The Tabloid Exploits of Bees and their honeys

Transcription

1 The Tabloid Exploits of Bees and their honeys by Rosie DeQuattro Imagine that it is early spring, and in the colony the old queen is entering her dotage. Triggered by the warming, lengthening days, her subjects instinct to flee erupts and spreads like the dreaded varroa mite throughout the colony, infecting workers with a restlessness that cannot be assuaged. In the dark chambers of the brood nest, nervous virgin queens commence a fight to the death. They challenge each other s titular claim with their piping, a shrill cry they make by pressing themselves against the comb and vibrating their flight muscles without moving their wings. Other virgin queens are biting their way into the sealed brood nests, stinging to death the inchoate queens. All the while, a small band of loyalists, survivors of winter, cluster in a ball around the old queen, sluggishly attending her, moving only enough to feed her and themselves. With waning energy, reluctant to leave her side, each expires in her turn, exhausted, starved, and poisoned by her own excrement. The old guard is gone; long live the new queen, and the cycle begins again. As macabre as this may seem, this dramatization accurately describes instinctive honeybee behavior something to keep in mind the next time you reach for the plastic honey bear on your supermarket shelf. In fact, the life-cycle of the honeybee, Apis mellifera, also known as the Western honeybee, is one of those under-appreciated yet vitally important stories that, once revealed, changes the way you think about seemingly ordinary honey, forever. First, a voyeur s account of life in the hive There s a hierarchy in a well-functioning bee colony, a caste system, with each caste responsible for specific tasks. The above scenario would never occur in a well-managed, beekeeper-attended hive. In honey-gathering season, with anywhere from 40,000 to 60,000 bees living in one healthy hive, harmony is key. There are three castes: workers, drones and the queen. Workers are females. Like all females, their lives are complicated. They have special organs that allow them to perform their duties which are mainly to preserve order within the colony. As they age they assume different tasks. They have a proboscis, a long hollow tube grooved down the middle, that allows them to extract nectar from plants, ideally flowers, but they have been known to collect nectar that exudes from the bodies of aphids when floral sources are scarce. Honey made from this nectar source is called honeydew. The foraging worker also has specially-developed hind legs that are used to collect and 18 spring 2007 edible boston carry pollen back to the hive. As they swoop and sweep amongst plants (each bee visiting between 50 and a 1,000 flowers per day and covering up to three miles distance from the hive), pollen is transferred from plant to plant and pollination of those plants, and of crops world-wide, occurs. The foraging workers carry the collected nectar and water to the hive in their honey stomachs, an enlarged area of the esophagus, and hand it off to younger workers who regurgitate the combination repeatedly until the water content evaporates down to about nineteen percent (who measures these things!). Other bees inside the hive fan their wings to create a strong draft across the nectar-laden honeycomb, hastening evaporation. The action of regurgitation adds enzymes to the resulting product, honey. This is where honey gets its reputation with humans as an immune system booster. After evaporation, the young workers deposit the honey into those familiar, hexagonally-shaped cells which they themselves construct from wax produced by wax glands located under their abdomens. Furthermore, some foraging workers perform a dance on their return to the hive to attract attention to themselves so that other workers will detect the odor of the nectar collected, and then follow the odor trail back to the plant to collect more. It takes visits to approximately two million flowers to make one pound of honey. A healthy colony can produce 300 hun- Photograph : Carole Topalian

2 Photograph: Adelaide Reseska dred to 500 hundred pounds of honey per year. Pollen carried back to the hive by successful foragers is a source of protein and is fed to gestating bees and consumed by nurse bees (also females) who in turn produce royal jelly in a gland in their heads. Royal jelly can turn ordinary bee larvae into queen bees, a tricky situation that is incredibly well-managed by the bees themselves and by the art and skill of the beekeeper. As a matter of fact, when workers detect a lack of queen pheromones, queen scent, they know the queen is absent and they will instinctively shift into queen-making gear and start to feed royal jelly to many larvae. Another job for the workers is to maintain the temperature of the hive at a balmy 93 degrees, year-round. When the temperature rises above that, workers bring in water and fan their wings across the comb to create a draft; below that, and they cluster, vibrating their wing muscles to generate heat to protect and warm the queen, her brood, and the colony s honey supply. Bees use the phenomenon of the January thaw to clean out excrement and any foreign bodies from the hive. Sometimes, another kind of animal may sneak in