Published: May 06, 2008 11:54 am            

WRITE ON: To Bee Or Not To Bee?

Had we been able to visit with a young Abraham Lincoln, would we have detected the greatness he would later reveal as President? Was there any way the school teacher who gave Albert Einstein a failing grade in math could have known they were flunking the mathematical genius who would later formulate the relationship between matter, energy, and the speed of light as E=Mc2?

As my mother would say: “You can’t judge a book by its cover.” This is especially true where expectations are low. Because most of its people struggle hard just to make ends meet, McCreary County is a place where outsiders might not think to look for highly talented individuals.

Yet again and again I have met people here who can do things one might not expect. When I had an electrical problem with a steam generating unit, I couldn’t find anyone to fix it. Then a friend suggested I call Murphy’s Appliances and ask for James. That’s how I met James Foster. He was able to make the repair on a unit he hadn’t ever seen before.

While he was working, we talked about the skills older folks acquire which may not be being passed on to the younger generations. I wrote a column about “Old Hands” and what they know and can do, also mentioning my friend Bill Anderson who repairs antique clocks. During the course of talking with James, the topic of bees came up. It was the English writer John Lyly who, in 1580, coined the phrase “As busy as a bee.” Yet this was not an original thought, since humans had associated bees and their hives with industry for thousands of years.

James told me that he was a beekeeper who began his hobby some forty years ago. His interest was further stimulated in the late 1980’s when parasites called mites wiped out about 60 percent of Kentucky’s bees. Since then, bees have made a remarkable comeback. That’s a good thing, because bees are the key to the raising of vital food crops, fruits, and flowers. Without bees, your kitchen table would be without lots more than just honey. Human survival depends in large part on our little buzzing friends.

With the decline of tobacco growing, Kentuckians have been encouraged by the state to raise other crops and also to keep bees. The beehive is a model for civilization. Its members work collectively for the good of the population. All bees begin life as females. Only a few are altered into becoming males called drones who live solely to mate with a virgin queen and then die shortly afterward. All the rest of the bees are workers—some who maintain the hive and some who forage for nectar and pollen. This division of labor works extremely well.

When a virgin queen has mated with about fourteen drones, she has all the seed she needs for the rest of her life. On an average day, the queen will lay about 1500 eggs. When these eggs hatch, the larvae are fed a substance called “royal jelly” for the first three days of life. Then their food is altered and a few become drones and the rest workers. If a larva is fed only royal jelly, it will become a queen. While a hive will produce more than one queen, the first to mature will kill off all the competition. When a queen cannot lay any more eggs, she will be quickly replaced.

Busy bees work themselves to death in the summertime, so new bees must constantly be created to replace them. The taste of the honey they make varies slightly with the kind of pollen and nectar used to make it. Here in Kentucky, our honey is made mostly from clover, tulip poplars, and black locust, along with sourwood, sassafras, and holly.

How bees communicate with each other is by doing a little “wiggle dance,” which utilizes the position of the sun in telling other bees where to find nectar and pollen. Scientists are still unravelling the secrets of these “dances.” When a bee stings you—which is only done defensively—she leaves behind her stinger—which kills her. She also leaves behind an “alarm chemical” which makes you a target for other bees to attack. Bees are also threatened by sudden movements and don’t like dark clothing, which is why beekeeper suits are white.

The bee is by nature an extremely gentle creature. The panic caused by the accidental release several years ago of so-called “killer bees” was highly exaggerated. Actually, these “Africanized” bees are just slightly more defensive of their hives than other bees.

James explained it this way: “The best “cure” for this particular strain of bee is the domestic beekeeper. By interbreeding bees, the gene pool is diluted and these bees are blended into the general bee population.” I asked him why he kept bees. “It’s just an interesting hobby,” he replied. “I’ve learned that when a society cooperates, they can survive and prosper. Watching how bees work together, I’ve seen why the bee and her hive have become symbols of industry. People can learn a lot about cooperation from bees.”

James showed me many things about bees and their hives I didn’t know and could never have guessed. The application of a little smoke from dried white pine needles breaks the chain of communication among bees and makes handling them much easier. The hive is like our world in miniature, or at least what our world would be like if we humans could live together in peace and harmony. I think that serene behavior by bees is at the heart of the fascination beekeepers have with them.

Beekeeping is a world unto itself. More than 25 local beekeepers have formed the Big South Fork Beekeepers Association. They generally meet at 7pm on the second Friday of every month in the conference room at our college campus in Whitley City. This month’s meeting, however, has been moved to the third Friday to accommodate the schedule of guest speaker Dr. Ray McDonnell from the Laurel Campus of Somerset Community College.

James Foster hopes that more people, and particularly our younger folks, will take the time to explore this fascinating hobby. To know bees and how they live and work is to see what we humans might become if we would put aside our differences and work together. Honey—the fruit of the bees’ labors—never spoils. It has been discovered in the tombs of the ancient Egyptians and, when re-melted, is as tasty and fresh as the day thousands of years ago when it was first made. I wonder what we humans make today that will last thousands of years.

For further information, contact James Foster at (606) 376-5428 or Greg Whitis at the County Extension Office at (606) 376-2524. Beekeeping is more than a hobby. It also conveys a practical philosophy with a lot to teach us. I thank James and the other beekeepers for giving me a glimpse into their fascinating world, and hope you will do the same.

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I’d also like to thank Mike Gregory for continuing to offer a view different from my own on whether America was founded as a “Christian” country. We can both quote Thomas Jefferson until heck freezes over, but Jesus Christ does not appear in our Constitution. Only God does—and most Deists of his day, like Jefferson, viewed God as Nature. “Christianity,” Jefferson wrote, “neither is, nor ever was a part of the common law.” I would suggest that anybody interested in this debate read the version of the Bible which Thomas Jefferson himself wrote. In it, you will find he deleted as fantasy all the miracles attributed to Jesus, along with the Apocalypse and many other parts of the good book. It is a remarkable insight into the mind of Thomas Jefferson.

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Copyright 2008 Peter Ferrara

        

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