Richard Spiegel, Owner of Volcano Island Honey Co, just got back from a trip to the East Coast to visit family, friends, and bees. He went to Vermont and stopped in for a visit with Ross Conrad, Owner of Dancing Bee Gardens and author of Natural Beekeeping, which has been a source of inspiration for beekeepers at Volcano Island Honey for years.
Richard found that he and Ross share a similar philosophy when it comes to beekeeping and the role of bees on the earth. Volcano Island Honey produces an organic, artisan honey that requires a high degree of attunement with the cycles of the bees. In order to maintain a close relationship with the bees Richard has kept the business intentionally small, managing between 130-150 hives. Most commercial beekeepers manage thousands of hives. Speaking to the organic approach in Natural Beekeeping, Ross Conrad says, “This emphasis on quality over quantity is perhaps the defining notion of the organic agricultural movement.”
A focus on quality over quantity has made Volcano Island Honey the company that it is. VIHC always leaves enough honey for the bees, so that the hive can maintain itself in the way that nature intended. Many large commercial apiaries take all of the honey from the bees and then feed the bees sugar- not their natural food! VIHC also uses “bee escapes” as a less invasive and non-violent way to vacate bees from the hive before harvesting. This is more labor intensive, but it is more gentle to the bees and does not kill bees. VIHC respects the bees as intelligent beings and teachers, instead of as a tool for making honey and money. We also make our own wax foundation, using our own beeswax to avoid beeswax from other sources that may be contaminated by toxins & chemicals.
Richard sees the bees as teachers- even after working closely with the bees for over 30 years he continues to learn lessons from the bees. Bees teach us many things about cooperative society and environmental sustainability. Beekeeping is an agricultural endeavor that has a positive environmental footprint. The bees give back and make the environment in which they live a better place. Not only do they share their incredible gifts of honey and wax, but they also help pollinate the area and increase the agricultural output of the trees and plants. Quoting Ross from Natural Beekeeping, “The honey bee inspires me to work into my daily life this lesson: That we should give something back and improve upon things, thus making the world a better place.” VIHC strives to make the world a better place through conscious management of every aspect of the business. However, even with all of this striving, it is very hard to create a positive environmental impact while running a business. The activities of the bees are an environmental plus, but the impact of the human activities of packaging and shipping are hard to avoid and hard to mitigate. “It is easy to talk about being a sustainable business, but it is very hard to live these things, try as we might,” says Richard Spiegel.
Bees are truly one of the natural wonders of the world- they make honey and wax- two things that humans have found very useful for thousands of years. Humans have figured out how to make wax from petroleum (yuck! beeswax candles are superior in every way!) but not to make honey. “Honey is something so precious and special; even with our highly developed technological sciences, we humans still have not been able to duplicate the efforts of the simple honey bee and create the same substance from what amounts to nothing more than sugar and water,” says Conrad in Natural Beekeeping. VIHC believes in using the honey as close to its natural state as possible and keeps the honey raw. Just like Volcano Island Honey, Dancing Bee Gardens also produces organic, raw honey.
So who’s smarter- Man or Bee? Well…you decide!
Watch this video of Ross Conrad speaking about his discovery of beekeeping and his all-natural methods for maintaining a healthy and thriving bee population.
A few years ago there was a bee swarm in my neighborhood. For a few days it was the talk of the town. Did you see that bee swarm? Are they angry? Are they looking for a person or animal to attack? Are they lost? Looking for their hive? It was both beautiful and frightening to the uninformed.
Richard says that some people are into horses, but if you don't know what you are doing a horse can hurt you. Bees are the same. If you don't know what you are doing you can get hurt, but if you understand what is happening, you will be fine. Richard is so friendly with the bees he captures the swarm with his bare hands. Don't try this at home!
The main reason that bees swarm out of the hive is that there is overcrowding in the hive. When the space gets too tight for so many bees, about half of them take off and go looking for a new home. An old queen also contributes to the instinct to swarm. The bees have a natural intelligence about when to leave and form a new hive, and this helps perpetuate the species. This works perfectly for bees in the wild. In managed hives, however, beekeepers want to avoid swarming because you lose half of your bees and decreases your honey production in that hive. Beekeepers keep an eye on the size of the hive and try to manage against swarming.