there. The bees make quick work of the hapless invader by sealing it in propolis, a kind of resin they collect and use to patch the honey comb. Then there are the drones, all males, good for one thing only: mating with the queen. Drones cannot sting. They do not have any of the structures necessary to collect nectar and pollen. During periods when food is scarce, workers run the drones out of the colony. Unequipped to fend for themselves, the drones die. Mating with the queen takes place in the air, away from the colony. When the weather is right, opportunistic drones leave the hive during the afternoon and congregate in certain areas where they wait for virgin queens to fly by. Those that successfully mate with a queen die shortly thereafter having had certain body parts ripped away Andy Reseska checking bees on a summer s day. during their aerial maneuvers; otherwise, drones live about 90 days. The only fully-developed female in the hive is the queen. Pheromones (the queen scent) produced by the queen and distributed throughout the colony control and harmonize bee behavior. Larger than the other females, she is fed exclusively on a diet of royal jelly during a particular stage of her metamorphosis. Five days after emerging from her cell, she may mate with ten or more different drones over a period of two to three days. She collects and stores the sperm in a special organ called the spermatheca, and then begins to lay eggs in the prepared honeycomb cells of the hive, one egg per cell, placed precisely in the lower middle section of each cell. A healthy queen can lay more than 1,500 eggs per day. The eggs she chooses to fertilize by releasing some of the stored sperm onto them will result in a worker, a female; those eggs she chooses not to fertilize will result in a drone, a male. She will continue to release sperm to fertilize eggs throughout her life (about five years) depending on the needs of the colony. Before she dies or leaves the hive to start a new colony, she lays an egg in a large queen cell. The nurse bees feed this larva a diet of royal jelly, and after 16 days, depending on weather conditions and other factors, a new queen emerges. The thousands of members of county beekeeping associations throughout the country are the real heroes of this story. In this country, as a result of years of disease and pesticide misuse, less than one percent of bees are designated as wild the other 99 percent are domesticated and managed by beekeepers. As keepers of the flame, their earnest mission is to educate aspiring beekeepers, safeguard beekeeping techniques, pass-on the folk lore, and provide needed support for each other. There are beekeeping groups in every state in the United States; at least 12 in Massachusetts alone. Andy Reseska of Reseska Apiaries, Inc., in Holliston is a member of both the Middlesex and Norfolk County Beekeepers Associations. He serves on the board of the Massachusetts Beekeepers Association, and is chairman of the Apiary Advisory Committee for the Massachusetts Farm Bureau. Reseska appreciates the importance a viable beekeeping cottage industry is to agriculture in Massachusetts. People are now just starting to appreciate beekeeping. He adds, we are getting a lot of calls from people looking for local honey. Unlike most beekeepers in Massachusetts, beekeeping for him is not a hobby; it s a full-time, labor of love, he says. I m at it seven days a week. The bees are always amazing and different, but it s not for everyone. Reseska keeps seven hundred to one thousand colonies of bees which makes him the largest local honey producer in Massachusetts. He can produce 48,000 pounds of honey a year. He keeps his bee yards on federal, private and town lands in eastern Massachusetts where purple loosestrife is plentiful. Purple loosestrife is good for bees, he explains; it contains a good supply of pollen and EDIBLE boston spring

3 nectar and has more fructose than glucose. When purple loosestrife is not abundant, his bees feed on wildflowers, goldenrod, milkweed and apple blossoms, making his honey darker and more flavorful than the ubiquitous light-colored honey we re used to seeing. That honey comes from the nectar of clover, and also from massive imports of South American, Indian, Vietnamese and Chinese honey. Reseska harvests his honey once or twice a year, in July and at the end of August and sells it under the name of Golden Meadow Honey and Boston Honey. You can find them at farmers markets and also at Russo s in Watertown, Whole Foods, Allandale Farm, and Debra s Natural Gourmet. In winter, Reseska is busy selling honey and maintaining equipment. By April, he s right out there with the bees, checking for the health of the hive, determining winter s attrition. If honey supplies within the colonies are low, he ll feed the bees sugar candy or syrup and a pollen substitute. The difficulties [in beekeeping] are in keeping the bees alive; there are numerous viruses that affect bee hives, he explains, dispassionately. What he means, is that the most pronounced economic impact on the beekeeping industry in the past two decades, Varroa destructor, can sweep through a colony and kill every single bee. The tiny external parasite spreads a virus by attaching to the bee and sucking out the bees bodily fluids. The disease is being studied in labs all over the