of me—the hands of real bee farmers, covered in calluses and small scars and sporting split fingernails. The arthritic evidence recorded upon their gritty knuckles portrayed years and years of stacking heavy beehives onto the backs of old pickup trucks, serious labour that had taken its toll.

  I struck up a conversation with a guy just ahead of me who looked like Grizzly Adams. “Excuse me,” I said. “I’m just curious. How many hives do you have?” Beekeeper small talk. He was a commercial beekeeper and had come to the meeting all the way from Alberta. He told me he had 8,000 hives. If he noticed my pristine, manicured, light-pink hands, as smooth as a baby’s bum, he didn’t let on. In a perfunctory manner he asked how many hives I had. Totally embarrassed about my one barely alive hive, I opted for the easy route out and simply replied, “Oh, I’m just a beginner.” I continued my small talk, but judging by Grizzly Adams’s dismissive lack of interest, I thought it best not to tell him about the cute honeybee that had guided us to the conference that morning. Carrying my cup of coffee to my chair at the back, I felt just a bit marginalized.

  Next up was a one-hour presentation on mushrooms. People who study bees are called entomologists; people who study mushrooms are called mycologists. Both terms struck me as good words for a game of Scrabble. People like me who can’t keep one beehive alive and who show up half an hour late for beekeeping conferences are called numbskulls.

  Somehow the organizers of the convention had arranged for one of the world’s leading mycologists to be the guest speaker. Mites, as you now know, can wreak havoc on a hive. Well, this super-brainiac guy from the United States named Paul, who has more degrees than a thermometer and has done 30 years of university research on mushrooms, figures he has cracked the Da Vinci Code on eradicating mites. Could mushrooms be the answer to my hive’s problems?

  At the beginning of his presentation, Paul explained he had accidently stumbled upon his theory while walking through the woods one day. He stopped to observe some honeybees buzzing around a certain type of mushroom that grows in hollow, rotten logs. During an earlier phase of his research, he had discovered that a rare fungus also found in old-growth forest logs can help fight viruses and diseases, including tuberculosis, smallpox, and bird flu. Strolling through the woods that day he wondered if the honeybee population would see similar health benefits from wood-rotting mushrooms. He went back to his lab, pulled out his microscope, and discovered this: when bees that have visited these special mushrooms return to their hives, they carry microscopic mushroom spores with them. These spores kill the mites in the hive! Needless to say, he was the highly celebrated keynote speaker of the weekend. That evening, he gave another sold-out speech to a convention of mycologists. I guess he found his niche on the bee convention and mushroom meeting touring circuit—a real rock star in the world of mites and moulds.

  Although I fell asleep in the middle of Paul’s presentation when it got too “researchy” and academic, I enjoyed the beginning when he pulled out a dopey-looking dirt-brown hat made of mushrooms and put it on his head, and I liked the happy ending when he explained how this seminal fungus-based discovery could save all our hives from the mighty mites. I’m not really clear, though, whether we are supposed to plant these magic mushrooms in rotten logs near our hives—that might have been the part where I dozed off. Near the end of the talk, he said something about donating his mite-killing mushroom discovery patent-free to the beekeeping community at large and got another huge enthusiastic round of applause. Then he pulled out another dopey mushroom hat and presented it to the bee conference’s master of ceremonies, Jeff. As Jeff put on the hat, Paul explained that the leathery type of mushroom the hat was made of is very rare and can be found only in one town in an extremely remote region of Romania. I ran into Jeff in the men’s room later in the afternoon, and he was still wearing the hat. I asked him if I could touch it, and it felt like old damp soft leather.

  Other talks that day included a seminar on making mead—honey wine—which was not all that useful in my quest to save my hive. Another one-hour presentation was titled “Bear Fencing,” which at least a beginner like me could understand, unlike the next presentation listed in the program, “Germplasm Cryopreservation.” I skipped that one and worried that none of the talks were applicable to my personal beekeeping predicament: my dying hive. When I perused the list of topics in the program, I noticed there were no talks, of course, addressing raising bees on a floating home.

  Descriptions of the presentations for the two-day convention occupied the centrefold of a slick program: a colourful, thick 32-page booklet full of ads and presenter photos. Conference offerings included the main talks, breakout sessions, and a small trade show. Welcoming messages from important government officials and politicians were splattered across the first five or six pages of the program; however, the top provincial government official in charge of the bee portfolio, which I imagine is not a highly sought-after political position, did not attend the event. Instead, British Columbia’s minister of agriculture drafted a missive revealing that the very first honeybee in the province arrived in Victoria’s harbour aboard a ship in 1858. He went on to describe the vital role that beekeeping plays in our province’s agricultural industry. There was also a welcome note from the mayor of Richmond that was not nearly as interesting as the notes of his provincial counterparts. The aide or public relations flack that writes greetings on behalf of the city’s mayor hadn’t bothered to research when the first bee settled in Richmond. The feds rounded out the roster of our three levels of government by sending a representative from Health Canada.

