Keeper tries to ‘build’ a better bee

By GINA KINSLOW
Glasgow Daily Times

FOUNTAIN RUN August 04, 2008 02:58 pm

— Steve Meador is not a typical beekeeper.
In fact, he has taken normal beekeeping and kicked it up a notch by conducting laboratory research on honeybees.
Meador became a beekeeper about nine years ago when a friend at work, who was also a beekeeper, spurred his interest in it.
He started out with two hives and shortly thereafter he ordered three more.
“Over the years it’s just kind of grown,” he said.
Meador now maintains between 14 and 25 beehives.
His research projects over the years have revolved around honeybee diseases and pests, pollen studies, pollen debris and analysis and marketing products made with honey and beeswax, such as lip balm and candles.
Meador helped develop the Allen County Beekeepers Association, which has close to 50 members and was created to promote better beekeeping.
According to the organization’s Web site, honeybees are not native to the United States. They are European in origin and were brought to North America by the settlers.
Honeybees are very important to agriculture, specifically for cross pollination, which is the transfer of pollen from one plant to another.
Honeybees pollinate about $10 billion worth of U.S. crops and produce about $150 million worth of honey each year, according to the University of Kentucky Cooperative Extension Service.
According to an Associated Press article, the number of honey-producing colonies has dropped from 5 million in the 1940s to 2.5 million currently. In 2006, beekeepers began reporting losing 30 to 90 percent of their beehives, a phenomenon that has come to be known as Colony Collapse Disorder.
One problem beekeepers are currently dealing with is the infiltration of parasites — the Tracheal mite and the Varroa mite.
Tracheal mites live in the air tubes inside bees and make it hard for them to breathe. Varroa mites live in bee colonies and feed on developing bee larvae. Both types of mites attack wild and managed bees, said the UK Cooperative Extension Service.
“In 1984 and 1987 Varroa mites and Tracheal mites wiped out all feral honeybee colonies and hit beekeepers’ hives ever since,” Meador said. “It’s a battle every beekeeper faces.”
Many fruits and vegetables such as blueberries, cranberries, tomatoes, apples, pears, apricots and almonds require the work of honeybees for pollination, the Associated Press article said.
Beekeepers lost 36 percent of their managed honeybee colonies this year, and 31 percent in 2007, the article said.
Ice cream maker Haagen-Dazs is among several companies that have pledged money for research to help save honeybees. The decline of the honeybee affects about 40 percent of Haagen-Dazs’ 73 flavors, including banana split and chocolate peanut butter because ingredients such as almonds, cherries and strawberries rely on honeybees for pollination, the article said.
Honeybees have a highly organized society and various bees play certain roles in the hive, such as nurses, guards, construction workers and queen bees.
Hives have only one queen bee, which can live for several years. The queen bee is the only bee with fully developed ovaries and can lay up to 2,000 eggs per day. Fertilized eggs become female worker bees and unfertilized bees become male drone bees, according to the Allen County Beekeeper Association’s Web site.
Honeybees have a natural instinct to survive, he said. When a hive gets overcrowded, honeybees will branch off into two separate groups and the new swarm will find a different location in which to live. Meador has been called on several times to capture honeybee swarms, as well as other members of the Allen County Beekeeper Association.
About five years ago, Meador began producing his own queen bees from wild honeybee swarms.
“What we’re looking for is a bee that is more suited to Kentucky’s climate,” he said.
Meador was trained in queen breeding by Dr. Tom Webster at Kentucky State University.
Meador is also studying honeybee disease and pests by conducting biological testing for bacterial diseases and honeybee problems. His research is funded by several laboratory supply companies.
“When beekeepers want to buy bees, if they want to increase the number of bees or their hives have died over the winter, they can buy bees from other states. It is possible to get bees fairly early in the spring that way,” Webster said. “That’s an advantage. A disadvantage is the bees are reared in places with warmer winters.”
And bees reared in places with warmer winters tend not to fare as well in Kentucky’s cold winter temperatures, he said.
So, Meador, along with about 10 to 20 other beekeepers across the state are working with Webster to develop a bee that can withstand Kentucky’s cold winter climate.
Webster explained they are doing this by evaluating the bees they have in their hives and choosing the best ones that seem to be resistant to parasites, are good honey producers and are not very aggressive.
By doing so, Webster said, he expects the quality of bees to improve greatly.
The research Meador is doing in hopes of producing a queen honeybee that is more suited to Kentucky’s climate involves the study of diseases that honeybees can contract, such as Nosema Apis and Nosema Ceranae, American Foul Brood and a lesser, European Foul Brood. With Nosema Apis, a honeybee’s abdomen swells. With Nosema Ceranae, honeybees develop dysentery, he said.
He is also studying the Small Hive Beetle, which is another threat to honeybees. The Small Hive Beetle burrows into honeycomb and destroys the comb, Meador said.
There are two chemicals that can be used to rid hives of the parasites, as well as the diseases, but five years ago Meador decided to go chemical-free.
“Beekeepers are getting away from using chemicals,” he said.
Meador stresses that his beekeeping is merely a hobby. He works as an IT administrator for A.O. Smith in Scottsville, which is headquartered in Wisconsin and manufactures electric motors and hot water heaters.
The company has announced plans to move the Scottsville production to Mexico and Meador has been traveling back and forth from Scottsville to Mexico as the company begins to phase out its Scottsville plant.
Once the company closes its Scottsville location, Meador plans to go back to college to study agriculture and biology so he can expand his beekeeping business, which is known as Capital Hill Honey Farm.
Proceeds from the honey he collects from his beehives and from the products made with honey and beeswax go to his grandson, Flynn, who is autistic.
About 300 beekeepers attended the Heartland Apiculture Society’s annual conference earlier this month at Marshall University in Huntington, W. Va.

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