The intoxicating array of bright colors, sugary candies, and sticky fruits on the Community High School back lawn during lunch often attracts many scavenging bees. However, their presence is rarely welcomed. Generally, the relationship between humans and bees is very strained and distant. Bees are seen as little more than a scary annoyance. Yet there is a strong, flourishing community of people who praise this misunderstood insect.
Harvesting knowledge on an Ann Arbor rooftop
Ann Arbor resident Marc Zimmerman has been intrigued by bees for as long as he can remember. After considering beekeeping for most of his life, Zimmerman finally took the plunge in April of 2011.
He and his friend Jack Scheerer ordered 10,000 bees and one queen bee from Georgia, and decided to set up a hive at Scheerer’s office. The hive is conveniently located near the Produce Station, which has a wide assortment of flowers and plants.
“I’m sure the bees think of it as like ‘Oh hey, here’s Costco,” Zimmerman said.
Still, the first season was rough. The hives were placed next to loud compressors which Zimmerman believes made the bees “swarm,” meaning they found a new queen and left the hive. This year, Zimmerman and Scheerer moved the hives to the roof of the office. At the end of August, the beginning of the harvest season, they had already produced four and a half gallons of honey.
The female population can be thanked for all that sweetness; female bees do all the foraging for the hive. In fact, most bees humans come in contact with are female.
“The drones, the male bees, never leave the hive,” Zimmerman said. “They basically impregnate the queen and then sit around and watch television.”
Bees only live for a couple of weeks, and in that time each individual bee only produces about 1/12 of a teaspoon of honey. So, these insects rely on and prosper from the work of the hive as a whole. They survive on a basis of codependency and cooperation—a “hive mentality” as Zimmerman calls it.
Dispersing the pollen of passion throughout a community
Lisa Bashert, the founder of the Local Honey Project in Ypsilanti, Michigan, first got interested in bees while watching the beekeeper that worked on her sister’s farm in South Jersey. From age ten until 20, she helped tend to the bees there. However, it wasn’t until recently that bees became a major component of her life.
In 2010, Bashert was recently laid off and searching for what to do next. She spoke to the manager of the Ypsilanti Food Co-op. Aware that Bashert had been keeping bees at her home, the manager proposed an idea: an urban beekeeping project that focused on two of the seven international principles followed by co-operatives— community and education. She wanted Bashert to head the operation. The goal was to create sustainable, Michigan hives that are organically managed. The result was The Local Honey Project.
The project is comprised of 11 members —ten volunteers trained in organic beekeeping and Bashert— who educate themselves about bees, set up hives, and check in on the health of the hive two to three times a month. So far, the project has hives set up in three locations, including The Farm at St. Joe’s hospital, the Growing Hope Center on Michigan Avenue in Ypsilanti, and “Honey Bee Alley,” a walkway on the side of the Ypsilanti Food Co-op.
Beehives may not be entirely organic because beekeepers cannot control if their bees go searching for pollen in a field that uses pesticides or other dangerous chemicals. Instead, Bashert takes pride in the fact that their hives are “organically managed.”
The Honey Project focuses on letting the bees live in a way that they would in nature. Bashert believes that as the beekeeping industry has grown, people have started depending on chemicals rather than hands-on involvement. She takes pride in the fact that The Honey Project uses no chemicals and no artificial elements in its hives.
But organic beekeeping does have its disadvantages. Since The Local Honey Project doesn’t use foundation wax, a man-made imitation of beeswax, in their hives, bees have less time to produce honey because they are busy making the wax.
Still, for the Honey Project harvest is secondary. The focus is to increase diversity and to spread the love of bees throughout the community— not to make a profit.
“You can either raise honey, or you can raise bees…we are definitely raising bees,” Bashert said.
Bashert is mesmerized by the intriguing practices in which bees participate.For instance, when a queen bee is ready to mate, she flies high into the air to a place called the drone congregation area.
“Think of it as the corner bar,” Bashert said. Here, the queen mates with dozens of males and receives enough sperm to fertilize her eggs for five years, producing 1000 eggs a day.
By default, all the embryos are ordinary, female worker bees. However, when a new queen is needed- about every three years- the embryo is fed a substance called royal jelly throughout its development. This secretion causes the bee to grow to a larger size with larger ovaries – creating a queen instead of an average worker.
Bashert has left a huge mark in the Ypsilanti beekeeping community. When she was reported for having bees on her property, she led a campaign to advocate beekeeping rights. In a unanimous vote, the city council agreed to legalize having personal hives.
Other than the Honey Project’s 10 active volunteers, there are 15-20 organic beekeepers that Bashert knows of in the Ypsilanti area. She calls these people Honey And Pollinator Protectors of Ypsilanti, or HAPPY for short. Despite the obvious success of her efforts, Bashert still feels like she can learn and do more.
“I’ve been doing (beekeeping) for more than eight years and I feel like I’ve barely scratched the surface,” she said.
Reconstructing misconceptions
Despite the passion of bee advocates like Bashert and Zimmerman, many people are still skeptical about this insect. Community High School senior Hank Miller often comes into contact with bees when he gardens for his neighbor.
“They dive bomb at me. There’s nothing good about them,” he said. “They are totally just scary insects, I don’t like them at all.”
Although almost everyone will get stung at least once in their lifetime, the bothersome buzzers are actually rarely bees. Most of the time, wasps and hornets are to blame.
“People have a lot of misconceptions about bees and think that anything that stings is a bees,” Bashert said. “Really, honey bees are interested in nectar and nothing else.”
