- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
No, the bees do not abscond with their queen and relocate, says Norman Gary, emeritus professor of entomology at the University of California, Davis.
Gary, known as "The Bee Man," has kept bees for more than seven decades. He's a bee scientist lauded for his research, his writings (his latest book is The Honey Bee Hobbyist: The Care and Keeping of Bees), his professional bee wrangling, and his work with Hollywood movie producers, documentaries, and talk shows. He's also a musician known for donning a full-length "bee suit" while playing the B-flat clarinet. (See more information on his career)
We asked "The Bee Man" to comment on what bee colonies do during a fire. He broke it down like this:
"Bees react to smoke by fanning, motion, flight, and immediately ingesting nectar and honey," he says. "Smoke disrupts their defensive behavior. That is why beekeepers smoke bees when manipulating and inspecting bee colonies. Some have speculated that feeding behavior, gorging on honey and nectar in response to smoke, would enable colonies to take honey during migrating from the fire area. I have smoked thousands of hives during my career. There was never any indication that bees left the hive area in response to smoke. Migration of the colony away from the fire and smoke would be impossible because the queen is full of eggs and much too heavy to fly. Consequently a colony that migrated from a fire could not survive without the queen. Wild colonies that nest inside of large tree trunks high above ground level may initially survive the fire. But they may eventually starve if all of the vegetation with their flight range has been destroyed."
However, the Aug. 19th fire occurred at night. All of the bees, including the foragers, were inside. "That did not leave any chance for the colonies," Yelle said.
"Everything burned to the ground with no signs of life or even wood left when the fire reached a pallet (4 hives). I have been finding only cleats and nails in a pile of ash. That gives you an idea on how strong was that fire."
"I did have one pallet of hives that the boxes didn't burn all down, but the bees died and brood is dying," she said.
Surviving Bees in Jeopardy
In the few surviving hives, the blazing heat killed the capped brood but some adult bees are still alive. "The colonies are low on population, and the queen has just started laying again. It will be a challenge for all beekeepers with surviving hives to restock the resources and rebuild the brood, meaning the bees are still in jeopardy."
Yelle credits a Bodega firefighter with saving her hives at another location--in Pope Valley. "He's a real hero and his name is Boone Vale, a volunteer fire captain with the Bodega Bay Fire Department and a bulldozer operator," she said. "We did lose about 60 hives," she said, but Vale saved 70 when he "pushed the hives away from the burning ones. He was on his way home after who knows how many hours of battling the fire and still stopped to save the hives."
"Bee Man" Norm Gary called the fire "an absolute disaster."
"This was an absolute disaster," said Gary. "Rick provided packaged bees for almost all of my TV shows and movies during the past 30 plus years," he said. "Rick has always been close to UC Davis beekeeping activities. He was the only commercial beekeeper who frequently attended our Bee Biology Group meetings at the Bee Biology Facility. His sister worked for me one summer. He is a fine gentlemen as well as an outstanding professional beekeeper!"
"I hope they can find some support from the industry or some other source, such as a Go Fund Me project," Gary said. "My daughter recently bought a country home west of Winters near Rick's property. The night that fire burned Rick's home, my daughter and husband were celebrating their first night at their new home. But they were evacuated in the middle of the night! Their property was saved only because another local fire a few weeks earlier had burned enough in a nearby area to provide a partial fire break!"
Contacts:
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/popecanyonqueens
- Email: popecanyonqueens@gmail.com
- Go Fund Me Account (shared by Pope Valley Queens and Rick Schubert): https://gf.me/u/ys2vtw
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/popecanyonqueens/?hl=en
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
Caroline Yelle, 28, owner of Pope Canyon Queens (PCQ) at 8307 Quail Canyon Road, Vacaville, lost her business when the lightning-sparked Hennessey Fire, part of the LNU Lightning Complex Fire, swept through rural Vacaville on Aug. 19 from Napa County.
The raging wall of flame "destroyed everything."
She has nothing left but hope.
Pope Valley Queens is one of the nation's few women-owned queen bee breeder businesses. Yelle breeds bees for "a better tomorrow" and now "tomorrow" and "better" are almost singed from her vocabulary.
She lost 500 hives.
Her mentor, best friend and business partner Rick Schubert (who recently sold his business, Bee Happy Apiary, Vacaville), lost everything in the Hennessey Fire, including his newly remodeled home at 8307 Quail Canyon Road--and where the PCQ office was.
"I bought the company in 2017 from my mentor," said Yelle, who began working there in 2012. "This year, 2020 is my seventh year in producing queens."
