It was nearly 10 years ago that people started to learn about the mysterious pollinator-killing syndrome known as colony collapse disorder.
And since then, there’s been a surge in hobby beekeeping across the country.
As the number of backyard beekeepers rises in Delaware, the state Department of Agriculture is also drafting a pollinator protection plan, creating a system to allow farmers and other pesticide applicators to communicate with beekeepers nearby.
Sitting on a driveway in Smyrna are two boxes with wooden frames and mesh screens. There are bees inside, clustered and hanging from the top, like stalactites.
Kathy Hossler, the president of the Delaware Beekeepers Association, says we’re looking at about 3 pounds of bees.
“Which is roughly like, something like 6,000, 7,000 bees,” she said.
Hossler had just driven down from Wilkinsburg, Pennsylvania, where she’d gotten the bees. One box will help set up her neighbor’s very first hive. The two of them put on latex gloves, veils and white jackets, then take the bees over to a white and orange-striped wooden crate.
Hossler takes off the lid of this hive box, adjusts the contents and then starts to remove a metal lid at the top of the bee box.
“So the first thing you do is you get the queen out,” she said to her neighbor, John Brown.
The queen will draw the other bees to the hive, so finding her is crucial. But the queen is only slightly larger than the other bees. And even with the white stripe the queen is marked with, locating her can be difficult. After a few minutes of careful rummaging, Hossler points her out.
“Can you see how there’s a white dot running around inside? There she is,” said Hossler.
Once the queen has been put inside, then it’s time to pour out the rest of the bees.
“This is the fun part,” said Hossler.
Thousands of bees start swirling, spreading out around the hive. Hossler says they’ll gradually gather into the hive in the next hour or so, once they’ve calmed down.
Hossler got into beekeeping about three years ago for the same reasons many people have in the last decade.
Since the winter of 2006-2007, beekeepers from all over began reporting unusually high losses in their hives--an average of 30 percent, compared to the historical average of 10 to 15 percent.
The really weird part was that worker bees abandoned hives with plenty of honey reserves and yet very few of their carcasses were found near their colony. Scientists are still trying to determine the root cause of this phenomenon -- known as Colony Collapse Disorder -- whether it’s parasites, a disease or the use of pesticides. The loss of honeybees poses a real threat to food security, since many major crops produced in the U.S. depend on them for pollination.
So as the public became aware of colony collapse disorder, a grassroots movement to save honeybees began in people’s backyards, including those in Delaware. In the First State, there’s approximately 270 registered beekeepers, including commercial but according to the state Department of Agriculture, the number of commercial operations has remained pretty consistent while noncommercial has drastically risen in the last few years.
Deborah Delaney, professor of apiculture at University of Delaware, says you can see that reflected at beekeeping meetings and workshops where attendance has spiked.
“We’d be excited about 15… now sometimes we’ll have 50,” said Delaney. “Sometimes we have to turn people away because the structure that we’re holding the meeting in can’t hold the number of people who want to register for the event.”
As the beekeeping community grows in the state, so does concern over bees exposure to pesticides. Worker bees will forage in a six mile radius around their hive. Especially in the more rural Kent and Sussex counties, it’s common for a person’s backyard to be right next to a field of crops.
At the UD Paradee Center in Dover, about 40 people showed up for Kent County’s monthly Delaware Beekeepers Association meeting. Someone brings up the pesticide that DNREC sprays for mosquito control.
“So what you’re saying is... is what they’re spraying is not harmful to the bees at this point in time?” asked a woman.
“The adulticide is nasty on bees,” said a male attendee.
“What do you do to protect your bees? If they give you notice, what do you do?” asked the woman.
The need for pesticide applicators and beekeepers to communicate with each other is something the state Department of Agriculture has been working on, ever since President Obama issued a memorandum in 2014 to develop a federal strategy focused on helping honeybees and other pollinators. Eventually, the EPA left it up to each state to determine the best course of action.
Around that time, the state began allowing commercial beekeepers to use an online system called Driftwatch. Drift refers to wind and other forces that spread pesticides. Chris Wade, pesticide administrator at the Department of Ag, explains.
“We complaints on drift sometimes, from pesticides and herbicides,” said Wade. “We saw a need to have something in place for communication. So that specialty crop growers and beekeepers could list their sites so applicators could have a reference to try and avoid those sites when they’re doing applications.”
This spring, the state opened up Driftwatch to noncommercial beekeepers as part of a program that they call BeeCheck. Before, there were 12 people registered. Now it’s doubled to 25.
“We didn’t want to just favor big commercial people, we wanted to expand it,” said Laura Mensch, a hydrologist with the Department of Agriculture. “And really, we’re trying to get people interested in keeping bees and in pollinator health.”
This supports Delaware’s developing pollinator protection plan, a set of voluntary guidelines meant to promote the health of all kinds of pollinators. It mainly focuses on advising beekeepers on limiting pesticide exposure and encourage conversation between them and growers.
Chris Wade and the department of agriculture’s plant industries administrator Faith Kuehn says there’s sometimes multiple people involved.
“Well, a lot of times, the beekeeper might have an agreement with the owner of the land, saying, ‘I’m going to put my hives out, like I’ve done for 20 years,’ but the grower, might not be aware that the bees are there,” said Wade.
“Right now, there’s a missing link,” said Kuehn. “We have to loop the landowner, the grower who might be renting the land, and the beekeeper. So if we can link all of those together in a good communication link, that reduces the risk of having someone not know that bees are there when they’re flying over for pesticide application.”
Making Driftwatch more inclusive and putting together these recommendations for best practices are expected to do a lot for pollinator health in Delaware. UD’s Deborah Delaney sees more work needed on how beekeepers and growers should engage with each other...
“Yeah, and I think that’s the trickiest part...is trying to figure out how to do that,” said Delaney. “Just seeing a name and realizing that they’re there is not going to help you unless you reach out and actually start to talk to each other… about plans should a problem occur, spray dates, or active foraging dates for the hive. So all of these things need to be discussed once those people are identified that you need to have a conversation with.”
Back in Smyrna, Kathy Hossler lives right next to a soybean farm. She’s never actually talked to the farmer about her hives, but she isn’t totally sure if her bees are going there anyway. And in the grand scheme of things, she doesn’t want to interfere with somebody’s bottom line.
“This is my hobby. That’s their livelihood,” she said.
But when Driftwatch opened up to hobbyists, she was eager to sign up. And having these bees nearby could potentially benefit the growers.
Hossler’s neighbor John Brown says he said a huge difference in his garden after the hives were built next to his yard.
“Could be in my head, but I noticed I had a really good year last year and the year before,” said Brown.
It's actually not just in his head. Honeybees pollinate $15 billion dollars’ worth of crops in the U.S. every year. A number of major Delaware crops, like watermelon and pumpkins, wouldn't be able to flourish without them.
That makes the state’s pollinator protection plan, which should be finalized sometime this year, as critical to the economic health of the state’ agriculture industry as it is to the health of honeybees. The first step to promoting both is to make sure that everyone is on the same page.
