The way of the honey bee

Michael Hansberry-The Auburn Villager Ben McGehee holds up a frame with bees making and placing honey inside of cells.

With the bee population declining across the nation, beekeeping--a once lucrative and popular occupation--also seems to be dying out. But one local man is still going strong with the profession that dates back thousands of years.

Ben McGehee is one of the few beekeepers in the Auburn/Opelika area. He's been living in Opelika since his retirement in 1988 and has been a beekeeper for the past nine years.

The 81-year-old former carpenter farms bees for honey, which he sells from his home and at the Auburn University Farmer's Market on Thursdays.

"It's a hobby that pays most of its way, and it keeps me busy," he said.

McGehee recalled that his father had homemade hives "just so we could have something sweet on the table." Although McGehee uses more advanced methods of extracting honey than his father's butter knife, he said it's still the same concept.

"You don't need a formal education to learn beekeeping," he said. "It's a job that only requires common sense."

McGehee harvests honey from his 37 hives every two months. The process is more strenuous than it might seem.

Before going anywhere near the bees, he has to don his beekeeper garb, covering all exposed skin and making sure his pants are tucked into his socks to prevent bees from flying up his legs.

Before he handles the bees, McGehee must use a device called a "smoker" that blows smoke into the hive to calm the bees. He puts wood chunks and straw inside a tin container and lights it to make a small fire. A cap is then placed over the fire, and the squeeze of a bellow pushes smoke into the hive.

The bees are more afraid of the smoke than of the invading predators, so the smoke disrupts the bees' natural defensive instincts and sends them into a honey-feeding frenzy. They believe the hive is in danger.

McGehee then opens the top to one of the hives, and the bees come out in droves, looking for whatever has disturbed them. At first they are calm, but as McGehee digs deeper into the hive, they become angrier, attaching themselves to McGehee's body suit. But he doesn't pay any attention to them.

"I get stung just about every time I come out to get honey," he said, "but I don't really feel it anymore."

McGehee isn't harvesting honey this time, only checking up on the queen. He has harvested 83 gallons of honey so far this year.

Extracting honey

When the honey is ready to be extracted, McGehee takes the frame containing the cells out of the hive and sprays a chemical called Bee-Go to remove the bees. He melts the honey caps, which hold the honey inside the honeycomb, off the cells with a heated electric knife.

After the caps are removed, the frames are placed into an extractor that spins at centrifugal force to remove the honey, filtering unwanted particles.

McGehee said all his honey is natural and unprocessed unlike honey in stores, which has to be pasteurized so it can be preserved for extended periods of time. He added that most honey in stores is an amalgam of honey from different countries.

"They force it through a fine filtering process and that gets everything out," he said. "But you want pollen in it because it helps with allergies."

McGehee maintains that honey as a natural substance is good for the body and can help with many ailments, including pollen allergies and heart disease.

His beekeeping expenses are sometimes greater than his profits, but that doesn't bother McGehee, who says he does it for himself and the bees.

"I do it to stay busy," he said. "I do all the work myself--bottling, processing and retail. I enjoy the bees and I set out to help others realize their importance."

A future without bees?

McGehee said he didn't know what the future would look like without the honey bee, and that could be a real concern. The bee population has been on a steady decline since 2006.

A study by the Apiary Inspectors of America and the U.S. Department of Agriculture reported a 29 percent decline in 2009, a 36 percent decline in 2007 and 32 percent drop in 2007.

Experts from the American Beekeeping Federation already estimate that a loss of 50 percent is expected this winter, which will reduce the production of honey and cause financial devastation to both farmers and beekeepers.

McGehee said he has lost three hives a year since 2007 because of a malady called "colony collapse," and noted that the nation's honey bee population is also plagued by mites.

In colony collapse, which became apparent in the U.S. in 2006, honey bees inexplicably abandon their hive, never to return. Bees leave behind the queen, eggs and honey, which is especially odd because a bee's only mission in life is to protect the hive and make honey.

According to the United States Department of Agriculture, some beekeepers began reporting losses of 30-90 percent of their hives starting in 2006.

That came on top of losses already caused by honey bee parasites, the varroa and tracheal mites. These mites killed 52 percent of all bees in the United States from 1980 to 1990, with the wild bee population dropping by 98 percent, McGehee said.

The varroa mite carries a disease that damages the bee's wings and can only reproduce in the bee colony. The tracheal mite lives inside the bee's breathing tubes. The female mite waits until the female honey bee lays eggs, and then lays its own eggs in the tracheal airways of the baby bee.

A significant

contribution

According to the American Beekeeping Federation, honey bees contribute more than $14 billion to the value of U.S. crop production. The Web site also states that many of the country's crops would not exist without the honey bee doing its job at bloom time.

Dr. Charles Ray, a research fellow in AU's department of entomology and plant pathology, said that although the disappearance of the honey bee could be serious, plants on this continent survived before the honey bee. The honey bee is, in fact, an import that came to the American colonies from Europe in the 1600s.

"The native plants on this continent all evolved without the honey bee," Ray said. "We do have native pollinators such as some insects and other bees like ground bees, the southern blueberry bee and orchard nesting bees, but none of them are as social as the honey bee. So honey bees, no doubt are extremely important."

Ray agreed, however, that if honey bees were to disappear, there is nothing commercially available to replace them.

The most recent study theorizes colony collapse may be attributed to a combination of fungi, viruses and mites and beetles, he said.

"The colony may get a fungus and makes it more susceptible to be attacked by viruses," Ray said. "They aren't dying in the colony, they die away from it, and that makes it hard to do a necropsy to examine the bodies.

McGehee wants more answers, however. He said universities aren't doing enough to help with these problems.

"If we don't get research, I don't know where we're going to be," he said. "We can do without the honey, but we can't do without the pollination. Unless the agriculture people worldwide do something, in 20 or 30 years, we probably won't have honey bees."