The Buzz Blog

Last week I wrote about my distress at finding Hive #3 without a queen. This week, I was glad to find out that Hive #3 has a queen and is doing fine! She was newly introduced last week and we just missed her in our examination of the hive. It sounds like things are going to be looking up for the bees in that colony.

One of my favorite things about the learning process is when new information fits like a puzzle piece into the “Big Picture”. The bees are an indicator species of what is going on in our mutual environment. Over the past two years I have been studying natural farming methods, beneficial insects and invasive species (both plant and insect). The introduction of invasive species has reduced the honeybee’s numbers by half. What can we learn from that catastrophe?

I agree with my fellow students that importing 90% of our food into Hawaii is a bad idea. The bees, for example, gather everything they need within 2-3 miles radius of their hive. What would it look like if we too a hint from the bees? Buying and/or growing local food, reducing our dependence on imports and fossil fuels?

This class on honeybees is turning out to be a teaching on emotional life lessons. I am inspired by Jenny and Richard’s commitment to live and work in the “right” way. It is such a pleasure to be learning from them, my fellow students, and most of all the honeybees. I can’t wait for next week!

Posted by Christine Young


This project was funded by a grant from the Western Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education Program.

It is a romantic image… bees hovering over delicate blooms, gathering nectar and pollen ripened by sunlight. Then, in the darkness of the hive, wax is produced and shaped into comb the color of cream. It is as if sunlight had found its way into the very center of the hive! We take the gifts the comb offers, golden-hued honey, and in the darkness of night or the depths of winter, we light candles crafted of beeswax. As they glow with brightness and warmth, we are again reminded of the sun’s light, now before us in miniature.

In our second beekeeping class, we had the opportunity to open a Langstroth hive, remove frames, and examine bees. Equipped with hat, veil, thick gloves, smoker and hooked hive tool, we gingerly lifted the hive lid. Clumsy under my gear and weakly grasping my hive tool, I seemed to move in slow motion. Hawaii’s bee expert, Danielle Downey, took my tool and deftly pushed the first frame to free it from the others. Encouraged by her vigor, I lifted the frame out, and the humming and buzzing of the bees quickly brought clarity and purpose to my movements. The gloves seemed more of a hindrance than a help, so off they came, and the bees crawling over my fingertips felt surprisingly more comforting than panic-inducing! My classmates took turns removing frames and examining brood and honey cells. I lifted out yet another frame when someone excitedly chirped, “There’s the queen, on the back of your frame!” She was instantly recognizable, her amber abdomen long and tapering, her thorax dark and mostly hairless.

Closer inspection of the colony revealed some bees with shiny small rust-colored ovals clinging to their bodies. This was our first encounter with the varroa mite, a blood-sucking parasite that spreads disease, weakens colonies, and is responsible, in part, for the massive bee die-offs in Hawaii over the last few years. Beekeepers have long been dealing with this pest on the mainland, but its fairly recent introduction to the islands has kept Hawaiian beekeepers scrambling to learn techniques for keeping the parasite populations in check.


After replacing the frames and lid, I walked away from the hive with mixed feelings: a “zingy” excitement at having held bees just inches from my face, but also concern over the mite that was weakening bees and causing some to emerge from their cells with deformed wings. For me, beekeeping will be a dance between the awe I experience when I am around bees, and the care I must provide to maintain healthy colonies.

Posted by Monika Hennig


This project was funded by a grant from the Western Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education Program.

With the sun over our shoulders, we took turns holding up the frames of our beehive to look at the bees. At first we saw a blanket of bees, but by blowing gently, the bees moved and we saw the six sided cells capped with honey, then some eggs, and larva. We saw bees drinking honey, with only their bottoms sticking out of the caps. We saw bees exchanging nectar. It was mesmerizing. We were surprised at how heavy the frames were. I certainly felt awkward at dislodging the propolis, moving the frames, prying them up with my new hive tool and trying to grab them with gloved hands. We were so afraid of crushing a bee!