The bees are smart about when they swarm. They choose a sunny day with light wind and try to leave early to give themselves plenty of time to find a new hive. The bees swarm out of the hive with the queen, the bees stay close together because of their attraction to a pheromone produced by the queen. Then they cluster together in the shade, while scouts go out to look for a new hive location. The entire swarm does not go out hive hunting together. The bees prefer to build a new hive in a cavity, like a hole in a tree. As we know, bees will sometimes find a cavity in or around a house if they can find a way in- we hear many stories of bees nesting between walls. Scouts look for the new nesting site and come back to guide the way when they find a suitable location.
We recently had a bee swarm from one of our hives at Volcano Island Honey in Ahualoa and the bees clustered under a bush while waiting for their scouts to come back. Since these bees swarmed out of one of the Volcano Island Honey hives, Richard wanted to catch them back and give them a new hive. You will see in the video below that Richard is making sure that he captures the queen as well as the rest of the bees. If he doesn’t capture the queen, the bees will swarm out of the new hive.
Bees, in general, do not attack people. They primarily exhibit defensive behavior and will sting if they perceive a threat to the hive. A bee swarm is a group of bees moving to a new home and they usually eat a big honey meal before they go. Full of honey and without a home, they are not at their most aggressive. They are not out and about with aggressive intentions, but that doesn’t mean that they wouldn’t sting if they felt threatened. You can see in the video above that Richard is capturing the swarm with his bare hands!
The swarm will usually move on to their new nesting site within a day or two. You can call a beekeeper to capture the bees if they locate themselves in your home, or if you want the swarm gone sooner than they are ready. Some beekeepers like to catch wild swarms and put them in managed hives. They feel that wild bees might be stronger and add genetic diversity to the other colonies.
There was recently another bee swarm down in Puako…here are some pictures from that:
The swarm is on the move!
The swarm settles down on a tree branch to await the return of the scouts.
This fall Richard launched a four week class called Beginning Organic Beekeeping. With thirty years experience in organic beekeeping and producing artisan honey- the demand to learn from Richard is high! Twelve lucky people are in the class now and there is already a list for the next class. With bees under attack by the varroa mite and other diseases, having a few managed hives in many backyards is a good way to help perpetuate Hawaii’s honey bees.
Unless you are a beekeeper you are probably asking yourself right now, “What is Wax Foundation?” and “Why Do I Care?” Wax foundation is a thin sheet of beeswax that is embossed with the hexagonal shape that the bees naturally form for their honeycomb. The wax foundation is placed in a rectangular wooden frame with two wires across the horizontal center that holds the wax foundation in place.
The bees “draw out the comb” by adding wax on top of the foundation to create hexagonal cells, which is where they store honey and pollen as well as where the queen lays her eggs (in separate cells!)
Organic foundation is important because most beeswax foundation is contaminated from the use of toxic chemicals used by beekeepers in the hives to treat disease. The chemicals remain in the wax, which is processed into wax foundation.
Most beekeepers purchase this commercial foundation for use in their hives. Organic standards allow plastic foundation dipped in organic beeswax, but some organic beekeepers (like Volcano Island Honey Co. and Hawaiian Queen Company!) feel strongly that plastic should not be used in bee hives.
We produce raw, organic honey and have a commitment to nonviolent and non toxic methods to harvest honey, and in all aspects of production. We believe that organic wax foundation provides the basis for healthier, stronger bee hives, thereby increasing honey and queen production. Strong, healthy bees mean that trees and plants are pollinated which increases the agricultural productivity of orchard crops and maintains the health of non-native and native forest.
Making beeswax foundation in a small-scale farm setting is a lost art, there are not many people who know how to do it as the process has been industrialized in developed countries. The fact that it is not possible to purchase organic foundation means that making your own is a necessity for apiaries who do not want to use plastic foundation.
The process of making foundation is not complicated, but it does require time and patience. The only piece of specialized equipment required is an embossing mill. The embossing rollers come in both 4.9 mm and 5.1 mm sizes.
Do you know that 1/3 of all the food you eat is pollinated by bees? The decimation of bee colonies is a threat to food production in Hawaii. In Hawaii we do not have the disappearance of bees (Colony Collapse Disorder or CCD), but we now have the devastating and aptly named varroa destructor, commonly known as the varroa mite.
The varroa mite is a parasite that attacks honey bee adults, larvae, and pupae. The varroa mite has been know to destroy up to 90% of wild hives and beekeepers can easily lose all or a majority of their managed hives. Until recently, Hawaii and Australia were the only remaining varroa free places in the world. The varroa mite was found on Oahu in 2007, unfortunately this did not result in quick and aggressive action by the private or government sector. As a result, the mite has now been found in hives on the Big Island.
