Distractions

-Posted by Isaac

There they go, now let’s get some work done.

No wait. More distractions.

It’s a good thing the sun came out this week.

If it hadn’t, I don’t think I would’ve done a single thing. We started cloudy and warm.

Warm enough Monday morning to find some protein. But things quickly took a turn. I think it was 14 degrees when I walked out on Friday.

I had big plans to work on my new shop, but the distractions kept coming. Some were welcome. Like on Tuesday, we had a big 12 bucket order to fill. Jayne and I made it a lunch date. There’s a new mead place in Dayton. It’s going to be called Blackbird Meadery, and they’re connected to the Hairless Hare Brewery.

It’s located right beside the airport. You can watch the planes take off as you sample the local beer with your personalized ‘Ugly Mug’.

And I suppose those mugs will soon work just as well with the local mead.

By Wednesday I was able to knock off a few hours on the shop.

One wall done, three to go. I hadn’t planned on this being such a project, but the more I think about it, I’m convinced that we need a nice shop— someplace warm and well lighted. Someplace I can work on things, change oil, listen to podcasts, dream about future projects without being distracted by work.

I see my future self fixing up a ‘68 Mustang, or an old cj7 Jeep. Maybe piecing together a small plane. Maybe fiddling over an old Honda Nighthawk 750… like I did way back when. Before life caught up.

Not that I’m dissatisfied with my present life. It’s just that my present ride doesn’t quite measure up.

How’s that John Lennon quote go?

Yeah, that’s the one.

It’s doesn’t only apply to life. Death can be a distraction also.

Because the sun came out, I thought I’d take a break from the shop and go visit the bees. Maybe do some feeding. That was probably a mistake. I found myself fully entangled in my least favorite job— cleaning dead-out hives. Nobody was out of food, but several more had kicked off since I last visited. I think I was bragging about a 1% loss back in December. Well, that was 50 days ago. We’re now up around 15%.

(At least we’ll be able to finish up on our haphazard paint job from October.)

Will our losses stay under 20%? I hope so. Nothing but good news coming out of California, and the majority of our girls are out there in the sun. So that’s a bright note.

And one other bright note. A new product! While I had to put my projects aside, distracted by dead bees, Jayne and Katie were full steam ahead.

Their new project- Beeswax Food Wraps.

Because this is far from my area of expertise, Jayne inserted this before I started on this blog post:

These are made by blending together beeswax, pine rosin, jojoba oil, and applying to 100% cotton to make a breathable wrap for storing fruits, vegetables, and sandwiches. ****Isaac insert clever commentary here****

Looks good to me. I don’t think we need any ***Isaac-clever-commentary***. In fact, I think it’s time to distract myself right out of finishing this post.

Time for a snack.

Drones get off easy

-Posted by Isaac

Happy Valentines!

Here’s a valentine just for you!

But enough with the courting, let’s talk about sex.

Specifically, bee sex.

Here’s a racy little video to put you in the mood.

I had a fun time finding that. If you happen to be pining for more, type “drone mating with queen” into your search bar. “Bee sex video” takes you somewhere entirely different.

So did you learn anything? The elongated queen cell… the virgin queen emerging… her mating flights through a drone congregation area… the mid-air copulation… the drones dying afterward? Brutal isn’t it? Those poor drones… some would call it the love’s ultimate sacrifice. Maybe the apogee of romantic tragedies.

But if you’re reading this blog, I have to assume you know a little more about drones. The lucky bastards.

You know that they get off easy. Both literally and figuratively.

They’re freeloaders. Deadbeats. They hang out anywhere they want, welcomed into any hive. They’re fed all the nectar they want, and do no work in return— no foraging, no comb building or cell cleaning, no nursing the young or tending the queen.. no waggle dancing, no protecting the hive.

They’re basically flying packets of sperm. And that’s all. Not even deadbeat dads… as soon as they reach the very pinnacle of their lives…

…they’re dead. Mission accomplished.

Wow.

Is this the superior intelligence of a matriarchal society? Did they figure out that the males, aside from being good sperm donors, were pretty much useless?

Hmmm… maybe. Or maybe some guys just get all the breaks. The Great Spirit, in infinite wisdom and comedic justice, winked, smiled, and looked kindly on the Apis mellifera male. They hang out, they have sex, they die. No muss, no fuss. Not once will they ever hang a shelf or fix a leaky faucet. Makes me think of a Hackensaw Boys song— they have something less in mind than a picket fence.