How amazing it is that bees make their homes with their own bodies! Except for the wooden part of the frame, the bees had made everything we were looking at. The beginning of their home is the comb, which is the womb of the hive. They make the comb by eating honey, then turning it into wax through glands situated on the last four segments of their abdomen. They sort of “sweat” the honey out through these smooth areas of the bodies called wax mirrors. These glands reach their peak in worker bees between the 12th and 18th day of their lives. The bees must eat about 8 lbs of honey to produce 1 lb of wax. They can make up to eight plates of wax a day, which harden into paper thin scales. They then maneuver the scales into their mouths, mix it with secretions, and knead it into workable wax. The most amazing part is they make perfect hexagons with the wax, which fit together without any spaces. They can even form chains of bees and use gravity to get the shape of comb they want. A healthy, fertilized queen lays eggs to fill these cells nonstop for years, creating the eggs and larva we were observing.


Suddenly, the sound changed from a pleasant hum to a higher pitched louder noise. The bees started darting around my veil. They were coming out of the hive, and seemed agitated. Maybe we had smoked them too much, or maybe we had introduced too much cool wind to the brood, or maybe they were just done letting us view the inner workings of their self made home. Whatever changed their mood, we decided it was time to close up the hive. We quickly put two frames back in, trying to coax the bees out of the way, then the queen excluder, the super, and the top. They bees were in the dark again. The pleasant hum returned, as our second class was over all too fast.


Posted by Mary Ann Smiles


This project was funded by a grant from the Western Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education Program.

The intoxicating aroma of beekeepers’ smoke
The fond smells of summer campfires does invoke
For a while we were able to share
For a while we were able to watch and stare
Amazing this hive, this amazing place
Thank you, bee friends, for sharing your space

Posted by Maria da Silva


a href=”http://www.westernsare.org/”>This project was funded by a grant from the Western Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education Program.

Our second class was an “awakening” for me. Richard and Jenny did a super job of transferring their vast wisdom about the bees and the equipment needed for a beekeeper. It is clear how deeply they both care about the bees and about us newbies trying to grasp all the critical points. Richard and Jenny have both developed great teaching styles in the way that they present the information verbally, visually, by demonstration and then allowing us to do it ourselves.


My “awakening” came when we opened Hive #3. The process felt invasive to me and I was feeling uncomfortable about my trespass. Then my feelings turned to real concern as we witnessed the bees struggling. We searched for the queen with no luck, finding only queen cells–some empty and one being fed. We found small hive beetles and the deformed wings of bees that were victims of a virus transferred by the varroa mite. So many battles to fight for these little honeybees. I have read about the challenges and threats to the bees for years, but I was never this close to the battle.

I can understand why re-queening is so important to the colony. You could almost hear their clocks ticking without the queen. Bees are much more vulnerable to pests and population decline without her leadership and strength. It is evident how colony collapse can happen without the constant vigilance of the beekeeper. With Richard showing the way we ran through a diagnostic of the colony in the least invasive way. He explained how we can help them by monitoring their health and wellbeing and by stepping in where we can to boost them up. Richard was very concerned about the colony being queenless and said he had just re-queened several colonies earlier that week.

So with that short visit into a hive, I am now emotionally invested in Hive #3 and hope to find out how they are doing first thing next Saturday.

Posted by Christine Young


a href=”http://www.westernsare.org/”>This project was funded by a grant from the Western Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education Program.

I was excited and a little anxious about my first bee class. The bees chose me awhile ago, and I feel like I’m catching up to their decision. A whole afternoon devoted to a class about bees seemed like a long time, but it turned out bees are just plain fascinating!

Richard and Jenny are the perfect yin and yang of the bee keeper and the bee guardian. Like the queen producing eggs, Richard is producing honey, and like the drone, who’s only job is to fertilize a queen, Jenny’s cause is to perpetuate the species. And we, the students, are like the worker bees, busy learning our new craft.

