Bees work for man, and yet they never bruise
Their Master's flower, but leave it having done,
As fair as ever and as fit to use;
So both the flower doth stay and honey run.
-George HerbertThe sun is out for a change. It's beating down on about a dozen white, wooden boxes. They're stacked up behind Roger Sutherland's small pole barn, which is behind his house located in the more rural part of Ann Arbor. The snow is melting a bit, dripping down from the roof to the four inches still on the ground. The trees are bare, and Sutherland's holding a snow shovel. The scene doesn't exactly scream "bee season." Yet, there it is. A low roaring buzz, hundreds of bees piling out of these boxes. If it weren't for the snow and the winter coat and the snow shovel, you'd think it was spring.
"Do you know what that is?" he asks, beaming at the sight of his bees. He's pointing down to hundreds of little amber spots pocking the surface of the heavy snow. "That's bee poop." And it's everywhere.
Sutherland is a small-scale beekeeper. He has ten hives; each hive has about 10,000 bees. He's been keeping bees since 1966. He's also president of the
Southeastern Michigan Beekeepers Association (SEMBA). In 1992, he started a beekeeping club on the campus of Schoolcraft College where he taught biology. He then built a honey house on campus for the kids. The club still exists, though he's retired. And he's still as active as ever.
"These bees are probably older bees," Sutherland says as a bee lands on his sleeve. "A lot of them probably won't make it." The sleeve bee falls into the snow. "I normally don't meddle," he says, picking it up, "but sometimes I do." He puts it back near the opening of the box. "Maybe she'll make it," he adds.
He calls this a cleansing flight. If the boxes warm a bit in the sun, the bees see it as an opportunity to relieve themselves. And, goodness, do they.
The industry is buzzingSutherland and his ten hives are just part of the many beekeepers in the Southeastern Michigan area. Most of the commercial operations (500 to 5,000 hives) are farther north. But down here, beekeepers are keeping bees from Detroit to Clarkston, from Grosse Pointe to Ann Arbor, in their backyard gardens, in empty factory lots, and on farmhouse orchards.
When it comes to American honey, Michigan is a top ten producer. Michael Hansen, the state apiarist who works within the Department of Agriculture, says that there are an estimated 100,000 honey producing hives in the state during the summer. "But that's quite an underestimate," he says. "I wouldn't be shocked if the number was closer to 150,000 hives."
Additionally, Hansen says there are probably 50 to 100 families in Michigan that make a living off of bees – honey, pollination contracts, retail products. (The biggest commercial beekeeper in the country, by the way, has somewhere near 85,000 hives.) There are an additional couple hundred doing this part-time, holding other jobs, he says. But beekeepers with a dozen hives or fewer are largely unknown. "Detroit is filled with beekeepers with one, two, three hives," Hansen says.
"There are 150 hives in the city of Detroit that I know of," says beekeeper Rich Wieske, founder of
Green Toe Gardens. Wieske himself keeps 50 hives spread throughout the city. He keeps them in friends' yards, community gardens, and the empty factory lots where nature has taken over. "We get a two-week jump on the bee season being in the city," he says. "It's a little warmer, very few pesticides, the city is a good place for a bee." There have been ordinances in the past restricting beehives within urban areas but those are slowly being repealed. Ypsilanti, for instance, now allows two hives per beekeeper.
Wieske's Detroit honey is bottled at
Windmill Hills Farm in Croswell – because of food prep laws – but is sold at Avalon International Breads in Detroit's Midtown as well as the Royal Oak Farmers Market. He does make some "honey money" as honey revenue is sometimes called, but he also sells a lot of bee retail products – such as candles.
Wieske says over the last three or four years he's seen a lot more beekeepers jump on the scene. But it's hard to pinpoint exactly why. The media's coverage of the threats bees face (mites, insecticides, colony collapse disorder), the push toward local and organic foods, the plants' benefits by having bees around - there are a number of reasons to attribute to beekeeping growth. Whatever point you give it, though, beekeeping interest is most definitely on the rise.
"A beekeeping group in Kalamazoo started in November 2008 and by March 2009 they had 200 members," Hansen says. "People are getting bees, forming clubs, helping other beekeepers out. SEMBA is a real leader for that."