"I was studying to be a lawyer in Canada," she related. "After I got my degree, I decided to move here and left everything behind to follow my dream with the bees and helping them."
Veteran beekeeper Schubert, who has kept bees for some four decades, is well known in the bee industry and agricultural world. He helped her settle in California and build the company, offering contacts and expertise. "Rick had just remodeled his house and that (the fire) happened," Yelle said. "He lost everything." Schubert's only surviving bees are the 100 hives he keeps in Dixon.
"Basically after selling Bee Happy, he invested in my company, Pope Canyon Queens," she said. "We lost everything together on different levels."
We Lost the Farm
"We (Rick Schubert and her) lost the farm, the house, the garage, the bees," Yelle said. "We have the majority of our bees on another property up in Pope Canyon Valley that also burned. We lost around 500 hives or $100,000 in livestock--minimum--that is not covered...and another $100,000 of benefits out of these hives. We are back to ground zero."
Yelle mainly breeds Carniolans, Apis mellifera carnica, a subspecies of the western honey bee and "a hybrid that we selected in Canada and we reproduce here in California for stronger genes."
"The Canadian beekeeping industry needs tons of early queens in the spring," she said. "We decided seven years ago to bring our northern and robust queen bee genetics, selected over more than 20 years, to produce here." She has an isolated mating station in Napa Valley (Pope Canyon Valley).
"Our goal was not to compete with the big queen guys that already export massive amount of queens but try to increase the level of quality standard into the queen importation issue in Canada and the United States," Yelle said. Over the years, they reached their goal of quality standard.
"However," she said, "we are still working to improve our genetics and to expand our production year after year."
Bee Source published this about the business in 2017: "Pope Canyon Queens LLC (PCQ) want and choose to be at the forefront breeding genetics to help bee populations to better defend themselves against mites, viruses, bacteria, pollination and commercial beekeeping stresses, pollution, depleting floral diversity and ever changing ecosystems. By confronting these challenges head on, PCQ will come to represent a turning point in the strengthening of bee populations. Its 'raison d'etre' is rooted in the urgency of grafting solid apicultural know-how onto strong genetics to meet today's challenge of breeding a better tomorrow."
'It Will Take Years to Recover'
Bee breeder-geneticist Susan Cobey of Washington State University, a former manager of the Harry H. Laidlaw Jr. Honey Bee Research Facility at UC Davis, called the fire "devastating." She knows of several beekeepers, including the Yelle-Schubert team, who lost everything in the tragic fire. "It will take years to recover."
"The story needs to be told," said Cobey, who breeds Carniolans. "These beekeepers work so hard. The impact of California agriculture will be huge, our breadbasket. It's about climate change, too."
"Sue is part of our family group," Yelle said. "We had programs on breeding stock and selection of genes." Yelle also works closely with bee breeder-geneticist Kim Fondrk, of the Laidlaw facility. For decades, Fondrk managed research bee colonies at the Laidlaw facility for Robert Page Jr., former chair of the UC Davis Department of Entomology who recently retired as provost at Arizona State University. Together Page and Fondrk wrote landmark research articles.
"Kim worked with and for us for us over the past years," Yelle recalled. Schubert also worked with bee scientist Norm Gary, emeritus professor, UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology, also known as an author, bee wrangler and musician. "We provided bees for Norm's research," Yelle related. Schubert provided bees for Gary's bee wrangling projects.
Now Yelle, who is accustomed to helping others, needs others' help.
"We need help with the bees that burned to be able to keep breeding them and bring back our livestock for next year pollination and to keep feeding the nation," Yelle said.
Yelle has set up a gofundme account, "Help Us Rebuild to Save the Bees," at https://gf.me/u/ys2vtw
"The help and support we are getting is really heartwarming," Yelle wrote on on the gofundme support page. "Thank you for the messages, the calls, the shares, the donations, the thoughts and everything. I see every single of your names and have such strong emotions about how much people care about us, about the bees and about their community. Some really good news so far: a bee company contacted us to help us rebuild the materials for lowest cost possible, my California family offered me a part of their barn for me to have a start before rebuilding."
Yelle is grateful that "someone saved a bee yard that was literally in the middle of one of the worst part of the fire," and she and a neighbor helped saved a mini farm from the fire. "Community is strong."
Strong...and from heartbreaking to heartwarming...
Contacts:
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/popecanyonqueens
- Email: popecanyonqueens@gmail.com
- Go Fund Me: https://gf.me/u/ys2vtw
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/popecanyonqueens/?hl=en
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
Bee-hold, the eye of a honey bee!
