Beekeepers gather in order
to educate, solve problems
By Anna Herkamp
Summer
Reporter
This week, beekeepers from around the mid-west
gathered to share stories, educate the public and solve problems concerning
their craft.
A three-day course called the Intensive Bee keeping
Short Course began Wednesday. The purpose of the class is to practice
the art of breeding queen bees. Beginning today, there will be a meeting
in which beekeepers will gather for dinner and share stories and address
issues about their careers.
Apiarist Susan Cobey, a staff member at Ohio State
University, is attending the Intensive Bee Keeping course to help Greg
Hunt, bee keeping specialist in entomology, to teach the short course.
Thursday's section of the course was about rearing
queen bees, the bees that breed in a beehive. "Queen rearing is the
foundation of bee keeping," Cobey said. Queen bees stick out from the
other worker bees by their size and amount they eat. Queen bees must
have plenty of protein in order to lay eggs.
To set up a suitable condition for bee breeding,
bees are put into a "swarm condition," she said. To create a swarm condition,
bees from several different hives are put into a bee keeping box with
lots of nectar and pollen. The goal is to create an environment ideal
for reproduction.
Another issue that will be addressed this year
is the problem of parasitic mites, which have ravaged bee populations
since the mid-'80s. In order to combat the parasites, bees that seem
resistant to the mites are bred to make stronger populations, said Cobey.
Most people who attend the class and meeting are
not beekeepers who do it for a living. Rather, they do it as a hobby,
said Hunt.
People who keep bees for a living are in the minority,
he said.
In order to be able to make a living in bee keeping,
you must have at least 1,000 colonies. One family in Indiana has 2,000
bee colonies.
Several different groups are participating in the
event. Representatives from Purdue, Ohio State University, University
of Tennessee and Illinois State University will be attending. Members
of bee keeping associations such as the Cook-duPage Illinois Association
as well as the Tippecanoe Beekeepers Association will be in attendance
as well.
Beekeepers don't make a lot of money, but they
are important to everyone, Hunt said. A statistic Hunt often cites is
'every third bite of food a person eats comes from bees.' He said approximately
$9 to $18 billion of food in the United States is produced because of
bees.
90 percent of the value of bees is pollination,
but they also produce different types of honey as well as wax.
One unusual thing bees do for people is help treat
multiple sclerosis. People with this debilitating disease often lose
muscle coordination. One woman at the short course has multiple sclerosis,
but began to use bee stings as part of her treatment. The venom from
the bee sting treatments allows her to move freely without the use of
her wheelchair.
· Registration for the Saturday meeting is
from 7:30 a.m. to 8:30 a.m. Saturday in the Stewart Center Room 202.
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