This is an article meant for re-distribution. It came to me from the Growers' association where I live.
A Case of Hives
By Jonathan King
The steady om of 30,000 bees filled the air as Chris Harp pried the roof
Off of the Langstroth box in his backyard. Harp used a metal spackling tool To get the frames out of the box; they had been sealed in place with
propolis,the sticky glue bees gather from plants. Worker bees crawled over the frames called "supers" that Harp removed From the hive as he cooed and petted the bees with a bare hand. As bees Poured out of every orifice in the hive and flew in wide chaotic patterns, Harp pointed out the spiraling patterns of eggs in the honeycomb surrounded By chambers filled with pollen that would eventually be used to feed the Brood in the center. The amber honeycomb cast a radiant glow in the afternoon light and the sweet smell of smoldering sumac filled the air as Harp puffed the bellows on the smoker used to calm the bees.
Chris Harp is an organic beekeeper based in New Paltz who lectures to
Raise awareness about a species most people don't know is rapidly
declining: the honeybee. The Langstroth hive is one reason for the
bee's endangerment.
The box hive, introduced over 150 years ago by a Massachusetts minister,
Lorenzo Lorraine Langstroth, has been the industry standard used by
commercial beekeepers since the early 20th century. While it has
optimized the beekeepers' management of the bees, Harp theorized, this hive is one of the principal sources of the species' precipitous decline. "The Langstroth hive, now used in most of the world, took away the bees' circular spirit. And now, as Rudolph Steiner predicted back in 1923, we are in trouble."
Humans have raised bees for over 10,000 years, since the earliest
Recorded civilizations. Beeswax created the first candles. Honey is the
Original sweetener. Bees are responsible for pollinating a high percentage
of plants. In the web of life on earth the honeybee exists somewhere near
The center as it has changed little over hundreds of millions of years.
Bees are an indicator species, much like frogs, for the overall health of
the planet. And the planet, according to Harp, is telling us something is
wrong. "In the last 14 years, the world has lost 80 to 90 percent of
its bees, both domesticated and natural. Bees are responsible for
pollinating up to 80 percent of human food crops."
The European honeybee exists in a self-sustaining and highly complex
socialist matriarchal society. A hive can been seen as a single living
organism and the queen, the workers, and the drones as organs of the
greater whole. A hive is composed of about 95 percent female workers. Born
of fertilized eggs, they are responsible for raising the young, making wax, building the honeycomb, gathering pollen and nectar, making honey,
defending the hive, and general housekeeping. They live about six weeks on
average and longer in the winter, when they cluster in the hive. Workers
are the only type of honeybee that can sting, but because stinging is also a death sentence, they will only do so when threatened.
Drones are male, born of unfertilized eggs, not given a stinger, and
Kept around in meager numbers for one task: to compete to impregnate the
queen on her virgin flight. The queen's virgin flight is the only time in
her life that she mates, although she can lay millions of eggs over the
course of her life. She mates with several drones and keeps all of the
sperm in a pouch for later. The drones who are strong and fast enough to
mate with the powerful queen high up in the air then have their genitalia
ripped off in the sex act and die. Late in fall the number of drones drops from three to five percent of a Hive to zero percent as the workers slaughter all of their brothers to Conserve food for the winter.
The queen is responsible for egg production and does this at the
Prodigious rate of 1,000 to 1,500 a day in her prime. When a hive is left
to its own accord, a queen will live for around four to six years before the hive chooses a successor. Unfortunately, in this age of industrial
apiaries, the queen is often a complete stranger to the hive as new queens
are introduced each year to keep the hive out of sync and prevent swarms. A swarm is a natural event that occurs when a hive has been particularly
successful. When a new queen is prepared to ascend the throne, the older
queen will take an army of about 25,000 bees and set off to find a new home. This amazing migration is commercial apiary's worst nightmare, so to prevent it, new queens are replaced in existing hives. This is good for honey production, but bad for the strength of the species.
So why are honeybees dying? The experts postulate several reasons for
It and yet there is no single answer. Organic beekeeping guru Gunther Hauk, one of the founders of the Pfeiffer Center, a biodynamic farming research center in Chestnut Ridge, Rockland County, said, "I look for the causes why the honeybee is so weak and the immune system is low, why the vitality is low, and it is because we have now for almost 200 years, more and more, been exploiting her shamelessly without looking at her own needs and her own organism."
