You Don’t Keep Bees, Bees Keep You: Lessons From A First-Time Apiarist

By Erin Mittag. Erin worked at the Research Station as lab technician until May 2015. She is currently legal assistant at the Minnesota Center for Environmental Advocacy.

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Photos courtesy Erin Mittag and Alaina Fedie

Last May, I stood in the St. Croix Watershed Research Station prairie holding a three-pound package of honey bees and wondering, with equal parts giddiness and terror, what I had gotten myself into. Buzzing at my feet were two more wood and wire packages of bees — 7,000 individual bees and one queen per package. Before me was a newly constructed bee yard, with three freshly-painted Langstroth hives waiting for their new residents.

None of the YouTube videos or conversations with experienced keepers could have fully prepared me for the process of hiving a colony. With considerable coaching from my partner in apiculture, Gary, I uncapped the package and shook the creatures en masse into the body of the hive. For a first-time keeper, the process was difficult, awesome, and thrilling; it was an exact indication of how the rest of the summer would be.

I decided to don the white suit and veil because I was captivated by bees and their complex societies. Also because, like many others caught up in this new wave of pollinator awareness, I wanted to know more about these essential yet imperiled cogs in our food system. To this point, I learned much but can offer nothing new to what has already been said by many researchers, long-time beekeepers, journalists, and advocates. Instead, I can speak to what my observations, participation, and interactions with the beekeeping community taught me about honeybees and those who keep them.

There is a vulnerability that must be embraced when keeping bees. This vulnerability is most immediately felt in the bee yard, where bee-generated vibrations and humming produce that familiar prickliness under the skin. If allowed, that prickliness can intensify to discomfort. My mind registers my protective gear and the rarity of stings, but my body remembers that a bee sting hurts like hell. These jitters meant that weekly hive inspections, which should be performed somewhat artfully to limit stress to the colony, were characterized by a humorous amount of fumbling, profanity, and the accidental squishing of a few (dozen) bees. For the sake of the colony and me, I had to learn to relax into the innate anxiety. Eventually I was able to shed the bulky gloves and heavy suit. I gained some dexterity and flexibility and the hive inspections have improved. By surrendering the protection and working with exposed hands, I can feel the minute air currents pushed by bee wings and the roughly 95℉ heat maintained in the hive by thousands of working bee bodies. And, more importantly, I am able to maintain my focus on the hive.

I am learning how to read the signs and understand the language of the alien city that is a beehive. I tracked the bees’ progress as they built comb on their frames and filled the hexagonal cells with pollen, nectar, and brood. I followed the cycle of brood development from egg to larva to pupa to adult. I learned that a worker bee’s job is roughly determined by her age, with younger bees working inside the hive and older bees foraging outside. Starting to understand the individual bee is essential to working with the entire colony.

I came to understand that a colony of bees, though containing tens of thousands of individuals, is one organism, with a unique personality and shifting moods. The characteristics of a colony can be influenced by the season, the availability of resources, and the disposition of the queen and her workers. This variability and flux means that, although there are many helpful resources for beekeepers, there is no step-by-step plan for beekeeping success. Despite a beekeeper’s best efforts, the colony will surprise. It may not make as much honey as imagined, but might surpass expectations in propolis use. It may decide one day that it needs a new queen, and, God forbid, half the colony may swarm. Puzzling out why the colony behaves the way it does is part of the fun, even if many of the answers remain elusive.

Not only is the colony an organism, it is an autonomous and wild creature. Bees have a range of up to five miles, meaning mine are able to explore the forbs in the Research Station prairie, the dandelions, gardens, and landscaping in the neighbors’ yards, a small section of the St. Croix River, the large fields of corn and soybeans, and other beehives. Those at the hive are subjected to the elements, predatory mammals and insects, and visits from uninvited bees looking to rob honey stores. Therefore, the colonies are vulnerable to natural dangers, potentially harmful chemicals, and hive diseases such as nosema, American foul brood, and the highly destructive varroa mites. Honey bees are tough, but they are up against a lot these days. I share in the colonies’ vulnerability, though certainly not to the same degree. My vulnerability in this regard comes from a lack of immediate control over what these bees, which I presume to keep, endure.