  I attended her incredibly dry presentation on the National Pesticide Compliance Program. All I learned is that if you are a registered apiarist, and some farmer is spraying a field near your hives with pesticide, you can go up and ask what pesticide the farmer is using, but the farmer is under no obligation to tell you. Jeannie left in the middle of that presentation to take her dog for a walk. When she returned I asked her if our honeybee was still on the dash. Apparently the bee had experienced a full recovery and fled out the window. At least I knew how she got out, because I never did figure out how she got in.

  Just before lunch an older gentleman gave a talk on tips for what to do before entering your honey in contests. He had been judging honey competitions at agricultural fairs in Western Canada since the 1940s. I perked up my ears since my Houseboat Honey had won a prize that first summer, but I never realized just how exacting and rigorous the standards were. I wondered if maybe this oldster had actually judged my honey.
It was interesting to learn that honey’s density and moisture can be measured and defined numerically. I took notes and wrote down that any honey with too much moisture is automatically disqualified from all contests. A small hand-held instrument called a refractometer is used to measure moisture content. The nectar bees gather is about 70 percent water, but the final product, honey, is 18.6 percent or less. It’s a universal apiarist rule, and don’t ask me why the defining measure is not 18.5 or 18.7 percent. If your honey’s moisture content exceeds that magic 18.6 number, you might as well pour it down the sink. Luckily, it will pour easily because it will be too watery.

  If you are unfortunate enough to have a dud batch of watery honey, who’s to blame? Why, the bees, of course. Just blame it all on them. During the honey-producing process the bees “dry out” the nectar, and one of the ways they do this is by fanning their wings to create airflow around the honeycomb, which helps water evaporate. A water content of over 18.6 percent means the bees were likely not fanning fast enough or long enough—slacking on the job, in other words. Or, maybe, like in my hive, they lacked the sheer workforce numbers or energy and strength to achieve the prized moisture level. During this water-content discussion Jeannie leaned over and whispered in my ear that she planned on buying a refractometer and asked me if I wanted her to get me one for Christmas.

  The seasoned honey judge also told us that during the judging process marks are deducted for other reasons like fingerprints on the honey jar, and he suggested wearing white gloves throughout the bottling process. Judges also don’t like seeing air bubbles in honey, and there is only one way to get rid of them. You need to get a medical hypodermic needle, hunt the evil bubbles down with the tip, and suck them out of the honey jars one by one. I can’t think of anything nerdier than sitting at home the evening before a big honey competition with a magnifying glass in one hand and a syringe in the other, sucking little bubbles out of honey. Though entertaining and peculiar, the judge’s information on removing bubbles out of jars wasn’t going to save my bees back on the river; I felt a familiar pang of dread and worry.

  After lunch, conference attendees got to sample and vote on a dozen jars of honey entered in the People’s Choice Award contest. I was blown away by the wide array of tastes, textures, and colours. I savoured each toothpick dollop of honey slowly, closing my eyes as I let the sweet syrup sit on my tongue for 30 or 40 seconds while trying to discern what types of flowers and plants contributed to the flavour composition. Jeannie and I discussed the merits of each sample and really took our time enjoying and comparing. When I was through sampling, I carefully inspected each of the honey jars looking for tiny air bubbles. I couldn’t find one single bubble, so I knew what some of my fellow convention attendees had been up to the night before.

  Although my convention experience was interesting, I was not really advancing my beekeeping skills—the skills I needed to actually keep my bees healthy and well. It probably didn’t help that I don’t have the intellectual capacity, scientific background, or attention span to take in two days of intense information on one subject. My mind wanders like a bee buzzing around from flower to flower. Jeannie is more focused and got more out of the presentations than I did. In the final analysis, the pressing question was: Had I, the novice beekeeper, taken in enough practical information to save or at least improve the quality of life in my colony? Not really. I wish I had listened more carefully and not dozed off during the mushroom guy. The convention’s large format also made it too hard to ask my naive questions. The hard-working professional beekeepers with thousands of hives intimidated me, and some of the topics were a bit too advanced. I was distracted. To boot, a conference attendee needs sustenance for all that listening, and the lunches they served weren’t all that great. I was also disappointed not to get a mushroom hat.

  By 4:00PM on Sunday I was getting really bored. I always feel sorry for the very last presenter at any two-day meeting. It doesn’t matter how dynamic or interesting the final speaker is; after two days of sitting on your butt, assimilating hundreds of facts and figures, there comes a point when the brain just goes into “pause” mode. The last presentation was about what types of notes you should take when inspecting your hive. The presenter had invented a codified form of shorthand for recording hive conditions that he was excited to show the group. He claimed his shorthand saved him time and helped him focus on what to look for after he lifted the lid on his bees.