On March 6, Rich Wieske and
City Bees Detroit will be holding an urban beekeeping conference in Detroit to discuss the spiritual, political, and economic perspectives of beekeeping. "There are so many beekeepers in Detroit I'd like to see us come out of the conference with plans for building a co-op for a honey house," Wieske says. The state of Michigan requires a licensed honey house to distribute honey in a retail setting. Without that, beekeepers can only sell honey, essentially, from their front door. "It's the next step."
Two weeks later, on March 20, Sutherland is holding the
72nd annual beekeeping conference on Schoolcraft's campus. Sutherland is also gearing up for SEMBA's 2010 bee school held at MSU's
Tollgate Farm in Novi.
Sideliners, small-scale keepers and commercial productionWinfred Harless, who goes by Winn, took SEMBA's bee school nine years ago when he re-started his beekeeping heritage.
"My family got here in the 1730s," he says. "We're ten generations of beekeepers." Harless has a southern accent. He came up from Appalachia to work at General Motors and retired four years ago. He took the class as a refresher since he had been out of the game for a bit and all the newest bee treatments, chemicals, and mites were unknown to him.
Harless has about 50 hives scattered on farms from Plymouth to Ann Arbor. He sells a little honey from his door but his big contribution is raising queens, dealing with mites, and finding new ways to acclimate bees to the Michigan winters. There are multiple strains of honeybees with different traits that deal with things differently (much like people). But Harless doesn't care about all that.
"I call them Michigan mongrels," he says. "I don't care what color or name they are, as long as they survive." He then breeds those surviving bees. Normal beekeepers, he says, will lose 20 percent of their hives during the winter. He expects to lose only five or ten percent. Wieske says what Harless is doing will help beekeepers here in Michigan. Harless's only business, though, is to support his hobby.
Harless is called a sideliner. Sutherland is a small-scale beekeeper. And then there are the commercial operations. Those are the three types of beekeepers in the world. Sideliners tend to do this in a part-time basis, a little more than Sutherland but a lot less than the commercial production.
But most commercial beekeepers make the bulk of their cash from pollination contracts, not honey. So, for example, a beekeeper up in Traverse City might send 2,000 hives down to Florida to pollinate the orange trees, and then maybe over to California to pollinate the Almond plants, then maybe up to Maine for blueberries. That's where a lot of the bee industry lies.
"This could be a good source of income for people if they are willing to do the work," Harless says. "A guy could make $80 to $100,000 if they rented out their hives for pollination. But I'm retired; I don't need all that crap. I just enjoy helping people get started. I like bees."
Judi Schmaltz is another sideliner. She started with one hive 30 years ago for ambiance. Now she has 150 hives stretched from Clarkston to Goodrich. Beekeepers always tell the same story. It always starts with one. It does something to you.
"[My husband and I] got one more and then one more then we took a class then a few more," she says. "And it just grew. … I never thought I'd be where I am now with honey."
She runs
Jodi-Bee Honey Farm. She's famous for her whipped honey, as well as many specialty honeys like cinnamon, ginger, and lemon. You can find her product at the Michigan Renaissance Fair, various craft shows, and Hiller's Market.
The honeybee does have hurdles to overcome. The hives are still threatened with mites, the toll of Michigan winters, and colony collapse disorder (when all the bees leave the hive without a real explanation), but it looks as if bees and beekeepers are both on the rise.
"We're seeing this grow," Wieske says. "We're seeing more hives in community gardens, in back yards. … Beekeepers are like missionaries in a way. They are passionate and enthusiastic. It's catchy."
Terry Parris Jr.
is a regular contributor to Concentrate,
Metromode and Model D.
His previous article was Pizza 2.0.
Send comments here.All Photographs © Marvin Shaouni Photography
Contact Marvin here
Photos:
Honeycomb
Winfred Harless checking up on his hive
Adding pollen substitute to bee hives
Rich Wieske, co-founder of City Bees Detroit
Green Toe Gardens
Winfred Harless looks at his bee production
Bee hives at Catheryn Ferguson Academy - Detroit