The beekeeping industry in Hawaii is a $4 million per year industry, with the majority of that being on the Big Island. Hawaii’s beekeepers produce both honey and queen bees. But Hawaii’s beekeeping industry affects a much larger industry. The Kona Coast of Hawaii produces approx. 400,000 varroa free queens per year, or 20% of the nation’s needs. Each queen bee heads up a colony of about 45,000 pollinating foragers that fly and pollinate about 8,000 acres around its hive. Hawaii’s queen producers supply many of the nation’s largest beekeepers with mite-free queens whose colonies pollinate the food crops in North America.
Not Just a Honey Problem, It is a Food Problem
The varroa mite is not just a beekeeper’s problem, it is a food production problem that will affect commercial farms as well as the backyard gardener. The State Department of Agriculture estimates that Hawaii’s agricultural industry will lose $42 – $62 million from the loss of feral bees. When wild honey bees no longer pollinate crops, farmers will have to hire managed bee colonies to sustain production, if managed hives are available. Since there is a ban on importation of bees to Hawaii, if the bees die out replenishing managed hives may present an unanticipated problem. Pollinated-dependent crops such as tomatoes, cucumbers and melons will experience losses in both quality and quantity. Bees also assist in pollinating coffee, macadamia nuts, citrus, avocado, and guava. The loss of wild hives will likely mean lower production and quality in farms and private gardens and fruit trees.
Living with Varroa in Hawaii
Volcano Island Honey Company, as a certified organic apiary has been researching ways to treat the varroa mite in hives and still remain certified organic. (Just to be clear Volcano Island Honey does not have varroa in its hives.) The company has developed an Integrated Pest Management (IPM) strategy that would use non-chemical methods such as screened bottom boards, brood cycle disruption and possibly drone brood removal first and then, if necessary, so called “soft-chemicals” such as formic acid.
Beekeepers on the U.S. mainland and other places in the world have been managing varroa for over 20 years, but Hawaii’s beekeepers have not had the varroa mite and this presents some special challenges. Managing the hives with the varroa mite is much more labor intensive and the treatments are expensive, this is not an expense that Hawaii’s beekeepers anticipated. In addition, many of the beekeepers in Hawaii just do not have experience with treating hives for varroa and will need to learn what works and what does not through experience- which could add up to expensive trial and error. To compound the challenge- many of the soft-chemical treatments such as formic acid and thymol have not been tested in European honeybee hives in a year round, tropical climate like Hawaii. Therefore, accurate information on application for Hawaii’s climate is not readily available. The University of Hawaii has ramped up its Bee Project in order to provide Hawaii’s beekeepers with localized information on application.
Are Bees the Canary in the Coalmine?
Until the disappearance of bees (Colony Collapse Disorder of CCD) began attracting national media attention, most people probably never thought about the important role that bees play in our food production. Unfortunately, the majority of our food comes from industrial food production systems and the bees that pollinate the food crops have been industrialized as well. Thousands of bee hives are trucked across the country each year to pollinate tree crops, primarily large, chemically fertilized and pesticide laden mono-cropping nut and fruit orchards.
Volcano Island Honey Company feels that the bees are the “canary in the coal mine” of the condition of our global environment. When the bees start disappearing, that is an obvious signal that our environment is out of balance. The cause of Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) has not yet been found, but we feel that the decimation and disappearance of bees is indicative of the many errors of our ways- from industrial agricultural practices to over consumption.
What You Can Do for Hawaii’s Bees
The effort to combat the varroa mite in Hawaii is woefully under funded. The Hawaii State Department of Agriculture, which is already handling more agricultural pests than it has time and staff for, only has about $370,000 to address the varroa problem statewide. Hawaii’s congressional delegation has secured another $469,000 for Fiscal Year 2010, but this is only a drop in the bucket.
A multi-stakeholder group comprised of beekeepers, the agricultural industry, University of Hawaii, Hawaii Department of Agriculture, USDA and others has formed to try to collectively address the varroa problem (disclosure- the writer of this article has been retained as the facilitator/coordinator of this group).
The public can make a tax deductible donation to the effort to help the bees on the Big Island. Checks should be made out to The Kohala Center, reference Varroa in the memo, and mail to:
The Kohala Center
Att: Cortney Hoffman
P.O. Box 437462
Kamuela, Hawai‘i 96743
You can also learn about beekeeping and keep a hive in your own backyard! Volcano Island Honey Company owner Richard Spiegel will be having a beginning beekeeping class in October.