  This was finally some relevant information, but long before the note-taking guy even had a chance to wrap up his talk, I was done. My focus was completely shot. So Jeannie and I gathered up our notes, programs, brochures, catalogues, and a wooden bee box Jeannie had bought and walked out into the fresh, moist air and back to the van. Without my faithful “bee GPS,” it was a good thing that I knew my way back to the river. The bee was homeless now. I thought about her a lot on that drive. Her chances of survival on her own in a strange town were pretty slim. She needed to live in a hive with her own colony to survive, and although she may well have found another hive within a few miles of the hotel, that hive would likely not have accepted her due to her strange river smell. And the poor thing had no chance of flying all the way back to her home colony almost 15 miles away. What difference would it make anyway? Even if she made it back to my hive, she would be doomed trying to survive in that mite-ridden, filthy combat zone with its shell-shocked queen.

  It would have been different if I had learned a lot at the convention and was going back to save the rest of the hive. Her valiant deed would have meant something. She had led me to the source of conventional wisdom and paid the ultimate sacrifice for it. In return I let her down. Truth be told, I didn’t even take one single page of notes during the full two days I was there. I napped in my seat more than once and even played on my phone’s Scrabble app and surfed Facebook.

  My heart filled with guilt and humility, I silently vowed not to give up. I would continue my quest for bee knowledge. I would do it for her. I was determined to become a respectable, legitimate beekeeper like Miriam, Len, Jeannie, and the cap-wearing, bearded bee farmers at the convention. Since the convention experience didn’t exactly work out, I promised myself I would seek other sources of bee knowledge. I would actually read an entire book on beekeeping; I would take a beekeeping class; I would join a beekeeping club. Whatever it took. I would not let my bees down again. As my resolve deepened, I looked up through the windshield and noticed the skies had parted and the dark storm clouds had disappeared. Tomorrow was a new day filled with the promise of a healthy, happy hive. With the harsh, ice-cold Canadian winter just around the corner, I knew my girls needed me now more than ever. That little bee on my dash, lost and wandering and forever separated from her hive, would not die in vain.

  Swarming Bee Club

  The following spring I attended my first-ever bee club meeting. I have never been much of a club joiner, but I figured it couldn’t hurt to go to one bee club meeting to try to expand my beekeeping knowledge. At the same time I hoped to meet some new, interesting people. There must be thousands of bee clubs all over North America meeting in community centres, homes of beekeepers, and, as was the case for me, musty old church basements.

  I pulled up to the church parking lot at 6:15 on a warm Tuesday evening, though it may as well have been a Sunday morning just before a service; I was dismayed there wasn’t one parking space to be found. I decided to find a place to park on the street. As I drove slowly out of the lot, I scanned the parked cars to glean some insight about the club members’ socio-economic traits. It didn’t surprise me there was an inordinate number of hybrid cars. In addition, I noticed some classic old pickup trucks and even a 1964 split-windshield VW van representing the tree-hugger fringe. In contrast, there was a sprinkling of late-model BMWs and even an Audi SUV, which convinced me this crowd had some money. Clearly none of them would have a hard time ponying up the $30 annual club membership dues.

  I spied an open space on a nearby side street and
wedged my van in. As I walked back down the tree-lined sidewalk to the church, many other beekeepers were arriving as well. I pushed open the heavy church door, anticipating that I was about to join a healthy club with affluent members.

  I had intentionally arrived early for the bee club’s 6:30 pre-gathering, called Beeginner’s Corner, which I assumed was a safe and casual environment where less advanced beekeepers like me could ask dumb questions without fear of being laughed at. As I descended the worn wooden stairs into the house of worship’s basement, I was struck by the ambient sound of voices below. The decibel level of the muffled conversations increased with each downward step.

  To the untrained ear, a beehive makes a generic, collective buzzing sound; however, advanced beekeepers can interpret an individual hive’s distinctive, ever-changing timbre without even opening the lid and can draw important conclusions. For instance, a certain buzzing sound expresses discontent, while a slight variation of that sound communicates agitation. A sick hive vibrates quite differently than a healthy one, a sound I was sadly growing far too used to. The cadence of an old hive is distinct from that of a young, growing hive. And a productive busy hive loudly and joyfully sings out the abundance within. Descending the flight of stairs to the church basement, I intuited a feeling for the club before entering the room.

  The voices drifting up the stairwell embodied a mix of energy, warmth, and interconnectivity. Unceasing, interwoven dialogues were interspersed with plentiful laughter. Based on the number of high verbal pitches, I sensed the crowd skewed a bit more female than male. Furthermore, without clearly hearing any words, I sensed all these people had something in common with my bees: they were industrious, busy, and collaborative. It was the thrum of like-minded people doing something they enjoy: talking about bees. When I finally reached the bottom stair and entered the room, this bee club “hive” was quite loud and very crowded.