To learn that 50% of the Big Island’s bee population was lost in 2010 is heartbreaking. So a new breed of bee keeper emerges. 50% of the class is more interested in pollination than honey. To me, the bees are saying, take care of me, I’ll pollinate, AND I’ll share my honey with you. How can I say no?

At the end of the day, awkwardly dressed in our new hats and veils, as Richard opened the hive, there was a perfect peace. The bees were calm. We were calm. No one seemed to want to leave. As Richard put the top back on, closing up the hive, the spell was broken, but I drove home thinking about the bees.

Written by Mary Ann Smiles

This project was funded by a grant from the Western Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education Program.

How is it with all our human verbal skills we have so much less quality communication that the beloved honey bees? Learning about bees communication this week, I was struck by how great they are at communicating throughout the colony that may number from 20,000 to 60,000 individuals.

They take care of the colony, the queen, the environment and give selflessly to others. Their communication through out the colony is faultless. How many of us could say that about our small family units? The bees share with all the other workers about where to find the best nectar and pollen sources. They communicate that information through a bee dance that triangulates the exact location, even factoring in the movement of the sun. They also share a sample of the product they are so excited about. No selfishness here. In the pollen and nectar gathering they can mark the flowers as “used” so another bee does not have to waste their time. The bees even communicate with us in an auditory way. They emit a happy hum or if they have lost their queen they give off the “queenless roar” in discontent. These wonderful creatures have so much to teach us and I am blessed to be in their classroom.

 

Written by Christine Young

This project was funded by a grant from the Western Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education Program.

The Beginning Organic Beekeeping class taught by Richard Spiegel and Jenny Bach started on Saturday, July 9, 2011, with a new crop of 17 people—all enthusiastic about learning to work with the bees. The class was comprised of backyard gardeners and small farmers, most of who were interested in keeping bees for pollination of trees and vegetables. Many people on Hawai‘i Island have reported noticing a decline in macadamia nut and fruit tree production as a result of the loss of wild beehives. Wild hives have begun to decline as a result of the varroa mite bee parasite and other bee pathogens.

Jenny told the class that Honeybees were first brought to Hawaii in 1857 by the Bishop family. After a number of failed attempts, honeybees finally arrived by ship and were first cultivated in Nu‘uanu valley on Oahu.

With plenty of flowering trees and no varroa mite, beekeepers in Hawaii have enjoyed a bee paradise for many years before the arrival of the devastating mite a few years ago. A Big Island Beekeepers Association survey found that Hawaii Island Beekeepers have recently lost about 50% of their managed hives.

With the decline in agricultural production and more awareness about the plight of the bees, public interest in bees has skyrocketed. Demand for the class was very high and we have a long waiting list for future classes.

“Bees find their beekeepers,” says Jenny.

The students had many different reasons for wanting to take the Beginning Organic Beekeeping class. Aja, a student at the University of Seattle wants to gain more farming skills and perpetuate the movement. Jim got turned on to beekeeping by a friend in New York. Now, living on 16 acres in Hawaii Island he wants to integrate bees into his farm system. Ian has been interested in bees since he did a project in the 7th grade and is glad to finally be pursing an interest so long ago started.

Caroline said, “Bees… I am fascinated by bees. I am a vegetarian, so fruits and vegetables are important. Bees are a powerful medicine. I recently got to help catch a swarm and that was one of the most inspiring experiences of my life. ”

Christine, a nursery manager said, “Gardening and bees just go together.”

Thanks to a grant from the Western Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education Program everyone received beginning beekeeping equipment. Here the class leans to put on their hats and veils.

This project was funded by a grant from the Western Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education Program.

Richard’s long experience as an organic beekeeper and creator of a socially/environmentally responsible honey business, combined with Jenny’s intuitive nature and obvious passion for nurturing bees, made for a fascinating and informative first class.

