Campbell's Honey

One of the happiest places on earth is the middle of a beeyard on a warm sunny day in May. Thousands of honey bees are noisily buzzing in a constant coming and going... They fly in all directions, like tiny transport planes at a commercial airport, they buzz in to off-load, take a brief respite, tank up again on honey (to re-energize) and off they go for another load of nectar, and pollen. It takes a lot of energy (honey fuels the bee) to haul in nectar from the field, but unbelievably, a strong colony in July can fill a 60 Lb honey super in three days.

A million workers inside these hives are fanning the moisture from the nectar (the honey making process) and making an aromatic scent, which adds to the quiet roar that makes up the ambiance of the bee-yard.

The beekeeper is hardly noticed, and its quite possible to work without gloves on such a day. The bees are so busy they are quite unconcerned and dont seem to notice the beekeeper's bare hands as the hive is manipulated. The big difficulty is to work without touching, or putting a finger on a bee, which makes working amid thousands of bees without getting stung next to impossible for a commercial Apiarist with a schedule to maintain. There are times when I almost wish I had just three or four colonies, so I could spend all day working with them.

Nobody gets a free ride, not even a honeybee. Today there are a multitude of pests living on its blood, while other viral foes attack the developing brood in the comb.

Today, we were placing formic acid pads on the top bars of the brood chambers in an effort to eradicate tracheal mites, a microscopic transparent creature which lives in the tracial tubes of the honeybee.

This tracheal mite lives on the bees blood, and will increase in numbers inside the tracial tubes until it weakens and suffocates its host. Formic acid is a naturally occuring substance (which can be found in very small amounts in honey) is lethel to the tracheal mite in a stronger solution. At Campbells Honey, our approach is to soak small pads in formic acid, and then place them on the top bars of the brood chamber, right inside the beehive.

How does formic acid work? The mites are killed when the bees breathe in the strong fumes of the acid. Its essential to wear gloves and use tongs when you apply the acid soaked pads; we must be careful not to come in contact with the solution, which can severly burn our skin. Beekeeping is dangerous sometimes.

Beekeepers Prepare For Spring Pollination

A hive of honeybees contains anywhere from 20,000 to 80,000 worker bees, plus hundreds of drones, (male bees) and only one queen, yet it's a single colony. The Apiarist (beekeeper) and the bees, both recognize the colony as a single entity. Honey bees are always on the alert to protect their home from attack, whether it be from a bear, skunk, or a human with a sweet tooth.

When the colony is threatened, hundreds soldier bees fly out, in total disregard for their personal lives, and thinking only to save the colony sting the intruder to chase it away. If the attack was successfully thwarted, the bees that staved off the attack will certainly die, as their stingers remain in the body of the attacker, and are torn from their abdoman as they fly off.

That the bees recognize the colony as a single entity, is proven by the fact that if a single bee, or a small number of the insects, are attacked or threatened while away from the colony, not one bee comes rushing to the rescue. Single Bees are dispensable, but the colony as a whole is not.