THE BEE-UTY OF BEES

by Lee Williams

I’ve been a beekeeper for about ten years. This means I will squeeze a conversation about beekeeping into any social occasion, whether you want to hear about it or not.

There are so many things I find interesting about bees, it’s hard not to share. One out of every three bites of food we eat is a result of pollinators like bees, butterflies, and hummingbirds, with honey bees being the overwhelming winner. Without bees, none of our farms, gardens, or fruit trees would produce the food we need to survive.

Our relationship with bees is complicated. In any square mile, there are three to five hives of between 50,000 and 80,000 bees. Since bees fly as far as five miles to forage for food, I could come in contact with one of 10 million bees on the peninsula at any given time. It only takes one to ruin your day, but the flip side is we have bees all around us, and we don’t even notice most days. Urban beekeeping is one of my passions. So much so that I advocated before the Los Angeles City Council in October 2015 to help legalize it in L.A. City. Eight years later, the bee population has made a solid comeback with managed hives and community education, but more work still needs to be done. We still lose hives to poisons from both pesticides and herbicides. If enough worker bees return to the hive from flowers treated with poisons, it doesn’t take long to kill the entire hive.

It’s obvious when they’ve been poisoned because their deaths are slow and tortured.

Natural alternatives to pesticides include diatomaceous earth, neem, peppermint, thyme, rosemary oil repellents, and homemade insecticidal soaps. Vinegar and boiling water are good solutions for unwanted weeds.

As we come out of an unusually wet winter, there is a good chance we will have a fruitful and abundant spring. Establishing a new hive isn’t as easy as people think. This last year, I lost both of my San Pedro hives. The first was a new colony of Italian bees bred in Irvine for their gentle nature. They were so sweet, you could work with them without gloves, and I was hoping to use them as a teaching aid for schools and events. Bees take a bit to establish themselves, and this hive struggled with the extreme heat we had last summer and the cold, wet, and windy winter we just had. The second hive lost its queen, and with my busy schedule, I didn’t notice until it was too late to replace her. It’s a balance. Feral bees are much better suited for our climate but can be more aggressive than hand-reared bees. It is thought that 80 percent of all bees in Southern California have some “Africanized” genetics. This doesn’t make them inherently dangerous, but you should be cautious around newly discovered hives. All bees have a temperament and a desire to protect their hives. Feral bees must deal with raccoons, skunks, and possums that lure them out of their hives to be eaten. The more aggressive honey bees are, the less they must contend with night critters. Managed hives typically bring more docile genetics into the local gene pool but need protection from predators, hive beetles, and wax moths. I try to be as treatment free as possible with my hives — no chemicals, and I will only feed them if I try to establish a new hive from gentle stock.

We are heading into “swarm season,” which means I will start getting calls from folks discovering footballsized balls of bees in their backyards. Typically, they are just resting as they migrate to a new home and will move on in three days. The bees are also in their most gentle state without a hive to defend, and they will likely leave you alone and hope you do the same. If you find bees have made a home in a spot that isn’t very compatible with humans, I recommend you post a picture or video to the Long Beach Beekeepers’ group on Facebook. There are several local beekeepers who can help relocate bees for you. There may be a small charge for their time and equipment to help support their efforts. Beekeeping is expensive, and every little donation helps.

Fun facts: A queen can lay 2,000 eggs a day. A single bee can produce half to one teaspoon of honey in its lifetime. It takes nectar from two million flowers to make one pound of honey. A queen mates in a single flight with roughly 13 drone bees, and she will live to lay eggs for three to five years. Drones die after mating. Worker bees live for one to four months. Bees are the only insects that produce food that humans eat regularly. spt

Lee Williams leads The Lee Williams Real Estate Group at REAL Broker and serves on the board of directors for Boys & Girls Clubs of the LA Harbor, San Pedro Chamber of Commerce, Harbor Connects, and the San Pedro Education Foundation. Email Lee@LAmove.com.