September 17, 2009
 WHERE: Temple University Ambler, Learning Center Auditorium
WHEN: Saturday, October 10, 8 a.m. to 4 p.m.
Take a bite out of a succulent Georgia peach. Enjoy a tall, cool glass of orange juice with breakfast. Taste the sweet mess of a watermelon at your next picnic.
Now thank the honey bee buzzing by you for all of the hard work it has put into ensuring that you have so much produce available year round.
“Honey bees are particularly important to agriculture in Pennsylvania and the nation. They pollinate one third of all the food crops that we consume — from fruits and vegetables to nuts and seed plants. One out of every three mouthfuls of food we eat has been pollinated by honey bees,” said Mark Antunes, President of the Montgomery County Beekeepers’ Association, which is celebrating its 90th year in 2009. “If honey bees were to seriously decline or die out, the impact upon agriculture in the U.S. and the world would be devastating. The cost of food would rise and our crops, in terms of quality and quantity, would decline rapidly.”
In an effort to raise awareness about the importance of honey bees to Pennsylvania and the nation and promote beekeeping in the region, the Montgomery County Beekeepers’ Association and Temple University will present the first ever Southeastern Pennsylvania Honey Bee Symposium — Bee Fest!
Bee Fest will be held on Saturday, October 10, from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m., in the Ambler Campus Learning Center. As seating is limited, pre-registration for this event is required. Online registration is available at www.montcobeekeepers.org.
 Bee Fest will bring together authors and experts to offer informative presentations about the current state of honey bees in our region and across the nation to beekeepers, gardeners, and everyone else interested in learning more about the importance of honey bees. Speakers will include Mike McGrath, host of WHYY Radio’s “You Bet Your Garden,” Maryanne Frazier, Penn State Sr. Extention Associate, and Jim Bobb, Chairman of the Eastern Apicultural Society and Past President of the Pennsylvania State Beekeepers Association.
During the symposium, participants will learn about: honey bee biology, native pollinators and plants, and pesticides and other threats to honey bee health, including the mysterious Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD), where thousands of honey bees seem to vanish from their home colonies without a trace or obvious cause.
In addition to the lecture series, attendees may also take guided tours of the Ambler Arboretum of Temple University, including a honey bee-friendly garden and the campus’s own hives. Participants may also explore educational exhibits from local beekeepers, an observation hive, beekeeping supplies, books, and local honey and hive products, which will be available for purchase.
Harkening back to the early history of the campus, where beekeeping was once a traditional course of study for the students of the Pennsylvania School of Horticulture for Women — the forerunner of Temple University Ambler — Ambler Arboretum horticulturists began their own honey producing hives in the spring of 2009. The five hives, which began with 40,000 bees and are now 150,000 bees, including five queens, strong, are tended by Vincent Aloyo, a member of the Montgomery County Beekeepers’ Association from Blue Bell, who is training Grace Chapman, Horticultural Technician Supervisor, and Kathryn Reber, Horticultural Technician, in their proper care.
“Beekeeping is steadily becoming more popular for public gardens and it’s a nice connection with our heritage as a campus. Our bees have certainly been visiting all of our gardens; the Wetland Garden and the Community Garden, where our students, faculty, and staff grow their own vegetables, seem to be particularly popular,” Chapman said. “This year, we’ve been able to sell the honey produced by the hives in July and August and we’ll be using the funds from those sales to buy more of our own hives. Producing and selling the honey to the campus and the community is a great way to raise awareness about the importance of honey bees and beekeeping.”
Temple’s honey bees have so far produced 210 pounds of honey, no small feat considering that to produce one pound of honey, honey bees must visit two million flowers and fly 55,000 miles, according to the Beekeepers’ Association. One bee cannot produce honey; it takes the entire hive.
 “As with any farming, you have to ensure that the bees have a sufficient food source, particularly in the spring and fall. In the spring, swarm control is very important,” said Aloyo, who has been beekeeping since 1966. “Swarming is a natural part of reproduction in the hive, but if half your bees leave, there goes your honey production. Of course one of the most important things in beekeeping is disease control and keeping the hive healthy.”
According to Antunes, the “state of bees in the region is fairly good.”
“We are of course experiencing all of the maladies that every hive faces and we continue to study Colony Collapse Disorder which has received a great deal of attention in the past few years,” Antunes said. “It started about 4 years ago. (Pennsylvania professional beekeeper) Dave Hackenberg raised the alarm initially when he discovered that there were no bees in hundreds of his hives — of 40,000 bees there were less than 100 remaining, which is unlike any disease we’ve ever encountered.”
Varrola mites, which prey on bees in a way similar to a tick, and tracheal mites, a mite so small that it lodges in the throat of the bee, and the “small hive beetle” — all of which have appeared in the United States in the just the past 20 years — are other, more common, maladies that beekeepers must contend with to the keep the hive healthy.
Maintaining the health of honey bees is an essential part of our ecological sustainability. Without honey bees pollinating alfalfa — a key source of dairy cow forage — for example, our milk supply and dairy industry would be at risk. The honey bee is responsible for pollinating $15 billion in agricultural crops each year in the United States. Pennsylvania alone has an agricultural crop value of over $4.5 billion dollars, of which 33 percent relies on the honey bee for pollination.
“Pennsylvania has a longstanding history of beekeeping. In 1900, there were 80,000 beekeepers in Pennsylvania — most farms kept their own hives,” said Antunes, who has 50 hives of his own and teaches a beginner beekeeping course for the Montgomery County Beekeepers’ Association. “The number of beekeepers in the state has dropped to about 15,000. After the incursion of mites and other diseases, beekeeping has become more complex and more difficult, but no less important. Our hope with Bee Fest is to get the right information to greatest number of people who are interested in bees and beekeeping.”
For more information about Bee Fest or to register for the event, visit www.montcobeekeepers.org.
- One in three bites the average American eats is directly attributable to honey bees.
- Honey bees are responsible for the pollination of more than 100 crops, including fruits, vegetables, nuts, and seeds, providing 80 percent of the country’s pollination service.
- The honey bee is responsible for pollinating $15 billion in agricultural crops each year. The California almond crop alone uses 1.3 million colonies of bees for pollination, approximately one half of all the honey bees in the United States.
- California is the largest producer of agricultural products with an estimated annual total gross crop value of $30.5 billion; Pennsylvania is also a major player in the agricultural world, with a total annual crop value of $4.5 billion.
- Honey bees are the only insect that produce food for humans, flying approximately 15 mph and visiting about 50 to 100 flowers in each pollination trip.
- When a honey bee returns to the hive, it gives out samples of the flower’s nectar to its hive mates. Then it performs a “dance” that identifies the distance, direction, quality, and quantity of the food supply. The richer the food source, the longer and more vigorous the dance.
- The principal form of communication among honey bees is through chemicals called pheromones.
- A single bee cannot make honey, it takes a whole hive.
- An average worker bee will only make 1/12 of a teaspoon of honey in its lifetime.
- One honey bee colony can produce 60 to 100 pounds of honey per year.
- To produce one pound of honey, honey bees must visit two million flowers and fly 55,000 miles.
- Preceding humans by millions of years, the oldest bee fossil dates back more than 100 million years. Flowering plants appeared about 65 million years ago.
- Humans have been associated with honey bees since the era of cave men, and ancient societies in Egypt and Israel kept bee colonies for honey production.
- A queen bee can live for 2 to 5 years, a worker bee 1 to 4 months and a drone 40 to 50 days.
Bee facts provided by the Montgomery County Beekeepers’ Association
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