Busy as a . . . : Bees Aren’t Models of Efficiency, but They Have a Following in the County
Common belief has beehives as models of super efficiency, places where even Japanese factory workers could learn something.
Will (Bill) Huston knows better. Bees, he says, kind of “muddle through” their days, looking a lot more efficient than they really are.
And Huston, 75, is talking from almost a lifetime of studying and earning his livelihood from bees.
“You find one bee that will work all day but another that will make a couple of loads (gathering nectar), then hang around the hive all day.” The saying “busy as a bee” is all right with him, as long as you don’t confuse “busy” with “productive.”
This little sting at popular myth probably won’t sour the enthusiasm of the estimated 2,000 honey bee aficionados in the county. If anything, it adds a new degree of fascination to a hobby that attracts people not only for the bees’ product, but also because it affords a close-up view of one of nature’s most fascinating creatures.
Thirty years ago, when Huston--who now lives in Corona del Mar--was operating his own Riverside-based bee company of 10,000 hives, there were at least 25 commercial bee-keepers who maintained 500 or more hives each in Orange County.
But even in its heyday, the bee business in Orange County would never have been a contender for the Fortune 500. Based on production statistics compiled by Wayne Appel, the county’s deputy 1634169449beekeeping has been steadily declining during this decade as new-home construction has boomed, in effect taking over the land needed to maintain bees. Most of the professional beekeepers have long since moved their business outside the county or even the state, Huston said.
In 1980, there were 8,486 registered colonies--a colony is defined as a grouping of one to four hives--in the county, according to Appel. Sales from honey totaled $387,500. By 1987, however, the number of registered colonies had dropped to 6,373, and revenue from honey was down to $124,700.
The numbers are somewhat deceptive, Appel said, because many beekeepers in Orange County have only one or two hives and don’t bother to register with the county.
Despite the decline in bee production, however, Orange County is still home to one of the country’s largest honey processors, Sioux Honey Assn., a cooperative that has been based in Anaheim for several decades.
Robert Cosgrove of South Laguna, a past president of the 150-member Orange County Beekeepers Assn. and a literature professor at Saddleback College, also teaches courses at the college on beekeeping and lectures on the subject to groups around the county. He is currently consulting with Knott’s Berry Farm to build an observation beehive.
Cosgrove is fascinated by the beehive as factory--”It’s high-tech nature”--and he keeps a small library in his home on the subject. His truck bears the license plate, “IMABMAN,” and he sometimes wears a yellow Polo shirt with a bee emblem sewn on the chest.
Cosgrove’s interest in beekeeping started when he was a boy living on the outskirts of Chicago. He remembers being fascinated by the hives that a next-door neighbor kept in his front yard. Cosgrove would kick the hives, then run like mad--until his neighbor caught him doing it one day. Instead of merely scolding the boy, however, the neighbor took the time to educate the boy about the hives. Cosgrove was hooked.
What started in his youth as a hobby became in adulthood a side business. Cosgrove tends to 30 of his own hives, which he keeps on the Saddleback campus, and also maintains a hive in back of his home. One hive will produce about 150 pounds of honey, which he sells at swap meets or to friends. Cosgrove is also among a number of beekeepers with whom the county contracts to take care of pesky swarms which have landed in houses or businesses in search of new homes.
Cosgrove has studied beekeeping with the fervor he applies to his teaching: he can describe in minute detail the social structure of a colony--each bee has an assigned task, ranging from worker to drone to guard bees that protect the hive from invasions of robber bees. They are fastidiously clean--some members of the hive play the role of undertaker by routinely carting out dead carcasses--and leave the hive to exercise twice daily.
Carefully lifting a protective covering from his back-yard hive and seemingly oblivious to the handful of bees buzzing around his head and hands, Cosgrove pointed out that bees are like living factories and have two stomachs--one for digesting, the other for carrying nectar.
Contrary to popular myth, the California honey bee--one of 5,000 different varieties in the country--is actually remarkably gentle and will sting only in self-defense or when it becomes irritated, he said.
“Bees get bad press sometimes,” he added.
But, he cautioned, it is not advisable to “work” a hive in the chill morning hours. Bees like to keep an incubation temperature of 94 degrees in the hive and will become agitated if exposed to cool air.
They also don’t like vibrations, certain smells, some clothing colors and woolly materials. A popular theory among bee people is that for the more than 80 million years that bees have existed, they have developed a natural aversion to their No. 1 predator, woolly creatures such as bears.
Huston, considered a guru among fellow bee enthusiasts, started out as an amateur beekeeper before he made his living from it. Although he never went to college, he regularly attended seminars and worked with professors at UC Davis in an experiment dealing with different bee strains.
While Huston’s enthusiasm for the pastime is just as strong as Cosgrove’s, he takes a decidedly more practical view.
“It’s an insect world completely alien to humans,” he said, explaining peoples’ fascination with the hobby. “The whole entomology is really fascinating until you try to be a beekeeper; then it’s just hard work.”
What of the dreaded African “killer” bee that is supposedly slowly migrating from South America and through Texas to California?
They’re very aggressive, said Huston, who used to have some in his apiary. “They’ll pin your shirt to your back, (but) they won’t take over the world.”
“The African bee is a different critter,” said Appel of the agriculture department, although he noted that only an expert can tell the difference. Its sting is no more toxic than that of a California honey bee, but African bees will attack in much greater numbers than their gentler counterparts--hence, the danger.
Appel figures African bees will arrive in Southern California in large numbers in about two years and fears that they will trigger profound changes in the nature of honey production. African bees produce a lot of honey, but they also consume a lot, he said.
And what of the belief that honey contains some special health-enriching properties?
Beeswax, Huston said.
He, like many others, for years thought that honey contained some “mysterious medical” attributes, but a convincing body of scientific evidence over the years convinced him that it wasn’t true.
“In the beginning, I was with the rest of them about folklore. Somewhere along the line, I decided to go scientific and throw out what I couldn’t prove.
Besides, “raspberry jam tastes better to me than most (kinds) of honey,” Huston said.