world. It is thought to have originated in Mexico and Asia in the 1980s. The infestation is aggravated by drought and unrestrained suburban growth that overtakes agricultural land. An estimated five percent of beekeepers in North America quit beekeeping annually because of this mite epidemic. Over the past 20 years, half the country s honey bees have succumbed to Varroa destructor. Al Carl, Program Coordinator at the Massachusetts Department of Agricultural Resources, knows only too well what beekeepers are up against in Massachusetts. It s very difficult, Carl says of beekeeping. Most [beekeepers] are hobbyists and use honey as an income supplement. Presently we have about 1,300 beekeepers in Massachusetts. Back in the day [about 1980], we had about 3,200. A lot of good beekeepers got discouraged. Varroa destructor is a high-profile scourge of beekeepers, but there are other more mundane pests as well. There are hive beetles and dwindling disease, nosema, foulbrood and chalk brood. Some of these have known symptoms and beekeepers can attack them with organic controls like formic acid, mineral oil or menthol. But some continue to evade scientific scrutiny. And, as if this weren t enough, Carl mentions yet another problem: finding good, safe locations to keep bees. He says that, Franklin County alone lost 80 percent of its beekeepers to bears. For an interesting perspective, consider the metrics of a company like Sue Bee Honey. Sue Bee accounts for almost all of the honey on the shelf at Shaw s Supermarkets, for instance. Of the five types of honey stocked, four of them are clover honeys from Sue Bee s American apiaries. The company produces 40 million pounds of honey in a year. As one of the largest honey producers in the world, Sue Bee controls an empire of 350 member apiaries, mostly west of the Mississippi, according to Bill Huser, Vice President of Research and Development at Sue Bee Honey in Sioux City, Iowa. Huser says that each one of its apiaries contains more than 10,000 bee colonies (remember, there are 40,000-60,000 bees per colony!). Bulk honey, honey that goes into products like cereals, breads, and meats, comes from honey the company imports from South America, India and Vietnam. According to Huser, the company is concerned with selling a consistent product. It can produce 8,000 cases of finished product in eight hours. It can reliably and consistently produce honey by the bucket, barrel, or tankertruckload. Michael Keane, a hobbyist beekeeper in Leominster, has six hives which he keeps in an apple orchard. (When he s not beekeeping, he s a software company manager). A good take would be about 100 pounds of honey out of a hive in one season. 60 pounds is average for harvesting. Double that amount is stored for the bees themselves, explains Keane. He harvests once per season and sells honey on his website. Keane, too, sees an up tick in the demand for local honey. He also sees the need for continuing education of the public. As a member of the Worcester County Beekeepers Association, the oldest beekeeping club in the country, Keane encourages people to take a beekeeping course at a local club. Most counties in Massachusetts have beekeeping clubs. We have an obligation to educate as many people as possible about bees and beekeeping. Formaggio Kitchen in Cambridge has arguably the best honey collection in the country; this according to manager, Tim Bucciarelli. Alas, their best-selling honey is acacia and wild lavender honey from Provence. Although Formaggio Kitchen has carried local honey in the past, Bucciarelli admits it s been a struggle getting a reliable supply. He wants to change that and is open to developing a group of suppliers of local honey. We would love to get more, he confirms. Whole Foods, too, offers economic incentive to local honey Photograph: Carole Topalian 20 spring 2007 edible boston

4 makers. Susan Phinney, Local Produce Forager for the North Atlantic Region, is proud of Whole Foods record, Whole Foods has been buying local for about 25 years. We plan to expand the local buying program and initiate a store-level buying program soon. Right now there are 11 varieties of honeys at the Fresh Pond store; seven are from New England apiaries, and four are from Massachusetts. Of course, the most important role honeybees play in our lives is not honey production but pollination. Honeybees do the work of pollinating over eighty percent of all food crops worldwide, accounting for more than two-thirds of the food we eat. It is estimated that in the US alone, the value of crops that require pollination by honeybees is $24 billion each year. Commercial bee pollination services are valued at around $10 billion annually. Pollination services, bees for hire, are purchased by growers or farmers who rely on insects to propagate their crops. Honeybees (the females) do this elegantly and efficiently as they fly from flower to flower collecting pollen and nectar for the hive. A forager can visit up to two million flowers in her lifetime. The pollen sticks to the feather-like hairs covering her body and some is deposited on each plant. Commercial pollination services require the beekeeper to transport his hives to the purchasing site and leave them there until the time of flower petal drop, early to late spring depending on the geography. Merrimack Valley Apiaries (MVA), headquartered in Billerica, has been providing pollination services to New England apple growers for 50 years. Their pollination services have gradually expanded to include high-bush blueberry growers in New Jersey, wild blueberry growers in Maine, cranberry growers on Cape Cod, and almond tree growers in California. MVA uses seasonal help from Nicaragua who are experienced beekeepers in their home country. There s a lot of work involved in moving fifteen thousand hives around the country. Crystal Card, co-owner of MVA, explains that these men come in on temporary work visas and do the work of maintaining the colonies, and work on the right nutrition balance for the bees. As you would imagine, extracting honey from the hive is another requirement of the job of beekeeping, whether it s for 15,000 hives or six. Beekeepers always leave enough honey in the hive for the bees to thrive, but removing the honey actually stimulates the bees to produce more. MVA produces enough honey to sell it by the barrel-load, in five- gallon bulk pails and by the tractor-trailer load. No matter the quantity, a mechanical device called a honey extractor is used to extract and collect honey from the honeycomb. The machine is either electric or hand-powered. Beekeepers place the frames of honeycomb into the bucket of the machine and centrifugal force spins the honey out of the cells of the comb. The wax comb stays intact within the frame and can be reused by the bees. The largest commercial extractor holds more than 100 frames; the smallest holds two frames. A word about the honeycomb itself: beekeepers provide their bees with frames upon which bees will construct a wax comb to store honey and gestating eggs. On a large frame, workers will build about 6,000 cells. They build it out of wax they produce. The hexagonal cells are uniformly about a quarter inch across and a few inches deep. Honeycomb is mathematically the second strongest structure in the world (the pyramid is first). Honeybees are the only insects that produce food for humans. Just like wine or chocolate, honey made by local beekeepers reflects terroir, that ineffable combination of soil, weather, flower source and location that gives honey its unique flavor, aroma and color. After seven years of commercial beekeeping, Andy Reseska says that beekeeping is more an art than a science. It requires being ahead of the bees; I have to be thinking about two weeks ahead of what the bees are thinking that s the art of beekeeping. He adds, When I started keeping bees, with one colony in my back yard, my eyes opened up to flowers and weather and the seasons. It s not just a job. There s that one day during the week when everything is perfect. It changed my life. The next time you reach for the plastic honeybear, consider the bee and its keeper. For a listing of MA Beekeeping Associations and where you can take a beekeeping course go to: Reseska Apiaries, Inc. 148 Adams Street, Holliston Andy Reseska Michael Keane 46 Lynnhaven Road, Leominster Merrimack Valley Apiaries 96 Dudley Road, Billerica cardbee@mvabeepunchers.com Freelance writer Rosie DeQuattro began her love affair with food as a child when her mother sent her off to school with bread and chocolate sandwiches for lunch. The envy of all her bologna-and-mayo-eating school mates, Rosie still eats and cooks the kind of peasant Italian food considered by many today as gourmet. Rosie contributes a monthly food column to The Culinary Beat, and to The Middlesex Beat, an arts and entertainment guide. EDIBLE boston spring

5 tea cake recipe HONEY AND LEMON TEA CAKES BY BÉATRICE PELTRE Makes 6 cakes, 3 each 2 large eggs 3/4 cup minus 1 Tsp all-purpose flour 1/2 cup almond flour 1 cup minus 2 Tsp confectioner s sugar 8 Tbsp (1 stick) salted butter, at room temperature 2 Tbsp honey (I used a local Raw Wildflower Honey) Zest of 1 lemon, finely grated + juice of 1/2 lemon (2 Tsp) 1 tsp baking powder A few sliced blanched almonds About 3 to 4 raspberries (fresh of frozen) per cake Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Sift all dry ingredients separately: flour, confectioner s sugar, almond flour and baking powder. In the bowl of a stand mixer, put the confectioner s sugar with the butter and whip until you obtain a white cream. Add the eggs, one by one, mixing well between each. Add the lemon zest, lemon juice and honey, and mix until absorbed. In another bowl, pour the flour, baking powder and almond flour. Mix together and add to the previous batter. Mix together but at this point, do not overwork the batter. It should be thick and creamy. Grease small molds (muffin type, silicone if you have them) and fill 3/4 full with the batter. Place a few raspberries on top and gently press them down. Add a few sliced almonds on top. Place the cakes in the oven and cook for 10 min, then reduce the oven temperature to 350 degrees and continue to cook for 10 to 12 minutes. Check that they are golden in color and remove. Wait for a few min before removing from the molds. Let cool on a cooling rack. Serve with a nice cup of tea or coffee. Béatrice grew up in France, traveled around the world and now lives in Boston where she runs the popular food blog La Tartine Gourmande which features anecdotal stories, photography and bilingual recipes. Photograph: Béatrice Peltre 22 spring 2007 edible boston