By: Ernest Gurulé
To bee or not to bee, is not actually the question in this story. In fact, why would it bee, er, be? OK. End of puns. Though for Pueblo apiarist—less formerly, beekeeper—Dru Spinuzzi, these fuzzy little insects are a fascinating world all unto themselves.
Wrapped in a fuzzy, yellow and black uniform, honeybees are as industrious as anything ever put on the earth. And Spinuzzi would like everyone to know that knowing this is important.
Spinuzzi is southern Colorado’s swarm commander, the ‘top of the food chain’ for all-things-bees. She teaches beekeepers, veteran and aspiring, anything they need to know about bees. She also shares this knowledge with others across an area spanning Colorado’s temperate ‘banana belt,’ from Rocky Ford to Cañon City.
This season, she’s spent most of her time and travel discussing the good news on bees. Fortunately, it has been a good year for bees with far less bad news than in years past. “Most beekeepers have been very successful in getting through the winter,” she said. “Populations are up.” Spinuzzi attributes this to the fact that it’s been dryer and warmer the last six months. Not all of the country has been so fortunate and it’s not just weather.
These hearty and prolific insects can survive many things, but an omnipresent and nearly microscopic threat can and often does darken hives laying waste to billions of bees. Colorado has been lucky.
Varroa mites are to bees what plagues were to Egyptians in biblical times. Quite literally, the mite is a death knell. It’s a parasite that attaches itself to a bee’s body and their larvae. It weakens and ultimately kills both, a condition called Colony Collapse Disorder, a mass die off. Varroa mites, said Spinuzzi, “enhance the spread of disease inside of hives… bees can’t keep up with them.” There are, fortunately, methods for controlling the spread of this natural enemy. Thymol, an essential oil derived from the thyme plant, is a natural antidote. But it does not offer uniform protection. It cannot penetrate cell cappings and, therefore, does not control Varroa in brood cells, a hive’s nursery.
There are also other bacteria that threaten bees, usually things foreign to almost everyone except biologists, beekeepers and, of course, bees. American Foulbrood, Chalkbrood and Nosema, all bacteria, are also fatal. But bees also have another enemy, a two-legged one that thrives on lack of knowledge or simple ignorance.
Man has historically and paradoxically been both friend and foe to bees. Over the centuries man along with scores of other lifeforms has thrived on the labor of bees, harvesting one of nature’s sweetest treats: honey. But while enjoying the fruits of the bee’s labor, man has also unwittingly or worse—knowingly— destroyed bee colonies through the use of pesticides or mistakenly erased natural habitat with new construction, paving of roads or otherwise eliminating open space for pollinators to either build or forage.
If Varroa, nature or unnatural enemies—including man—do nothing to compromise this season’s harvest, Spinuzzi is anticipating a banner year. She expects to gather “a thousand to twelve hundred pounds (of honey)”from the approximately eighty hives she tends.
The one lesson Spinuzzi stresses more than all others is that bees are not aggressive insects. Exercise restraint if you spot a huge swarm of bees. Before reacting wrongly by swatting, aiming a hose on them or otherwise killing them call a beekeeper. “We have beekeepers who will collect them.” It’s something she’s done more than a few times and, no matter how many times she’s called, will do again.
Bees are not only that important to her but important to the environment. They pollinate nature’s plant offerings.
But beekeeping, she cautions, is not for the economically faint of heart. “Bee keeping is very expensive.” Getting started can cost “as much as $1,200.” A beekeepers suit ($175), a beehive ($500), purchasing a queen ($40), along with a few other things adds up. Then there’s the time and effort invested to properly maintain the hive or hives.
Most beekeepers willingly commit to the job. They’ll also just as willingly spin the heads of the curious with tons of fun facts about the tiny critters they have committed to. They’ll explain the difference between a drone (male bees) and a worker (a female); that bees have been around for approximately 30 million years; that bees have two pair of wings; that bees carry pollen on their hind legs; that it takes collecting the nectar of two million flowers to make a pound of honey; that a queen bee lays around 2,000 eggs daily. They’ll also lay one more fact—one that transcends trivia.
They’ll explain that we cannot live without bees. Along with butterflies, they pollinate as much as 75 percent of the world’s flowering plants and about 35 percent of the world’s food crops. Without their contribution, the world would be in trouble.
Perhaps long ago Archbishop of Constantinople Saint John Chrysostom best summed up how best to think about bees. “The bee,” he said, “is more honored than other animals. Not because she labors, but because she labors for others.”
