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EESTI ELU reedel, 11. septembril 2020 — Friday, September 11, 2020
Nr. 36
Flying Towards the Beehive: The Estonian Apiculture industry Vincent Teetsov Bees come in more than 20,000 varieties worldwide. Eight of these are honey bee species that are known to still exist. Whether they produce honey, or they are the at-risk wild bees that pollinate agri cultural products that make up the food on our plates, they are vital to our survival. Yet, they are at the centre of a serious dilemma that affects both Estonia and Canada. Two years ago, the Netflix documentary series Rotten revealed the alleged corruption behind the United States’ booming honey industry; claiming that diluted honey (filled with substitutes such as rice syrup) was being sent from multiple countries in Asia to counteract the dwindling number of honeyproducing bee colonies in the US. This alarming claim has even instigated the use of scientists trained in melissopalyno logy (pollen analysis), to determine where honey comes from, both in botanical and geo gra phical terms. Diluted products aside, Canada has seen a similar downward trajectory in honey bee colonies. The Canadian Association of Professional
Medical mishaps from the past In this humourless world of ours one seeks respite wher ever available. Best quietly, of course, expressing opinion aloud is a dangerous thing. What with social media, extreme activism and the general climate of fear, it is best done, as we Estonians say, in our heads. Thus sure to only offend or frighten one self. Or on paper, as here, in the interest of general mental health. I mean, you cannot even accidentally cough or otherwise show signs of ailments in public, masked though we are. Your humble correspondent did just that – a mighty sneeze indoors while shopping for essentials. Such as food. (It came unannounced – possibly triggered by the powerful pungent smell of hand sanitizer. With our hu midity it helps only in cases where it is used as a deodorant. Masked, while a few others, who could not have gained entry without one, shucked theirs to the chin, uncovered their noses, or took them off entirely to facilitate a phone call.) Wow. It was worse than passing gas loudly. Skilled practitioners of the fine art of flatulence do know how to blame the famous silent and deadly on others. Not with a nasal explosion, what with the accompanying volume. The reaction was startling. Spread ing droplets, are we?
Apiculturists reported that over the winter of 2018-2019, the national percentage of lost colonies was 25.7%. Statistics Canada reported at the end of 2019 that Canada-wide honey production levels dropped by 15.4% from 2018, to 80.4 million pounds. Alberta suffered the biggest losses of all pro vinces. Wildlife Preservation Canada and the Canadian Honey Council both support initiatives to protect the livelihood of bees, based on the increased wintering loss percentage. Meanwhile, a study of beekeeping in Estonia by the Estonian Institute of Economic Research showed that since 2014, honey production levels have been over 1,000 metric tonnes (2,205,000 pounds). Even adjusted proportionately to the population size of Canada, Estonia’s level of production is less. However, the report indicated a broad in crease in the amount of bee colonies and the number of households that keep bees. Further, more than a third of those who keep bees (with less than 10 colonies) as a hobby have not registered their colonies with the Agricultural Re gisters and Information Board.
Our wired, connected society has a peculiar penchant for self-diagnosis. This even preCOVID. Online searches lead to self-diagnosis, rating doctors just because they had a bad day, only human and just because the patient can flame anonymously. Well, how sick is that? Brought to mind some stories of weird medicine (think The Donald and his prescriptions for the public, bleached like his hair) and truly dangerous doctors from the past. Might alleviate present stresses; even help with looking forward to the future, once it unmasks itself. Galen was such a doctor. Considered by many as one of the fathers of medicine, he changed the face of how to treat ailments. With one major bad call. Remember, at his time people saw diseases as humours. Much later, syphilis was seen in Victorian England as a very bad humour. Worse, one is sure, than groaner puns, spoonerisms and the maligned Dad jokes. Which are all classics. Grown hoary with time, sure, but funny once. Why else repeat them? The Romans were concerned with sanguinary issues; suffering from plethoric conditions was a huge worry. The root of the word is, of course, blood. Galen’s solution was blood- letting – if the problem is in your veins, release it. All in vain. Usually, an impressive release of blood was enough to convince the patient that all ills were released from the system. (Continued on page 13)
be blown in the wind from the sides of roads where weed treatment has taken place. Though not necessarily correlating to this problem, the number of organic beekeepers has recently increased in Estonia. While damage has been inflicted to the industry in both continents due to a combination of climate, pesticides, and other factors, in North America, the dry summer we’ve experienced this year is advantageous for the production of honey. In the Prairies, the season of production was from May to August. For Quebec and northern New Brunswick, it runs from the middle of May to September. Elsewhere in Canada, it can go from April to October. We may see an uptick in production when the numbers come in from both sides of the Atlantic.
