Colony collapse a threat to bees
MONROE - Bee deaths worldwide have greatly exceeded sustainable levels in recent years as reports of a hive-destroying condition called colony collapse disorder have drastically increased in frequency.
Colony collapse disorder is a social dysfunction wherein worker bees abandon a hive, leaving behind a queen and the hive's larvae. Bees who leave the hive tend to die.
Unlike other hive-destroying phenomena, such as mite infestations, colony collapse is identifiable by the absence of bee corpses surrounding the affected hive.
Donna Gilson of the Wisconsin Department of Agriculture, Trade and Consumer Protection, said colony collapse can be attributed to several causes, primarily pesticide use and loss of foraging land.
Colony collapse is one factor that has led to a general decrease in pollinator populations worldwide, Gilson said. According to a study by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, beekeepers in the U.S. lost 44 percent of bees between April 2015 and 2016, an increase of nearly four percent from the previous year.
While nearly 30 percent of the 2015 bee deaths were during winter, they still greatly exceeded the 17 percent figure that the Department of Agriculture considers an acceptable or sustainable loss.
Gilson said the global decrease of pollinators can likewise be attributed primarily to pesticide use and the loss of habitat. Pollinators' decline led to the placement of the rusty patched bumblebee, a bee native to the upper Midwest, on the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's list of endangered species in January, the first bee to be added to the list in the continental U.S.
Gilson said 2016's milder winter may have led to less bee mortality than the previous winter but added that there is no way to know until studies are completed in June.
- Michael Brestovansky
Les Bieneman considers it a hobby.
A substitute science teacher by trade, Bieneman has been an amateur beekeeper for 50 years.
"I grew up around bees," said Bieneman, whose father kept bees while he was a child. "I like working with them."
Bieneman - whose name, in an extraordinary case of nominative determinism, means "keeper of bees" in German - keeps six hives of bees in various locations throughout Green County. Each hive holds about 10,000 bees and one queen.
Three of these hives are kept at the residence of Johann Bayer, a Browntown retiree who helps Bieneman by building the artificial hive units in which the bees reside.
"I like the isolation at Johann's place," Bieneman said. "It's good for the bees here."
Keeping bees can be difficult. While hives are self-sufficient, they can be susceptible to attacks from predators such as skunks, mite infestations or an insidious apiary social disorder called colony collapse disorder.
Donna Gilson, public information officer for the Wisconsin Department of Agriculture, Trade and Consumer Protection, said much is still unknown about colony collapse disorder, although its multifarious causes are believed to range from use of pesticides, various pathogens within hives and a loss of foraging in the environment.
"The only real way to prevent colony collapse is through general pollinator protection methods," Gilson said. "Making sure there's adequate foraging, using pesticides judiciously and making sure the pesticides you use aren't dangerous to pollinators."
The isolation of the hives at Bayer's residence keeps the bees relatively unexposed to agricultural pesticides, which Bieneman said lowers the risk for colony collapse.
Mites, Bieneman said, are a tougher problem. The Varroa mite is a resilient parasite that lays eggs on bee larvae and spread diseases as they propagate through a hive. Often, a Varroa infestation can destroy a hive.
Bieneman said he intends to buy a Russian breed of honeybees that are more resistant to mites, although he added that he has only had one hive fail in the 50 years he has kept the insects.
However, hives frequently do not last through the winter, Bieneman said, and have to be restocked with bees in the spring. This he accomplishes by purchasing boxes containing three pounds of bees, which get to work on building a honeycomb hive while he suspends the hive's queen above the hive, to acclimate the bees to her pheromones.
"If they don't get acclimated, then they won't breed with her and the hive fails," Bieneman said.
Once the queen is successfully introduced to the hive, Bieneman leaves the bees to their own devices, only checking in with them every three or four weeks until the honey harvest in the fall.
Bieneman said he can obtain seventy pounds of honey per hive.
"I don't sell it though, I just give it to friends," he said. He also said he saves the beeswax, because his granddaughter wants to make candles and lip balm.
Bieneman's passion for beekeeping has spread beyond his friends and family. Last year, he taught a beekeeping class at Blackhawk Technical College, where he instructed 12 students on how to keep bees.
"Beekeepers are good folks," Bieneman said. "Nobody's doing this for a living; they just enjoy it. Most people learn as they go."
"Plus it's good for the environment and they help with your garden," he added.