EEKEEPING:
By Paula Lavigne
Staff Reporter _ _
Standing in the middle of a patch of clover, Marion
Ellis looked towards his buzzing swarm of over
300,000 honey bees making their way into their
hives.
Ellis, a graduate student in biology, has been a
beekeeper for the past 25 years. He spent 15 of those years
as the state apiculturist for the Nebraska Department of
Agriculture. His focus was controlling diseases prone to
honey bees.
And even though beekeeping is a "stinging” occupa
tion, Ellis has been fascinated with it since he was in high
school when he started helping out with his grandpar
ents’ honey bee colony.
“My mom’s got pictures of me when I was a kid with
both eyes swelled shut that she likes to show to her
friends,” he said, laughing.
Ellis, who currently teaches beekeeping classes at the
University of Ncbraska-Lincoln and takes care of the
apiary on east campus, said he was hooked on bees from
the start.
“They’re fascinating creatures,” he said. "You can
sure teach young people a lot about biology through
them.”
Ellis has had several education majors in his classes
who want to use bees as a tool for teaching their own
students about more than just “the birds and the bees.”
“It makes you aware of a lot of things in the natural
world. You see the bees coming home with a different
pollen color and it makes you start looking around to sec
what’s blooming,” he said.
“You learn about insects and that’s enjoyable. For a lot
of people who live in town, (beekeeping) gives them an
excuse to come into the country and, if you’re really good
at it, you can make a profit.”
Ellis said a lot of children raise bees for 4-H projects
and some people who tend orchards or gardens for a
living use bees for pollination purposes.
For those who are serious about getting started with
beekeeping, Ellis said, they need to get in contact with
someone who tends bees to learn how the operation
works.
The structure of bee life is very similar to human life.
An apiary, the place where bees are kept, is like a
neighborhood. A hive is the bees’ house while a colony
is a family of bees that live in a specific hive.
Within the colony, there is a three-tiered cast system.
The worker bees have different duties from cleaning
cells, guarding the entrance and toragmg lor pollen and nectar. I he
workers live fivetoseven weeks before their wings literally wear out.
The drone bees perform no work in the colony other than mating
with the queen whose only duty is to lay eggs — about one every
minute or 1500 eggs a day.
“She’s referred to as a queen,” Ellis said, “but if you think about
her life, she’s more like a slave.”
Ellis said all the work done in the hive is through instinct.
“(Bees) are a social insect and they are able to do things that are
really amazing for an insect,” he said. “They can communicate
where food is located, threats to the hive and the location of a queen.”
This communication is carried out in two ways, he said.
The bees use a symbolic dance, Ellis said, which is mainly used
for relaying the direction and distance of a food source.
“I f the food is within 100 meters, they do a round dance where they
circle one way then circle the other way slopping to give the other
bees a taste of the nectar,” he said.
The bees can also communicate by emitting odors called phero
mones that other bees can detect. They can produce up to 16 different
pheromones.
“If you approach a colony and bang on the entrance, the bees
release a warning scent that makes all the worker bees come to
protect the colony,” he said.
This is why beekeepers use a smoker when they open the hives,
he said. The smoke masks the odor so they won’t detect the warning
scent and become defensive.
Even though.he lakes this precaution, Ellis still gets slung almost
every day. However, he said after a while a beekeeper could develop
a tolerance to the stings. -
“I can get stung 20 to 30 nines on the arm and just get little red
dots," he said. “It always hurts and you say ‘ouch’ and a few other
words you probably shouldn’t, but it’s something that becomes a
minor annoyance after you’ve worked with bees long enough.”
Only onc-hallol one percent ol the population is severely allergic
to bee stings. Even if someone is allergic, Ellis said, doctors have
medications which can desensitize against bee stings.
Traditionally, he said, beekeepers do lake other precautions to
avoid bee stings. Wearing coveralls made of light colored smooth
material complete with long, thick gloves is the best protection.
“For a beekeeper in Nebraska in 95 degree heal with gloves and
overalls on, the biggest threat is overheating,” Ellis said, “so most
beekeepers will forego all that.”
Although Ellis might not wear the additional protection, he said
he always wears a veil over his head.
Protection isn’t the only thing Ellis, or other beekeepers, worries
about. Diseases that can wipe out entire colonies have become a
concern.
“Until about 10 years ago, bees had a fairly good resistance to most
diseases,” he said. “About 1984 we had a parasitic mite introduced
to this country, and in 1987 we had a second one that affected honey
bees.”
Bees aren’t native to the United States. They were brought over
in the 1600s from Europe, Ellis said, and fortunately left most of their
diseases behind. In 1920, the United States prohibited the importa
tion of bees to prevent diseases.
Ellis said if the current diseases weren’t detected in time, it could
wipe a beekeeper out of business.
“Bees are usually faithful to their colony, but a lot ofdri fling docs
go on,” he said. “A lot of work needs to be done in developing
resistance to the diseases.”
Another problem of beekeepers in the Southwest is the famous
Africanized or “killer bee” Ellis said. Bees in Nebraska haven’t
encountered this problem yet. - ---
“Traditionally, Nebraska isa fairly good area for beekeeping,” he
said.