Photo: agri.ee
The same study showed that 38% of professional beekeepers in Estonia had faced a loss of bee colonies due to pesticides. Another study, by Risto Raimets from the Estonian University of Life Sciences, shows that this
damage does not always come from insecticides used by apiculturists (commonly used to combat the Varroa destructor mite, for example); but rather, it can unintentionally come from plants that bees visit or it can
A story of…
United States, and the latter was arrested in 1947 and sent to a prison camp somewhere in Arkhan gelsk. After the war he managed to go to the US and joined his brother there. Their sister, Julie, 43, was deported the same night on March 25th, 1949, when the soldiers came after my mom as well. My grandfather “was lucky to die” before deportations, in January 1949, as my mother would put it, otherwise he would have died in a deportation train, as he was a 79-year-old sick man.” Madli explains that her mother was the youngest one in her family and she was left all alone in the country after that operation. “I think it was the reason she decided to have a child. I was born 1.5 years later.” According to her, if her mother did not manage to survive the deportation operation, she would not have been able to send food and parcels to her brothers in the camp and to her sister in Siberia, which saved their lives. After Stalin’s death in 1953, Madli’s aunt was allowed to leave Siberia in autumn 1956 but she could not immediately return to Estonia, as she had no money to buy a train ticket. “It was so weird. A free person could not come back home because she had no money, so my mother sent her some money for the ticket. Those times no one had money in Siberia. If people needed some food or products, they were growing them or exchanging what they had with the others. As I have
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years old. The soldiers started to ask for Salme but the widow told them she was not at home. The soldiers searched the house and went up to the attic door. They wanted to see what was inside. According to Madli, Johannes realized that Salme was hiding there but he told the soldiers there was nothing inside. When asked to open it, the landlord agreed but asked some time to go downstairs and find the key. The soldiers thought that if the attic was closed and the key was downstairs, there was nobody there and left without searching it. “My mother was working for the Academy of Science then, with other Estonians, grown up in the prewar Estonia. She went to her chief, told him what happened, adding she needed to leave the city immediately. She was given a fictitious vacation document to Tartu but in reality she went near Tallinn to her uncle and was hiding there for a while. The soldiers once again went to her flat in Tallinn at midday, but saw she was not there and they never showed up again. As we learned later, the soldiers were gathering people during that operation for four days. My mother told me that her two brothers Julius Velland and Johannes Vitismann were in the German army, in order not to let the Red Army enter Estonia. The first one managed to run away and escaped to the
Action will be needed for Estonian and Canadian beekeepers to protect their colonies from damaging elements, but for those outside of the industry, the best bet would be to plant flowers that are native to your area for wild bees. You can even build “bee hotels” to accommodate wild bees. That way, we can enjoy pure honey as well as safeguarding the health of crops that are pollinated by wild bees, for the benefit of our own beehive, so to speak!
read in the letters of my aunt to my mother, it was in November 1956 when she took a train and came to our place. I was six then. Julie was sleeping in the room of Aunt Härmi because our room was only 9 square meters, as I said and no one gave her back her own flat where she lived before the deportation. Few years after, when my mom got a flat through her work, my aunt moved to our small room.” 1949 deportation operation, called “Priboi” (Coastal Surf) was planned by Soviet Security officials for three months and it aimed at deportation, intimidation and Sovietization of the residents of Baltic States. The Secret Service gathered all information about the people that were aimed, mainly dividing them into three groups. The first group were “kulaks” who were peasants wealthy enough to own a farm and hire labor. Madli’s grandfather was included in this category. The second group were Forest Brothers, partisans who waged guerrilla warfare against Soviet rule during the Soviet invasion and occupation of the Baltic states, and the third group were so called “nationalists” involved in some movements. As a result of the “Priboi” operation, 20,713 people were deported from Estonia and in total, 94,779 people were deported from Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia. Over 70% of the depor tees were women and children under the age of 16.
