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WWW.AMISUN.COM - CELEBRATING 15 YEARS
THE SUN
FEBRUARY 10, 2016
Beekeeper seeks to protect bees Kevin Lausman said a shortage of bees has forced farmers to rent bees from beekeepers to pollinate their crops. BY TOM VAUG HT SUN STAFF WRITER | tvaught@amisun.com
HOLMES BEACH – University of Florida beekeeper Kevin Lausman spoke in the Island Branch Library’s Lecture and Travel Series on Thursday, Feb. 4, to a packed meeting room. Lausman teaches backyard beekeeping to those who want to help end the loss of bees from manmade perils, mainly the widespread use of insecticides from amateur gardeners to Manatee County’s Mosquito Control Board’s use of poisons against those pests. Lausman held up a honeycomb from a nest and passed it around the room. He said the honeycomb, which measures approximately one square foot, could weigh up to 100 pounds after the bees produce honey. He talked about the insects that are
tom vaught | sun
Beekeeper Kevin Lausman says use of pesticides commercially and in the yard is killing off bees and butterflies, two insects that are crucial in the pollination of plants. vital to food and flower agriculture by providing pollination. Each nest has worker bees to protect the nest and the queen, drones to fertilize the queen’s eggs before they die and the queen.
“Most nests have only one queen,” he said. “In those cases where there are two queens, one might be the daughter of the other. In that case, the younger queen often takes off with workers and drones to
form a new nest.” Honeybees produce dif ferent kinds of honey – royal jelly that they put into cells for the larvae to ingest and Propolis, which he described as a mixture of tree sap and bee spit
and is used to treat many ailments. He spoke about the accelerated loss of bees, mainly to ingesting pesticides used by farmers and gardeners. “Some beekeepers have been sending their bees to California to pollinate the almond crop,” he said. He said the bees also have natural enemies such as varroa, a parasitic mite that grows on pupa and destroys them. Lausman also said spraying insecticides, as the county does to control mosquitoes, is still the major concern of beekeepers. He also said genuine honey is rare. “When we make honey, we press it through filters to remove the bad stuff without filtering it so much that you remove the pollen and natural enzymes in the honey,” he said. “Honey makers, especially in China and other foreign countries, filter it too much and then add water.” Lausman said most of the honey people buy at the store is over-filtered, but honey from Alberta (Canada) and Chile is organic.
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