2006.07.26: July 26, 2006: Headlines: COS - Tunisia: Beekeeping: Enterprise: Tunisia RPCV Joseph Koehring is the state apiary inspector for six counties
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2006.07.26: July 26, 2006: Headlines: COS - Tunisia: Beekeeping: Enterprise: Tunisia RPCV Joseph Koehring is the state apiary inspector for six counties
Tunisia RPCV Joseph Koehring is the state apiary inspector for six counties
Koehring, who majored in French and business in college, worked with beekeepers during a two-year Peace Corps stint in Tunisia, then worked with bees in Kona, Hawaii. He has been an inspector for New York state for two years.
Tunisia RPCV Joseph Koehring is the state apiary inspector for six counties
Your friendly North Country beehive inspector
By Martha Allen, Enterprise Correspondent
KEENE VALLEY — Joseph Koehring of Keene is the state apiary inspector for six counties: St. Lawrence, Franklin, Clinton, Essex, Warren and Washington. Weekday mornings, he rises early, gets into a red pickup truck emblazoned with an official insignia that reads “State Apiary Inspection,” leaves his rustic hilltop cabin in Keene and heads out to help beekeepers keep their hives healthy.
“It’s a lot of territory to cover,” Koehring admits.
He calls beekeepers from a list supplied by the state Department of Agriculture and Markets, to let them know when he’ll be in their area.
“It’s a matter of courtesy,” Koehring said. Bee inspectors can suggest ways to improve honey production and control disease and parasites but do not have enforcement authority.
About two-thirds of the world’s food crops are pollinated by honey bees, Koehring said.
“There aren’t as many wild bees around anymore, so we need more beekeepers,” he observed. “The honey business is pretty healthy. There are all different levels, from two or three to 500 or 1,500. Even small-scale production can be lucrative.”
The larger beekeepers are migratory and can lead a gypsy-like life, hauling tractor-trailer loads of bees south in the winter — Georgia and Florida are popular spots — and north in the winter. They contract with farmers to pollinate crops. In spring, they start with oranges, then travel east and north, pollinating blueberries in New Jersey and Maine, apples in New York, and so on.
The honeybees increase food production for the farmer and bring in income for the beekeepers. All of this takes place between April and June; then, from the end of May until November, the bees will be returned to a home base location, Koehring said.
On their own, bees will travel within a six-mile radius from the hive.
“Pollination is quite a taxing business for the bees,” Koehring said. “Bees work harder in spring, and constant flying weakens them.”
The life span of an individual bee can normally vary from six weeks to six months. Generally, there is one queen to a hive. She can lay from 2,000 to 3,000 eggs in a day. Worker bees make cells for the eggs from wax which they produce themselves, and clean and sterilize old cells with nectar. New hatch-offs occur in 21-day cycles.
Theoretically, any egg can become a queen, Koehring explained. The larvae that will become worker bees are fed royal jelly for two to three days, while the queen is fed royal jelly for four to six days. The drones, or males, are hatched from unfertilized eggs.
The queen produces all the eggs of her lifetime from one night of fertilization from many males. The bees fly to mate. As soon as a drone has mated, he drops dead, literally.
In Koehring’s territory, bees can be threatened by creatures as tiny as parasitic mites that deform the wings of a wide range of animals, from worker bees to bears.
Everyone knows that bears love honey, but what they prefer, according to Koehring, is the bees’ brood, or larvae. Bears will tear apart a hive and destroy it. Beekeepers in bear territory need to use electric fencing to protect their apiaries.
Bees may suffer from infections, too. One of the worst is American foulbrood, which breaks the brood and spreads easily. To control this disease, the hives containing the affected bee community must be burnt. A related disease, European foulbrood, can be controlled with medicinal drugs.
Yes, the killer bee scare stories are true — in part, Koehring said. Bees vary in temperament. The Africanized honeybee has made its way from Brazil to Texas and Arizona, then east across the Gulf states to Florida. This bee is extremely vicious to livestock and humans, he said.
In an experiment conducted in a bee research lab in Tucson, scientists placed a battery-operated toy 10 to 15 feet away from the entrance to a hive. Immediately, the bees swarmed the toy and covered it.
Some of the honeybees preferred by beekeepers are Carniolans, Russians and Italians. Bad-tempered bee populations can be managed and controlled by requeening — removing the nasty-tempered queen from the hive and replacing it with a nicer one.
Koehring, who majored in French and business in college, worked with beekeepers during a two-year Peace Corps stint in Tunisia, then worked with bees in Kona, Hawaii. He has been an inspector for New York state for two years.
He grows vegetables, which he also cans and puts up for the winter, in a large organic garden shared with friends.
The way people live affects the life around them, Koehring believes.
“What I decide to do—how I decide to live right here — affects more than just me.”
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