Zimmerman agrees.
“Honey bees are incredibly docile,” he said. “I’ve never been stung.”
Their calm demeanor isn’t the only charming characteristic of a honey bee. These incredibly intelligent insects communicate with one another by performing little dances; they use wagging motions to warn of danger or tell about a newly discovered food source. The entire hive functions as a “super-organism”; they live as if they were just one big organism rather than thousands of individuals.
Danger knocks atthe hive’s door
Honeybees are the only insect that produce food consumed by humans. Countless crops- including blueberries, apples, and broccoli- depend on honeybee pollination in order to bloom. In fact, one third of all the food Americans eat are directly or indirectly affected by honeybees. The human/ honeybee relationship is intricately woven; the existence of pollinators is pivotal to the success of human agriculture and food supply. However, in recent years the honeybee population has been rapidly declining.
According to Bashert, the abrupt and inexplicable disappearance or death of hives was first noticed in 2006 by large commercial apiaries (the professional term for a bee-yard). There are many theories for the reason behind this phenomena- which is called Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD)- but Bashert argues that over-management by professional beekeepers and use of industrial processes are to blame.
“They are out of touch with the way systems interrelate,” she said.
Bees are often used to pollinate mono-crops, which are thousands of acres of one single crop. Bashert believes this is one reason for CCD.
“Imagine eating a diet of just one thing…it’s very unhealthy,” she said.
A pesticide often used on these crops called neonicotinoid is also linked to the honey bee decline. Futhermore, the transportation between crop fields is very stressful and unhealthy for the bees.
Professional croppers now can’t get enough bees to pollinate their crops. So they import bees from overseas, adding another devastating layer to the problem.
“It’s insane,” Bashert said. “They have a microscopic focus, but everything is interconnected.”
Community student joins the buzz
Community High School Junior Graham Gerdes’ interest in bees started one very late night when he was in middle school. Gerdes and his friend Ben Giampatroni were sitting around at 2 a.m. watching entomology videos and “thinking of ways to use insects to terrorize our school.” Their original plan was to organize a “bee infestation” but they decided keeping bees for themselves was a better idea.
After contacting friends with bees, researching online, and obtaining information from the Southeastern Michigan Beekeepers Association (SEMBA), Gerdes and Giampatroni set up four hives on Giapetroni’s 17 acre property. They checked on the hives five times this summer. Setting up the hives, preparing the hives for winter, and extracting honey are the hardest types of maintenance work. For Gerdes, it’s the small things that make the process worthwhile.
“I have a bee suit. It’s intense. I look great,” he said.
Gerdes finds great pleasure in beekeeping. He enjoys the responsibility of having a living thing to take care of and sees it as a very “interesting and scientific” hobby. Plus, telling his friends that he manages an apiary makes him look pretty cool.
“[Beekeeping] is very fun, rewarding, and easy,” he said. For now, Gerdes is involved simply for the enjoyable experience. However, he hopes to gain businesses experience by selling honey in the future. With 20 gallons harvested this season, the chance for success looks bright.
A fulfilling profession sticks through generations
Kathy Kohlman knows all about the business element of beekeeping. Every Wednesday and Saturday she drives from her home in Howell to sell beeswax molds and soaps at Cohoctah Honey Works— a booth in the Kerrytown Farmer’s Market. Kohlman’s late husband, Thomas Arnott, began participating in the market 16 years ago.
“Tom was the bee man,” Kohlman said. “It was like they knew him. He was just so comfortable with them.”
Arnott began beekeeping as a way to make income after he was forced to retire from his job at Ford Motor Company. He came from a long line of beekeepers, and his passion for the insect came naturally.
Arnott died last year, and this is the first market season without him.
“(Tom) knew all about the bees…his biggest worry was getting one of his kids to take over the business,” Kohlman said. Arnott’s wish came more than true: every Wednesday and Saturday Arnott’s son Joshua Arnott, and Kohlman herself, drive from Howell to sell at the booth.
The molds are made from the wax of honeybees that are scattered throughout Livingston county. When the Cohoctah team notices an abundance of bee friendly flowers on someone’s property, they knock on the door. In turn for a share of the honey, the owners usually allow them to set up hives on their land.
The lessons left “bee-hind”
Whether it’s for business, experience, or just pure enjoyment, beekeeping has proved to be very fulfilling for these individuals. Zimmerman encourages people who are interested in the wonders of the honey bee to give it a shot.
“I’d always been fascinated my whole life and I just thought what the heck? I finally had someone to do it with myself so I just pulled the trigger,” he said.
The intimate involvement with such a disciplined, cooperative organism causes beekeepers to look at human interrelationships in a clearer, more critical light.
“You hear people say we have to get more self-sufficient… but it’s not about each one of us providing all our own needs,” Bashert said. “It’s about being interdependent, just like bees.“
Zimmerman thinks there is a lot to learn from the honey bee social system.
“Bees have a hive mentality. If humans lived like that, we wouldn’t have war,” he said. “It wouldn’t matter if someone is Jewish or Muslim or Catholic, or black or white…bees live for the benefit of the hive. They will sacrifice themselves for the hive. They live a democratic life.”
It is easy to dismiss the honey bee as just another pestering insect. But the presence, products, and lessons of the bee give people a lot to be grateful for,
“(Tom) loved his job at Ford,” Kohlman said. “He was devastated retiring early. Beekeeping was like a blessing for
