Section A
Of 2, 000 commercial beekeepers in the United States about
half migrate. Migratory beekeeping is nothing new. The ancient Egyptians
moved clay hives, probably on rafts, down the Nile to follow the bloom and
nectar flow as it moved toward Cairo. In the 1880s North American beekeepers
experimented with the same idea. moving bees on barges along the Mississippi
lighter, wooden hives kept falling into the water, Other keepers tried the
railroad and horse drawn wagons, but that didn’t prove practical. Not
until the 1920s when cars and trucks became affordable and roads improved, did
migratory beekeeping begin to catch on. For the Californian
beekeeper, the pollination season begins in February. At this time. the beehives
are in particular demand by farmers who have almond groves; they need two hives
an acre. For the three-week long bloom, beekeepers can hire out their hives for
$ 32 each. By early March it is time to move the bees. It can
take up to seven nights to pack the 4,000 or so hives that a beekeeper may own.
These are not moved in the middle of the day because too many of the bees would
end up homeless. But at night, the hives are stacked onto wooden pallets,
back-to-back in sets of four, and lifted onto a truck. It is not necessary to
wear gloves or a beekeeper’s veil because the hives are not being opened and the
bees should remain relatively quiet. Just in case some are still lively, bees
can be pacified with a few puffs of smoke blown into each hive’s narrow
entrance. In their new location, the beekeeper will pay the
farmer to allow his bees to feed in such places as orange groves. The honey
produced here is fragrant and sweet and can be sold by the beekeepers. To
encourage the bees to produce as’ much honey as possible during this period, the
beekeepers open the hives and stack extra boxes called supers on top.
These temporary hive extensions contain frames of empty comb for the bees
to fill with honey. In the brood chamber below, the bees will stash honey to eat
later. To prevent the queen from crawling up to the top and laying eggs, a
screen can be inserted between the brood chamber and the supers.
Three weeks later the honey can be gathered. Foul smelling chemicals
are often used to irritate the bees and drive them down into the hive’s bottom
boxes, leaving the honey-filled supers more or less bee free. These can then be
pulled off the hive. They are heavy with honey and may weigh up to 90 pounds
each. The supers are then taken to a warehouse where the extracting
process takes place. After this, approximately a quarter of the
hives weakened by disease, mites or an ageing or dead queen, will have to be
replaced. To create new colonies, a healthy double hive, teeming with bees, can
be separated into two boxes. One half will hold the queen and a young, already
mated queen can be put in the other half, to make two hives from one. By the
time the flowers bloom, the new queens will be laying eggs, filling each hive
with young worker bees. The beekeeper’s family will then migrate with them to
their summer location. To create new colonies, what will beekeepers do with the hives in good condition