Yesterday was the big Valentines party at Westfall Elementary.

It was all about boxes and decorations and candy.

I remember. We did the same thing. The swapping of valentines, the stuffing of boxes. At that stage of life, it was all pure awesome fun. I can’t remember caring, or giving a single thought as to which gender happened to put cards in my box.

But time went on.

Middle school happened.

Things got awkward.

Our 6th grade middle school drone is just about to step into an endlessly complex universe. The storm is coming, an emotional hurricane, and I feel for him. I can’t help but think about the simplicity of bee love… for the male side of things.

Mason had an assignment for his V.I.P. day. (The middle school substitute for a Valentines party) He had a ‘remembering middle school’ questionnaire for a parent… and I was honored to be picked.

Nothing about relationships, but one of the last questions was about looking back. What advice would I give to my middle school self? Would I do anything differently?

No, I guess not, I said. Well, yes… maybe I would… I would tell myself to relax. What’s going to happen, is going to happen. It’s a rough ride, but thinking back, there was no sense in being so uptight about everything. Just take it day by day, hang on tight and try to enjoy it.

I realized as soon as I said it, my old-man advice was falling on deaf ears. Mason is clueless. He’s my son.

But I also realize that I shouldn’t worry so much. He’s my son. A Barnes. I won’t bet against him. It may take him thirty years, but he’ll figure it out. Just like me, he’ll find himself walking the straight and narrow… and he’ll end up happy to walk it.

I’ve done my breeding and I’m not even dead yet. I guess I’m quietly happy to fall into the rhythm of being a human drone. Which brings to mind yet another tune. More Hackensaw Boys anyone?

In Defense of Almonds

-Posted by Isaac

As far as cash value for its farm products, the state of California leads the entire nation in agriculture.

And which California crop tops all others in revenue?

You guessed it…

I had the good fortune to be a temporary eyewitness. Cortez Growers owned the holding yard where our bees are situated, and I watched the comings and goings right across the road in this large almond processing facility.

Denise (our pollination broker) told me that every one of those stacked wooded boxes gets filled with almonds. They leave weekly, put on giant container ships in the San Fransisco Bay, destined for ports around the world. Billions in revenue.

About every hour I would hear a grinding roar and see a big cloud of dust. They were taking the hulls off the almonds. These end up on a huge pile, probably 50’ high, at least a football field in length. They are eventually sold as a feed supplement. Mostly to dairies, ironically.

Ironic, because the dairy industry has taken quite a hit with the increasing demand for almond milk.

Demand for almonds in general has exploded over the last two decades. And California services about 80% of the world’s market. The industry is booming. And here’s the thing— they need bees!

Our bees, (and right now about 100,000 other hives) are located on the outskirts of the little town of Turlock.

Almond central.

Denise tells me that only two things could possibly slow the almond explosion— lack of water, and lack of bees. Neither of those seems to be a hinderance at the moment. Around town, driving in any direction, you go through miles and miles of orchards. Many are young— planted only a few years ago, they’re just now ready to produce. They’ll need bees for the next two decades.

I think Denise said, this year in the Central Valley, about 100,000 acres of young new orchards need pollinated. Next year, it’s around 300,000!

“Where are we going to find all those bees??”

What I’m trying to say is, there’s a huge market for pollinators out there. And it’s growing! This giant, multibillion dollar almond industry has suddenly and unexpectedly found itself reliant on the expertise of a small rag-tag group of agricultural misfits— migratory beekeepers.

Because of that, we’re treated like rock stars. (In my experience.) Namely, we’re paid like rock stars, but that’s not all. It seems to me that the almond folks are trying hard to appease beekeepers in other ways. They plant their orchard floors with bee forage. They provide holding yards and equipment. They throw a ton of money toward honey bee research, bee nutrition, beekeeper education, public awareness, government involvement, and so on. In fact, the biggest reason the public knows anything about the recent plight of the honey bee is because the almond industry sounded the alarm.

I forgot to link that Dan Rather Buzzkill episode last week. (For those of you on the mailing list.) If you watch any of that, you’ll see the level of concern and trepidation over bee health. It’s not the almond industry causing the decline of the bees. They are one of the key players in trying to prevent it!

And in the last decade since the appearance of colony collapse disorder (CCD), they’ve made some real strides. Not to mention, the nature of the business itself… the biggest benefit of all to bees and beekeepers…

Endless pollen in mid February. I repeat— an enormous pollen flow in February!

