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Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology

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Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology <[log in to unmask]>
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Sun, 6 Feb 2011 18:04:03 -0500
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Paul
 
You are correct that there may be more forage in corn belt areas than  
appear at first glance.  I didn't say there wasn't any forage in the margin  
areas.  I said, in many areas, there isn't much margin, and what is there  is 
often mowed or treated with herbicides.  
 
But - there is also the issue of carrying capacity.  Let's say one has  a 
colony of 40-60,000 bees.  Each bee has its own food requirements, and  the 
colony itself has other needs - e.g., foragers may be able to sustain  
themselves without pollen, but brood absolutely needs it.  Brood requires  nectar 
and quality pollen.
 
How many bees, how many colonies can a narrow margin strip support -  
especially if its aggressively mown or treated with herbicides to kill  
everything but the grass?
 
And yes, even in the most intense corn belt areas, one can find 'islands'  
of resource, from farm gardens to riparian zones along waterways.
 
But, you can also go miles without seeing anything but corn and those  
narrow strips along the pavement.
 
 
To illustrate my point, years ago, I was sampling bees from colonies near  
the US DOE Hanford site in eastern WA.  In one area, there were clover  
fields and bees that went on for miles.  One would assume that these bees  would 
thrive, yet beekeepers lamented the decline of honey crops, failure to  
thrive in what used to be one of their best areas.  The clover was still  
there, but conditions for bees seemed to be getting worse year by year.
 
That area was very flat, and paved roads followed section lines.   There 
were ditches with high banks and lots of haystacks.  When I went  out to 
sample, I had lists of locations from four different  beekeepers.  Driving by, I 
saw an occasional hive.  When I  found the yards, most werre hidden behind 
the ditch banks, hay stacks -  since theft and vandalism were problems.
 
By the end of the day, I had figured out the problem.  In a square  mile of 
clover, I found over 1,000 colonies of bees.  Each beekeeper  thought that 
there was one other beekeeper in the area, and estimated that the  other 
beekeeper had 40-100 colonies.  NONE of the beekeepers realized that  there 
were four beekeepers in that area, running  more than 1,000  colonies.
 
So, even though it was wall to wall clover, it certainly appears that the  
lack of honey crop and slow growth of colonies was probably a consequence of 
 exceeding the bee carrying capacity of the region.
 
 
 
 
 


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