The relationship between bees and humans is a long one, as a 6,000 year old cave painting in Spain attests. A thin ochre figure reaches for a round hive in a tree as bees swarm. The image made me smile… golden sweetness upon the tongue is worth the pain of getting stung!

I was amazed by the utter complexity of life within the beehive. The female workers, comprising 90% of the population, live from 3 to 6 weeks and display a very orderly division of labor. As soon as a worker bee emerges from her cell as a newly hatched adult, she begins cleaning cells of debris, graduates a few days later to covering larval cells with beeswax, and ends her nursery duties with brood tending. Having reached a certain level of maturity, she now attends the queen, then shortly changes jobs again to receive incoming nectar from her sisters. Subsequent chores include packing pollen, comb building, ventilating the hive to maintain an ideal temperature of 97 degrees, and guarding against invaders. Only after fulfilling her share of each of these tasks does she leave the hive for her first day of foraging! I can hear the children already: “You mean she can’t just choose her favorite job and do it forever?!” What a lesson in community sharing and responsibility!

Equally fascinating is the use of pheromones, or chemical scents the bees produce to communicate with one another. I was surprised to learn that a bee will leave a pheromone on a flower it has just visited to alert others that the nectar is all used up. As if by magic, the pheromone dissipates when the flower’s nectar supply returns! Indeed, there is much magic surrounding bees, which Richard and Jenny openly acknowledge – a magic that continually adds to the awe and joy of beekeeping.

Written by Monika Hennig

This project was funded by a grant from the Western Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education Program.

Back in the 1980′s, when VIHC was just becoming more than a hobby, Richard went into Dean & Deluca (one of the first and finest specialty food stores in the U.S.) with a jar of White Honey in his vest pocket. It was just before Christmas, and Richard was told he would not be able to meet with the store buyer, as the holiday season was very busy. But as fate would have it, Joel Dean, the owner, walked out at that very moment and asked if he could help …

Richard showed him the jar of honey and gave him a taste. “Send me two cases,” Mr. Dean said. That endorsement later warmed many a cold call, as Richard introduced the honey to other potential accounts. Once tasted, the honey sold itself.

At that time, VIHC had only one product: white kiawe honey. Many people advised Richard on how to run a small business, saying it would never

succeed with just one product. But, being an unconventional, hippy businessman, Richard ignored this advice; VIHC continued to offer only the White Honey and the business continued to grow. Eventually, however, he did decide to try creating another product. One of those he tried was honey with passionfruit, or lilikoi (“li-li-koi”) in Hawaiian.

Though not native to Hawaii, lilikoi has become a local favorite, especially when added to other foods. Eaten fresh off the vine, it is high in vitamin C, potassium, beta carotene and fiber. Baked, squeezed, frozen or preserved, it is turned into a variety of tasty confections (lilikoi butter, jelly, pie, cookies) and refreshing drinks (smoothies, iced tea). We obtain our lilikoi wild crafted from a small, local, family-owned company. The lilikoi puree is then mixed, by hand, into our honey in small batches.

Since we began offering Rare Hawaiian Organic White Honey with Hawaiian Lilikoi, it has become a customer favorite. Like other winning flavor combinations (tomato and basil, apple and cinnamon, papaya and lime), the blend of White Honey and lilikoi somehow amounts to more than the sum of its parts: the tart, tropical tang of lilikoi complements the rich, creamy sweetness of White Honey, yielding a sensuous, magically delicious result!

If you’ve already tried our White Honey with Hawaiian Lilikoi, let us know what you think on the product review link on our product page. If you

Be creative: if you discover your favorite way of using our lilikoi honey, please share it with us on Facebook or by email. Better yet, invite some friends to share your favorite lilikoi honey treat!

In honor of sweet fathers everywhere, for the next week only (ending on 6/20/11) we’re offering special flat rate shipping of only $15 for any order of$100 or more. May we suggest our White Lilikoi Eco Six Pack?