This is why the bees come home looking like this:

Kirk Stoller, a northern Ohio commercial beekeeper, loves to show off his post-almond colonies. The busting hives pictured above looked like that on April 2nd. In Ohio! (While our puny hives were still recovering from winter.) He posts these photos on beekeeper social media every spring. Making all of us mad.

It sure doesn’t seem to fit the narrative, does it? You know, that panicky, dystopia… that the bees are dying… that we’re all going to starve to death without them… that the annual almond pollination is to blame.

But, but, but… The Guardian article said almond pollination is ‘Like sending bees to war’… What gives?

What gives, is a typical half-truth media story whipping people into a frenzy. That article was shared our direction a couple more times this week. Jayne responded to one of them. (In a more friendly and concise manner than me… I was the guy who “Liked” it.)

The thing about that article (and many like it), is that it tells the complete truth for only part of the story. Yes, the bees are out there in a mono-crop environment. And yes, the ag chemicals are bad for insects… But NO, the short stint in the blooming California orchards is NOT the reason for honey bee decline.

They sort of brush over all the ‘war zone’ environments where the bees spend their other 10 months a year.

It’s a war zone right here!

I was thinking about all this while feeding my levee hives this week. For about five months these girls sit in the cold with zero pollen coming in. Then when things finally start blooming, the real worries begin. I have a cross-your-fingers list.

Cross your fingers that:

1. The farmer didn’t spray a fall ‘burn down’, which would eliminate any chance of some spring ground cover forage. (purple deadnettle, hen bit, etc…)

2. The farmer plants on a calm, cloudy day. This would minimize the bee kill due to drift of pesticide-laced planting dust.

3. The farmer applies the pre-emergent herbicide (usually twice) when it’s windless. This would keep the weed killer in the field where it belongs and not killing bee forage in the ditches and tree lines.

4. The farmer doesn’t use dicamba, an extremely volatile substitute for Roundup resistant weeds. Dicamba will drift for hundreds of feet with only the slightest breeze.

5. The mid-summer fungicide application won’t set the bees back more than a single brood cycle.

6. The farmer doesn’t feel the need to add an insecticide to the fungicide tank mix.

7. The bees can find something besides corn pollen in July and August. (Trace amounts of neonic pesticides in corn pollen.)

8. Maybe, just maybe a few stands of ragweed manage to survive in the ditches and corners of the field. (Giving the bees a slightly more diverse fall diet.)

9. The farmer doesn’t kick my bees the hell off his land. (When he finds out I’m an environmentalist wacko.)

That’s a long growing season of crossing my fingers. Right here in Ohio! If, by some miracle, we get the bees to the winter in good shape, it looks to me like the California almonds are more of a sanctuary than a ‘war zone’.

You know I’m kidding about that last one on the list— the environmentalist ideal. Farmers are environmentalists. To a certain extent, anyway. The farmers I know are reasonable and conscientious. Stewards of the land. It’s just that they’re caught up in this dog-eat-dog, commodity market driven, bottom dollar, bottomline, chemically dependent, subsidy dependent food system. It sucks. The farmers have to stay in business. (Or the business itself needs to change… which it won’t, until we all wise up with our food choices.)

Here’s the rub— it’s what we’ve got almost everywhere— the modern food system, like it or not. Keeping insects alive and healthy within this system is not an easy thing to do. But there are places where pollinators are more appreciated.

And for a couple months in the winter, California is one of those places.

It’s nice to be someplace you’re appreciated.

California girls

-Posted by Isaac

On Wednesday I was driving up the hills that rise above the big Central Valley. Heading back to Oakland. Here’s California for you:

Beautiful, but somewhat crowded. Progressive, high powered, running on $4.00 gas, virtue signaling from the hilltops.

Also full of almond trees. And colorful people.

This is my almond broker, Denise Qualls. She’s the one handling all the logistics of getting the bees into and out of the orchards. I met her years ago at a bee conference and then saw her on Dan Rather’s show. (15 minutes in.)

She’s famous!

After our first meeting, I coincidentally bought an extractor from her more infamous brother. She laughs at that. They like to trash talk each other in an, I-admire-you-but-you’ll-never-know-it sort of way. I had to laugh at her bright pink (never used) suit, the way she trashed her brother’s bees… the fact that we were all in California looking for work… a Houndmouth song called Sedona came to mind. And I was happy to let that song bounce around my brain the next three days.

