WEST POINT — A beekeeper looking to take the sting out of the purchase price for boxes needed to ship his honey bees turned to the Residential Carpentry Technology program at East Mississippi Community College’s West Point campus.
Terry Craig said he could find no one who builds shipping cages for package bees for sale locally. In the past he has purchased them from a vendor out of state for $15 a box. It cost Craig another $7 per box for shipment to his West Point home. Hoping for a more cost-effective alternative, Craig approached EMCC carpentry instructor Johnny Duren and asked for his help.
“Johnny told me he could build them for between $3 and $5 a box, which is great,” Craig said. “And there are no shipping costs.”
Students in the residential program built 10 of the bee boxes for Craig with plans to build more as they are needed.
Duren said he charged Craig just enough to recoup the college’s cost for materials.
“No more materials than he is using, it is basically scraps,” Duren said of the wood needed for the bee boxes. “He bought the screen wire because we don’t have that on hand.”
Each box is about 18 inches wide and 12 inches tall and consists of a wood frame covered with mesh screen wire. A 4-inch hole is drilled into the top of the box into which a can is dropped. The can is filled with sugar water, which helps keep the bees alive during transport.
Craig includes a queen bee and about 10,000 worker bees in each box, which is mailed through the U.S. Postal Service and sells for about $125.
“I usually ship out three boxes at a time,” Craig said.
Craig and fellow beekeeper Stanley Scott manage their beehives on Scott’s West Point farm. In addition to the shipping cages, students in the carpentry program also built the tops and bottoms of the men’s beehives at a reduced cost. Craig is appreciative.
Bee losses
Like many beekeepers, Craig is struggling. Last August he lost nine of his 11 hives.
“Those hives were rocking and rolling,” Craig said. “Then, I came out one day and they were gone. I didn’t see a single bee.”
Craig isn’t sure what happened to his bees but there has been a lot of publicity nationwide about similar instances to that experienced by Craig attributed to Colony Distress Disorder (CCD), which the Agricultural Research Service describes as “a dead colony with no adult bees or dead bee bodies but with a live queen and usually honey and immature bees still present.”
According to the ARS website, in 2006, some beekeepers reported losses of 30 percent to 90 percent of their hives.
“Annual losses from the winter of 2006-2011 averaged about 33 percent each year, with a third of these losses attributed to CCD by beekeepers,” the website states.
No single cause for the collapse of the beehives has been scientifically proven, however, and some scientists say it is more likely that multiple factors come into play.
Jeffrey Harris, a research professor at the Mississippi State Extension Service who specializes in entomology, said poor nutrition, pesticides, hive beetles, viruses and parasites can all cause stress to a beehive.
Varroa mites, a tiny parasite that attaches to bees and larvae and sucks the blood out of them, are one of the biggest problems beekeepers face, Harris said. The mites also transmit viruses lethal to the bees. Some of the chemicals used to treat hives for the mites can contaminate the bees wax. There are methods to treat hives for mites that don’t involve chemicals but they are labor intensive and “require a steep learning curve on the part of the beekeeper,” Harris said.
Information about mite control is available on the MSU Extension Service website and through workshops conducted by the agency.
Commercial beekeeping on decline
According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the number of managed bee hives nationwide has decreased from about 5 million in the 1940s to about 2.5 million today, a statistic cited by some as an indicator that the nation’s beehives are in jeopardy.
Harris disputes beehives in the U.S. are in serious trouble or even on the decline.
“Citing this decline of bee colonies over many decades as an indicator of troubled bees is misleading,” Harris said. “Many factors are at play here. We actually have more managed beehives in the U.S. than we had 10 years ago.”
While the number of managed beehives in the U.S. is down overall since the 1940s, much of that is a matter of economics, Harris said.
For one thing, table sugar, and later artificial sweeteners, replaced honey as the preferred sweetener. Furthermore, honey production costs have increased while prices have remained low and imported honey is often cheaper than domestic honey, prompting a decrease in commercial beekeeping, Harris said.
“Overall, it is commercial beekeeping as a way of life that is in jeopardy and not so much the bees themselves,” Harris said.
More hobbyists
While commercial beekeeping may have declined since the 1940s, Harris said he has seen an increase in the number of people in Mississippi who are turning to beekeeping as a hobby.
“There are probably about 25 to 30 families in the state making a living off their bees,” Harris said. “We probably have between 600 and 800 people I know of who keep bees mainly as a hobby.”
MSU’s beekeeping workshops in Jackson each spring attract between 150 and 180 people.
“I am sometimes invited to speak to beekeepers in other states, and I have seen attendance of nearly 500 to 700 people at each of several beekeeping meetings in Alabama, Pennsylvania, and North Carolina,” Harris said.
Some hobbyists sell honey from the hives to offset their expenses while others, like Craig, sell bees. Some do both.
Bee hobbyists looking to make money off the venture might want to reconsider. The bees have to be purchased, as do the hives and equipment such as a bee suit and a smoker, to name a few things.
“There is a bit of a sticker shock,” Harris said of the cost. “It can cost between $400 and $500 per hive for the start-up,” Harris said.
Charles Vick, former president and co-founder of Meridian Beekeepers Association, which has about 30 members, agreed.
“Then you have to feed the bees and maintain the hives,” Vick said. “It can be costly.”
Craig and Vick agree that most hobbyists raise bees because they enjoy it. One way in which Craig is trying to offset his costs is by charging a fee to local residents who want a beehive set up on their property.
“Most people are just interested in the honey so I will give them the honey off of the hive and I will take bees as the hive grows and sell them,” Craig said. “It’s a win-win situation for both them and for me.”
As for Duren, he is glad EMCC could help Craig out while exposing his students to new carpentry skills.
“The only kind of projects we will take is something they would learn something from,” Duren said. “It is kind of a two-way deal. He has this need and we are trying to help him with it. And it gives us some opportunity for some training we would not have.”
You can help your community
Quality, in-depth journalism is essential to a healthy community. The Dispatch brings you the most complete reporting and insightful commentary in the Golden Triangle, but we need your help to continue our efforts. In the past week, our reporters have posted 36 articles to cdispatch.com. Please consider subscribing to our website for only $2.30 per week to help support local journalism and our community.