daily nebraskan
pago7
friday, may 2,1980
Lorn for bees stings professor
makes honey a lifelong career
By BUI Graf
Some children are born with a silver spoon or under a
lucky star. But, Cliff Walstrom was born into a life buzz
ing with beqs.
Walstrom slashed the air about two feet from the
ground and said, "That's how big I was when I got into
bees.
Walstrom's father raised bees before Walstrom was
born 56 years ago. Since then he has lead a honey of a
life.
But no matter how sweet the honey, getting stung is
usually a major event for most folks. But Walstrom is so
used to bee stings that he will force a bee to sting him just
to show an onlooker how a stinger pumps poison into its
victim.
On a day when the bees are restless, he may get stung
100 times, he said.
But he added, "The first one-eighth or sixteenth of an
inch of the stinger is from the bee, the other two inches is
your imagination."
After one bee refused to sting him, Walstrom grabbed
another, which stung him almost immediately. With the
stinger in his finger, he described the different parts of
the stinger.
At the top of the barbed stinger is a small muscle
which pulsated, pumping venom through the center of
the stinger and into his finger.
"If you're stung, take a knife blade or your fingernail
and scrape the stinger off. If you grab it and pull it out
you'll just be squeezing the poison into yourself," he said.
While Walstrom handled the bees he kept his "smoker"
nearby. He explained that the smoke relaxes the bees.
Smoke screen
One theory on why the smoker keeps the bees from
stinging is that the smoke makes the bees think their
hive is on fire, he explained.
Walstrom said the bees will load up on honey before
leaving the hive if they think it's on fire. Because they
must double up to sting, the load of honey makes a sting
impossible.
"It's like Thanksgiving when you get up from the table
and have a hard time tying your shoes," Walstrom added.
Walstrom explained that bees have an interesting social
order within the colony.
Making up most of the population are the worker bees,
he explained that workers are sexually imperfect female
bees.
The workers are the bees that do all the work of col
lecting pollen, building the comb and: 'producing honey.
There is only one queen bee per colony. Although she
has special status, Walstrom said she is "nothing more
than an egg laying machine."
Royal jelly
The queen is conceived in the same manner as a
Open Mon-Fri 10-9 Sat 10-5:30
worker, he said. But it a colony needs to raise another
queen due to the failing of their queen or the death of
the colony's queen the workers will pump "royal jelly"
into the cell of a developing female bee.
The addition of the "Royal Jelly" shortens the gesta
tion period from 21 days to 16 days and the queen is
twice the size of a worker.
Walstrom said that a queen will leave the hive five days
after birth and mate with as many as five drones (male
bees) while in flight.
"The drone is a free loader. He's insurance for the
colony in case he is needed to fertilize the eggs," Wal
strom said.
But he added, "Few ever mate and once they do, they
die. Also since they're freeloaders the colony won't sup
port the drone during the winter. In the fall the drones are
forced out of the colony to die.
"That's not much of a future for the doggone things,"
he said with a laugh.
Pollination
Although bees are most commonly thought of in con
nection with honey and beeswax the most important
function of bees is pollinating plants.
Some beekeepers raise bees primarily to be hired out to
farmers to help pollinate a wide variety of crops, Wal
strom said.
Bees can be hired for $15 to $20 a hive, he said. Con
sidering that a healthy hive contains 50,000 to 80,000
bees, the per-be wage is pretty low.
Besides the bee business, Walstrom raises angus cattle
and farms near Davey, Neb.
"I puddle around in a little of everything, but bees are
the main thing," he said. Walstrom keeps 1,300 colonies
of his own.
Walstrom served as the state entymologist for 23
years, then in 1958 he was called on by UNL to teach a
course in beekeeping.
"Of Prof. Bare died and there was no one to take over.
If I didn't take the job, I don't know whether they'd still
offer the course," he said.
"You don't graduate (from the course) until you've
been stung," he said jokingly.
Many of Walstrom's students have a passing interest in
beekeeping. But with the price of honey at about $1.20
retail, Walstrom said it is possible for a person to make a
fair living in the honey business.
"Used to be in the old days a colony of bees would
produce 100 pounds of honey per year. But anymore
a colony will produce 60 pounds a year."
Walstrom explained that the difference in production
is because farmers used to plant their fields with pollen
rich sweet clover to revitalize the soil. But farmers now
use artificial fertilizers and farm the same ground year
after year, thus reducing the bee's pollen sources.
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