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 Moriearty began by giving everyone a quiz on honey
bees. “One of the most important ways to protect our bee population,
especially honey bees, is to know as much as possible about their
lives,” she said. There has been much in the news lately about the
decline of the honey bee population, a vital part of agriculture and
nature across our country.
Question one asked about the history of honey bees in North America.
While everyone seemed to think that honey bees have always been
here, Pam had to correct that way of thinking. “Honey bees came to
America in the early 1600’s with the migration of Europeans to our
shores,” she said. The honey bees found the land rich with flowers
and plants that they could use to make honey. The bees thrived.
Honey bees followed the westward migration of settlers and reached
the Mississippi River by the 1820’s. Most of these were wild,
swarming as they went along and starting their own hives.
The prairie of Illinois was an ideal environment for honey bees who
feasted on the diverse mix of prairie grasses and forests that made
up the landscape at that time. The bounty of Illinois flowers and
plants that the honey bees used to gather pollen bloomed for months,
from the waning days of winter to deep in fall. “I have seen honey
bees buzzing around the flowers in my backyard as early as late
February,” said Pam Moriearty.
The early settlers knew the value of honey and tried to tame wild
hives. The bee hives were crude affairs consisting usually of a
hollowed out tree trunk. It was difficult to remove the honey from
these makeshift hives. There were even professional bee hunters in
those early days, people who roamed the land in search of wild hives
from which they could harvest honey.
“In the 1850’s honey bee culture changed forever in the United
States with the introduction of the Langstroth hive, especially
engineered to remove honey easily without disturbing the bees,” she
said. And the rest is history. Honey has become a billion dollar
industry in the United States thanks to technology. The Langstroth
is still used today by professional and backyard bee keepers. The
bees can make honey in the supers, and bee keepers have access to it
while keeping the denizens of the hive happy.
The next questions on the quiz that Pam used to test the bee
knowledge of her audience were all revelations. A swarm of bees that
sometimes shows up in the backyard is not aggressive. “Just leave
them alone. This is a homeless hive looking for a new place to
live,” she said. They have sent out scouts to find a new wild hive
and will soon be gone.
While honey bees are essential to the almond crop in
the US, the largest in the world, they are not essential to
pollinating other crops. Honey bees and native bee species that do
not produce honey are essential to pollinating 70% of all plants,
plants that make up our diverse and essential environment.
There are more bee species in Illinois than all
species of mammals, reptiles, and birds. No one in the audience
selected the correct answer on that quiz question. There are 400
species of bees in Illinois. Honey bees are the only ones to produce
honey.
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“Honey bees live in a colony above ground while other
species live under ground. Honey bees have a complex social
structure, while native species are loners,” she said. A honey bee
colony can last for years while native species last only one year
before a new generation is born. During the winter, honey bees do
not hibernate. They gather in a large mass within the hive and move
constantly to keep the entire hive warm enough to survive the cold
temperatures. They use stored honey as food during the long winter.
It is essential that the hive has sufficient honey for a long cold
winter.
The final question on the bee quiz was an easy one. Are honey bees
in trouble?
Yes, honey bees are in trouble. And trouble in the bee world spells
trouble for the human world. “There are a number of reasons why
honey bee populations are declining,” said Pam. Habitat loss and
food source loss are primary reasons. New diseases from other parts
of the world that migrate to the United States are another. The use
of pesticides in row crop agriculture also harms bee populations.
Finally, the changing temperature harms bees. Blooming flowers and
bee culture are no longer in sync as they have been. Flowers bloom
but bees are still in a winter state. When bees are ready for
pollen, flowers that they have depended on have already bloomed.
“Another of the main reasons honey bees are endangered our lack of
knowledge about them,” she said.
Pam Moriearty is a bee enthusiast, and she is definitely spreading
the word about how we all can make the environment safer for these
essential friends of the earth. “We can make our yards more bee
friendly with just a few adjustments like planting a mosaic of
flowers that bloom during spring, summer and fall,” she said. She
practices what she advocates with a back yard that is a riot of
continuously blooming plants. She even has a few milkweed plants for
the monarchs. “The more bio-diversity we have, the healthier the
planet,” she said.
The Logan County Genealogical and Historical Society meets the third
Monday of the month at their research office on Chicago Street. The
public is invited and there is always an interesting presentation.
[Curtis Fox]
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