“You can watch them come in (to the hive) with pollen on their legs,” Manning said. “It’s a hobby I’d suggest to anyone.”
Manning read about the problems bees were having and decided to try to help out. So far, it’s been an adventure. She learned about bees by taking classes through the Greene County Parks Department.
“I jumped in with both feet,” she said. “I love it.”
In the Miami Valley, beekeeping is an important agricultural sideline. In Montgomery County, there are 94 bee yards, or apiaries. Some yards host only a few colonies, others have hundreds. Each colony contains about 50,000 of the insects at summer peaks when nectar is fast-flowing. Preble County has 40 yards, Greene 40, Miami 71, and Warren 112.
Now, beekeeping is more of a challenge. Honeybees are being worn down by factors that include mite parasites, viruses, bacteria, poor nutrition and pesticides. The insects must be closely watched and treated with medications, or otherwise managed, to survive for long.
Bees seem to be in bigger trouble than normal this year following a difficult winter, according to an informal survey of commercial bee brokers cited in an internal USDA document. One-third of those surveyed had trouble finding enough hives to pollinate California’s blossoming nut trees, which grow the bulk of the world’s almonds, the Associated Press said. In Ohio in the 1920s, Ohio beekeepers kept 120,000 colonies.
Today, there are about 30,000 or so colonies, a decline attributed in recent years to the new and more challenging issues associated with bees. in Ohio, down from 120,000 colonies in the 1920s.
“How low should these numbers go before it’s a crisis?” asksasked James Tew, OSU’s state honeybee specialist. “Do you wait until you can’t get vegetables? The public should be concerned.”Help could be on the way.
Beekeeping classes held this year and last at the Greene County Parks Department’s Narrows Reserve have seen registrations increase to more than 20. Bee clubs “have had double the number of people taking classes in Cincinnati, Central and Northern Ohio,” said entomologist Barb Bloetscher of the Ohio Department of Agriculture.
Terry Smith, who teaches bee classes for the Greene County Beekeepers Association with fellow beekeeper Bill Starrett, said a new breed of beginning beekeepers is motivated by the crisis and more — a desire to reconnect with the environment.
“No longer are beekeepers just odd country folk with hives in the back 40 acres,” she said. “Many ‘professional’ people have adopted beekeeping as a way to disengage from their hectic, stressful, and technology-oriented lifestyle.”
The Ohio Department of Agriculture has announced a 4-H “Beekeeping Start-Up Grant Program,” and there’s a movement to revive the Boy Scout beekeeping merit badge, discontinued in 1995. The Central Ohio Beekeepers Association is attempting to breed an Ohio-hardy stock of bees.
Research shows a profusion of pesticides among the most serious threats. A study in the Public Library of Science showed about three out of five pollen and wax samples from 23 states had at least one systemic pesticide — a chemical designed to spread throughout all parts of a plant. U.S.
Environmental Protection Agency officials said they’re aware of problems involving pesticides and bees, and the agency is “very seriously concerned,” the Associated Press reported.
None of the chemicals themselves were at high enough levels to kill bees, but their combination and variety is worrisome. The study found 121 different types of pesticides within 887 wax, pollen, bee and hive samples.
Bee health seems to be deteriorating overall.
“It’s just gotten so much worse in the past four years,” said Jeff Pettis, research leader of the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Bee Research Laboratory in Beltsville, Md.
“We’re just not keeping bees alive that long.”
Contact this reporter at (937) 225-7407 or sbennish@coxohio.com.
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