Ultimately what I have decided is that the term “beekeeper” makes me a bit uncomfortable. It is a title too reminiscent of “zookeeper.” It suggests that I have more control over the bees, their work, and their fate than I really do, and I suspect that even some veteran beekeepers would agree. Despite some of our best efforts, we “keepers” cannot always keep the bees from stinging, keep them from swarming, or keep them from any number of perils, known and unknown. Perhaps it would be more fitting to say that they keep me; they keep me guessing, enthralled, observant, and coming back for more.

Modeling Northern Lake Responses to Future Climate

By David Vandermeulen, National Park Service, Great Lakes Network, david_vandermeulen@nps.gov. Republished from the National Park Service’s Climate Change Response Program newsletter.

Diatom frustules, 875X-1250X magnification, by Mark Edlund

Regular water quality monitoring provides snapshots of what is happening in a lake. Collecting sediment cores provides diatoms, a type of algae with cell walls made of silica, that can be identified to the species-level and used to re-construct the composition of a lake’s algae communities going back hundreds of years. The species composition of those historic communities lends insights to past environmental conditions in a lake (e.g., temperature, acidity, oxygen levels).

Recent studies have documented potential changes in boreal lakes that include a longer ice- free season, stronger stratification between warm surface waters and cold deeper waters, shifts in algal communities, and increased frequency of harmful algal blooms. In the Great Lakes region, annual water quality monitoring and studies of diatoms from sediment cores collected from park lakes are revealing evidence of changes in algal communities over time. Can the information diatoms provide about how lakes responded to past environmental changes give us an indication of how lakes will respond to future climate changes?

Locations of Voyageurs National Park, MN & Isle Royale National Park, MI. (Map courtesy National Park Service)

NPS used the program MINLAKE2012 to develop daily temperature models for eight inland lakes in two Great Lakes Network national parks, four lakes in Voyageurs National Park and four in Isle Royale National Park, from 1960 to 2001. Water quality data, including temperature profiles, gathered during routine monitoring by Great Lakes Inventory and Monitoring scientists and park staff since the mid-2000s allowed us to check modeled results against actual in-lake measurements.

Overall, there was good agreement between modeled and observed temperature profiles, especially in the deeper lakes. The shallow lakes at Isle Royale did not fit the model quite as well, possibly due to their smaller volumes and factors related to their size, such as increased sheltering from wind, sunlight reaching the lake sediment and heating it up, and being proportionately more affected by water flowing in and out of the lake.

NPS also used the models to look for trends in shallow, and deep, water temperatures and timing of temperature gradient (thermocline) formation between two time periods (1962–1986 and 1987–2011). The most common significant trend was the increase in shallow-water temperatures across all eight lakes during the summer. We also found an increase in how often and for how long thermoclines in deep lakes equaled or exceeded 2°C–3°C per meter.

Diatom community shifts in the shallow lakes at Voyageurs National Park suggested slight increases in lake pH; in Isle Royale National Park shallow lakes, the shifts suggested an increase in the number of days that the lakes completely mixed. Changes in diatom communities were more pronounced in the deeper lakes and tracked with the modeled increased frequency and duration of a stronger (2°C or 3°C) thermocline.

This study is a proof of concept that past meteorological data and lake characteristics can accurately model past physical responses of lakes to weather and climate conditions and predict future responses. The ultimate aim is to use simple lake parameters to predict the sensitivity of different lake types to future climate change. Knowing how sensitive lakes are to change can help park managers identify potential management issues such as determining what lakes are most likely to support a cold-water fishery, or which lakes might be more susceptible to harmful algal blooms.

This work is a cooperative effort of the Great Lakes Inventory and Monitoring Network and the St. Croix Watershed Research Station.