Have you ever looked into the eye of a honey bee? Really looked?
If you read Norm Gary's popular book, Honey Bee Hobbyist: The Care and Keeping of Bees, you'll see just how marvelous they are.
Norm Gary, emeritus professor of entomology at UC Davis, and a widely known bee wrangler for Hollywood movies and documentaries (as well as a musician), covers many topics in his book, published in 2010 by Bow-Tie Press.
"Bees have two compound eyes, each composed of thousands of light-sensitive 'micro-eyes' (ommatidae) that are fused together," he writes. "Each ommatidium has a lens and a nerve connection. The ommatidia are connected to collectively generate a mosaic of sensory inputs into the bee's tiny brain, where the signals are integrated into a functional image. Yes, bees can see images--especially flower shapes--as well as colors. They see shorter wavelengths better than humans;ultraviolet is invisible to humans, but bees see it as color. Flowers are exquisitely endowed with nature's ultraviolet artwork, which we visually impaired humans can't enjoy."
Note that "there are three additional simple eyes (ocelli) on top of a bee's head," Gary points out.
We've always been fascinated by the microscopic hairs all over the bee body, from the abdomen to the thorax to the head. The branched hairs on the eyes are clearly visible in this photo, taken with a Canon MPE-65mm lens.
This little bee was foraging in our Spanish lavender, and stopped to "eye" me.
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
But it will be bee-boggling--all bee-boggling--when the Western Apicultural Society (WAS) meets Sept. 5-8 at the University of California, Davis for its 40th annual conference.
So much to do. So much to hear. So much to talk about.
It's a conference filled with educational topics, networking, field trips, a silent auction, door prizes and just plain "bee" fun, says honey bee guru and WAS co-founder Eric Mussen, Extension apiculturist emeritus, UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology, who is serving his sixth term as president.
Professor Norm Gary, now professor emeritus of the UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology, spearheaded the founding of WAS and served as its first president. Mussen joined him as the founding vice president and Becky Westerdahl as secretary-treasurer. Westerdahl, then a postdoctoral scholar, is now an Extension nematologist. Both Gary and Mussen will be speaking at the conference.
Mussen, who retired from UC Davis in 2014 but maintains an office at Briggs Hall, said most events will take place in the UC Davis Activities and Recreation Center (ARC) and surrounding facilities associated with the UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology. Off-site tours are also planned during the afternoons.
Just a few of the topics and speakers:
- “Seasonal Honey Bee Colony Population Cycle” – Gene Brandi, Los Banos, Calif.
- "Moderated Honey Tasting” – Amina Harris, director, UC Davis Honey and Pollination Center
- "Keeping Your Bees Alive and Growing” Larry Connor, Kalamazoo, Mich.
- "Rapidly Changing Bee Scene” – Bee Culture magazine editor Kim Flottum, Medina, Ohio
- "Honey Bee Queens or Varroa Control" – Extension apiculturist Elina Lastro Niño, UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology
- "Honey Bee Behavior or Distribution of Africanized Honey Bees in California" – Brian Johnson, faculty, UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology
- “Beneficial Microbes for Honey Bees at the Intersection of Nutrition and Defense – Slava Strogolov, Milwaukee, Wisc.
- "Pesticide Toxicity Testing with Adult and Immature Honey Bees” with Eric Mussen, moderator
- "Changes in Nectar Affecting Foraging” – Rachel Vannette, faculty, UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology
Conference participants will tour the Harry H. Laidlaw Jr. Honey Bee Research Facility, Häagen Dazs Honey Bee Haven (half-acre bee friendly garden), both part of the UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology; and Mann Lake Ltd., and Z Specialty Foods, both of Woodland.
Of special interest are the subgroup tours on Thursday, Sept. 7 that cycle through the Laidlaw facility, aka "Bee Biology Faciilty," and the nearby bee garden:
- Various beehive iterations – Bernardo Niño, staff, UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology
- Determining levels of Nosema or Varroa infestation – Randy Oliver, Grass Valley, Calif.
- Studying native bee foraging in screen houses – Neal Williams, faculty,UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology and his team
- Studying plant flower selection in open field plots south of bee garden, Neal Williams and his team, UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology
- Preparing honey bees for molecular Africanized Honey Bees studies or behavioral studies – Brian Johnson, faculty, UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology
- Selecting for, and maintaining, a bee garden – Christine Casey, staff, UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology, who manages the Häagen Dazs Honey Bee Haven
Among the other topics: The "Next Generation Beekeepers” session in the Sensory Building, Robert Mondavi Institute, 392 Old Davis Road. This event will include beer, music, networking and an interactive group session.