In the past 20 years it is estimated that the number of honeybee
colonies in the US has shrunk from seven million to around two million.
This is largely attributed to the spread of parasites and diseases. The
varroa mite and the tracheal mite are two pests that have wreaked havoc on
the beekeeping industry, as has the highly contagious bacterium foulbrood.
The varroa mite is about the size of a pinhead and sucks the juice out of
bee larvae. Tracheal mites live in the bees' throats and suffocate them.
And now beekeepers have a brand new pest for which they have no answer yet: the African hive beetle, which showed up in Florida in 1998. In less than six years it has spread to over 38 states and counting, arriving in New York just this past year. Harp was able to show me some dead beetles
scattered across the base of his hive. Organic beekeeping theory holds that the real reason behind the decline of the species is due to the
industrialization of agriculture. As Hauk said, "We have made an industry
out of exploiting the animals. And the industrial paradigm is always you
try to squeeze the last bit out of everything to make it profitable. And so we have changed everything."
Huge commercial apiaries exist in the southern states where bees are
raised for honey and trucked around the country to pollinate megafields of
genetically modified monocultures of crops. In the past, farmers had
diverse fields of crops that they would rotate, and beehives were just
another necessary part of the farm. Now the trucking of bees to
pollinate miles of soybeans or oranges has not only weakened the species,
but also has aided in the rapid spread of mites and, lately, the African
hive beetle.
When asked how industrial farming has affected the honeybee, Hauk said,
"We are taking all the honey, we are feeding them sugar, we are artificially preventing the swarms, we are shipping the bees around from one monoculture to another, from one insecticide and pesticide to another.
Basically, we are the cause. Not only the beekeepers, but the modern
agriculture. We've lost most of the weeds the bees would feed on. We spray
them away. It's the poisons, it's the decrease of clean water and air, all
of that goes into the picture." He continued, "Using all the chemicals is a dead end. Even conventional beekeepers know this. They use one chemical, the mites become resistant, they go to the next chemical that's more powerful."
Robert Mungari, the director of Agriculture and Markets for New York
state, offered a different perspctive. New York state runs a seasonal
Apiary Inspection Program from April through November to monitor the
detection of infectious and contagious honeybee diseases. Mungari said that using chemicals in beekeeping is a relatively new development. "In the fruit and vegetable industry, chemicals have long played an important role in the suppression and management of pests. The beekeepers never had to deal with these issues before, so they had to enter a new realm."
Commenting on the costs associated with pest management, Mungari said,
"Taken in context of the world economics at play here with the price of
honey, the US commercial beekeeper has to ask himself: 'Is this a viable
industry to maintain a presence in when you are competing against honey
from South America, honey from China, honey from Mexico?'"
In addition to the mites killing the honeybees, Mungari said that the
industry is suffering from beekeeper attrition as many aging beekeepers
retire who are not being replaced by new blood. Mungari had no concrete
numbers to share as New York's inspection program is voluntary, he
estimates that in the early '80s New York state had about 120,000 colonies
of bees, which subsequently dropped to about 60,000 colonies in the '90s.
Mungari said that recent data had shown that the number of managed bees is
Starting to recover slightly due to more diligent pest management, but that the feral bee population has been decimated.
When asked how he viewed the role of the migratory commercial Pollination circuit in the rampant spreading of pests, Mungari said, "My Professional opinion is that the migratory commercial beekeepers are far too great of an asset to the agriculture of the state to restrict them or prevent them from coming, in spite of any pest we've had to take."
In 1923, Rudolph Steiner predicted that commercial beekeeping would wipe
out bees within 100 years; depending upon whom you talk to, we may be right on schedule.
If you have any bee questions or want to learn about organic beekeeping,
You can call Chris Harp at (845) 255-6113. The Pfeiffer Center holds
Classes and conferences about organic farming and beekeeping for all ages at Their two-and-a-half acre educational garden. You can learn more about them at www.pfeiffercenter. org or (845) 352-5020
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