On Monday, sporting her pretty new suit, Denise took a few minutes to help me dust some probiotic. Of course she was enamored with my own pretty suit.

She said the bees weren’t too shabby either.

By the look of things, those California temps have suited our girls just fine. To respond to Amanda R., yes the bees are doing wonderfully. Probably 80% of the hives looked like the four above. The next 15% still looked strong enough to make an 8-frame grade, just not bursting. And of course, there’s always a few that just won’t make the cut. A drag on society. But that’s the way it goes, Denise says. In fact, it’s usually over 10% that really fade, she tells me. So our girls are not faring too awful, comparatively.

Every hive got about a pound of protein.

Which took the most time of all the jobs. Every top box had to be lifted, set aside, the bees smoked down. Aside from those few minutes with Denise, it was only me out there. For two and a half days, I hustled. You can see my rental car ‘work truck’ in the background.

I loaded the trunk with 400 pounds of protein, bought from a local bee supply store. This stuff was 15% actual pollen.

Which is supposed to stimulate the brood rearing to a greater extent than the artificial pollen supplement I’ve been feeding since August.

I think they needed it. Although most hives looked big and strong as far as population, there was very little brood rearing. And no natural pollen coming in. Apparently our girls still knew it was January.

One thing I didn’t need to worry about was feeding syrup. There was still plenty of honey weight.

No risk of starvation. Those top boxes felt like lead bricks… my back knows. In the above picture you can see another beekeeper’s hives in the background. That guy was from Oregon.

In fact back at my hotel, I discovered that the place was saturated with beekeepers.

This was in Turlock, a small town south of Modesto. Basically ground zero for almond pollination.

We’re only three weeks from bloom! Our girls will soon find a purpose in all this moving and shuffling, sweat and travel.

It was a quick trip for me, but I’m going to squeeze two posts from it. Next week I’d like to tell you a little about the almond industry. From my beekeeping standpoint.

And you can bet it won’t fit the narrative…

(Ya flipped the script! Ya shot the plot!)

Off Week

-Posted by Isaac

Well, a somewhat decent weather week has now culminated in this:

Misery from the skies.

But hey, at least we have wood for the fire.

34 degrees and raining. All day.

5 am, I got my walking in. Cold and wet, ice on my jacket. 6 am, Jayne headed north to brave the market. 7 am, I called Lafe off. And he was really looking forward to some overtime. By 8:00 I was dozing peacefully by the fire. The kids woke me. Breakfast! Waffles! And we launch into another Saturday.

It feels like an off week on the bee farm. Not much to talk about. I thought I’d have to entertain you with Trump analysis and commentary. But even with the politics… in between scandals, in between impeachment hearings, in between World Wars… we seem to have fallen on an off week.

So back to Honeyrun we go. I guess we did get a few things done. I started in on a new project.

Two projects, in fact. One short-term.

Another long-term:

Both expensive.

But education is expensive…

These young minds are malleable. We’ll put the square baler in the ‘child rearing’ expense column. I grew up baling hay, and my thinking is, it may be good for our own kids. Maybe a distraction from the devices?

Question is, will Whole Foods buy Honeyrun Farm hay? No? Ah, maybe City Folks Farm Shop…

Back to honey production. Lafe finished up with the lids.

Then jumped on piecing the nuc boxes together.

Jayne and Hannah made 7 batches of soap, then she and Katie did some new product R & D.

We even got a gentlemanly visit from Jim North, our Pickaway County honey competitor.

And what do you think we talked about? Did we trash each others’ business? Did we exhume the honey hatchet?

No, we talked bees, of course!

Jim caught me that day while I was out feeding. Most hives had made it through their first helping, and needed another. They’re looking good. So far, we’re under 1% loss. But don’t count your chickens, right?

Mostly Jim wanted to talk about the bees in California. And to that, I had to respond with the truth: I haven’t a clue. I have no idea how our almond pollinators are doing. They don’t keep in touch.

But you know what? I’m heading out tomorrow! Bound for the sun. I’ll soon see for myself how the girls are doing. Good or bad, next week I’ll fill you in.

Maybe that’s why this relatively busy week felt slow. I’ve been anticipating next week.

The illustrious life of a migratory beekeeper— bouncing from coast to coast. I think the anticipation alone will get me through this rainy cold Saturday.