UC Davis artist Steve Dana created the conference T-shirt featuring a bee on a high wheeler bicycle or penny-farthing, symbolizing UC Davis. The t-shirt can be ordered on the WAS website athttp://www.westernapiculturalsociety.org. The conference registration form, speaker program and other information are online.
WAS, a non-profit organization, represents mainly small-scale beekeepers in the western portion of North America, from Alaska and the Yukon to California and Arizona. Beekeepers across North America will gather to hear the latest in science and technology pertaining to their industry and how to keep their bees healthy.
Eric Mussen offers 10 reasons why one should attend the conference. See Bug Squad blog.
(Editor's Note: Initially on the schedule was Serge Labesque of Glen Ellen, who will be unable to participate. Gene Brandi of Los Banos will be speaking instead.)
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
Eric Mussen of UC Davis, who is serving his sixth term as president of the Western Apicultural Society (WAS), says those registering early will save $50. “There will still be an opportunity to register after July 31 but you won't get the ‘early bee' special,” he said.
The early registration fee for the full conference is $175, while the cost after July 31 is $225. One-day registration is also offered at $60. The conference is open to all interested persons.
WAS, a non-profit organization, represents mainly small-scale beekeepers in the western portion of North America, from Alaska and the Yukon to California and Arizona. Beekeepers across North America will gather to hear the latest in science and technology pertaining to their industry and how to keep their bees healthy.
Most events, Mussen said, will take place at the UC Davis Activities and Recreation Center (ARC) and surrounding facilities associated with the Department of Entomology and Nematology. Off-site tours are also planned during the afternoons. Mussen retired as California's Extension apiculturist in 2014, but, as emeritus, continues to maintains his office at Briggs Hall, UC Davis.
At the conference, Kim Flottum, editor of Bee Culture magazine, will share his insights on the "The Rapidly Changing Bee Scene"; Les Crowder will discuss managing honey bees in top bar hives, and Larry Connor will cover "Keeping Your Bees Alive and Growing.” Several speakers will present mini-sessions outdoors at the Harry H. Laidlaw Jr. Honey Bee Research Facility and the adjacent Häagen Dazs Bee Haven, a bee friendly garden operated by the UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology. Both are on Bee Biology Road.
"The beekeeping and honey industries are, and have been extremely volatile,” said Flottum, editor of Bee Culture for more than 30 years. “That's what happens when you have animals, the weather, government and humans in the mix.” He will discuss “what's going on at the moment that beekeepers should be aware of, and more importantly, what to expect in the near and not so near future that will affect bees, beekeepers and honey, queen and honey bee production."
Flottum also authored three books on beginning, intermediate and advanced beekeeping and one on honey plants and honey tasting, and is working on several more books. He is the editor of BEEkeeping, Your First Three Years since its inception two years ago. He keeps about a dozen colonies at his home in Northeast Ohio, where he lives with his wife, chickens and of course, the bees.
"Kim Flottum has been a stalwart in U.S. beekeeping for decades,” Mussen said. “He ferrets out information on national, regional, and local beekeeping happenings and disseminates the news in various places, depending upon his role at the time.”
Other presenters will include beekeeper Serge Labesque of Glen Ellen, Sonoma County, who advocates selecting local bee stocks that can handle the problems of current-day beekeeping. Amina Harris, director of the UC Davis Honey and Pollination Center will lead a formal honey tasting, and Sarah Red-Laird of Oregon, executive director of Bee Girl and the American Beekeeping Federation's Kids and Bees Program director, will present a breakout session on “Beekeeping Education/Honey Bee Conservation."
UC Davis is a world-renowned entomology/apicultural facility. Among the UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology faculty are Elina Niño, Extension apiculturist; pollination ecologist Neal Williams; bee scientists Brian Johnson and Rachel Vannette, and native pollinator specialist Robbin Thorp, distinguished emeritus professor. Niño and Williams are on the speakers' list.
UC Davis artist Steve Dana created a T-shirt for the conference featuring a bee on a high wheeler bicycle or penny-farthing, symbolizing UC Davis. The t-shirt can be ordered on the WAS website at http://www.westernapiculturalsociety.org. The conference registration form, speaker program and other information are online.
Eric Mussen offers 10 reasons why one should attend the conference. See the Bug Squad blog, UC Agriculture and Natural Resources website.