Honeybees are creating a stir in the Town of Colonie as they have taken up residence in a corner of the highway department’s salt shed and need to be removed. But because they are honeybees, and not yellow jackets, hornets or another type of bee, extracting the insects from the shed calls for more than just exterminators because the honeybee is just shy of making the endangered species list.
According to Michele Matuszek from the town’s highway department, the honeybee colony is about 4 by 8 inches.
It’s quite large, she said.
Matuszek said she started making calls to learn the best way to remove the bees, but because the honeybees are so close to being an endangered species, the state Department of Environmental Conservation asks that a beekeeper come and take the bees out alive. Beekeepers tend to bring the live bees to a bee sanctuary after they extract them.
It will cost the town about $600 to have the bees extracted, and funding was approved by the Town Board at its regular meeting on Thursday, Aug. 6.
The company that will extract the bees is Sweet Sunshine/Honey Bee Gone, based out of Johnstown.
The company’s owner and president of the Southern Adirondack Beekeeping Association Dan Kerwood said it is paramount to the human existence that the honeybee population stays intact.
`The honeybee colonies are dying off,` said Kerwood. `And unfortunately, if the honeybees get wiped out, we’re not going to be far behind them.`
Honeybees are so important to humans, Kerwood said, because their pollination is crucial for the survival of many crops, including wheat and oats, corn, peaches, plums and `pretty much everything other than root crops.` Kerwood, who has been beekeeping for the past 10 years, said the pollination occurs when the bee touches the male and female parts of the flower when it is out collecting nectar.
Without their pollination, Kerwood said, `food would become very scarce and we would eventually become cannibals.`
Kerwood said that some people have speculated that without honey bees, the human population would last three to five years.
`So we gotta do the best we can to keep the bees coming,` he said.
Kerwood does this by extracting the live bees and putting them in hives in wooden boxes in a safe location where the bees can flourish and live. Bees hibernate in the winter, he said, so they simply stay in their hives and rest until temperatures reach at least 48 degrees again. When the weather starts getting colder, but it is not yet time to hibernate, Kerwood said the bees feed off of their honey and beat their wings rapidly to create heat. When it is 5 degrees outside, this activity can heat the hives up to between 80 and 90 degrees, he said.
When they are not hibernating, the bees are producing honey. Kerwood lets the bees keep 100 pounds of honey in their hive and everything after 100 pounds he extracts and sells.
This year, Kerwood predicts the honey crops will be light because bees do not work in the rain, something this summer has had in abundance.
He also sells beekeeping tools and hopes to start up beekeeping classes at one of the Capital District’s community colleges this fall.
Kerwood offered some advice for those who have bees in their home and are not sure whether the bees are honey bees. One quick indicator is the physical appearance of the bee, he said.
`The hornets and yellow jackets tend to be very glossy in color,` he said, while honey bees are duller. Kerwood also said honeybees are furry, and while bumblebees are also fuzzy, they are much bigger than honeybees, which are about the same size as a dry bean.
But the best way to tell what kind of bee is in your home is to do an Internet search with photos that show the different kind of bees, Kerwood said.
If you are interested in beekeeping, having a beekeeper mentor or would like to have honeybees removed from your home, contact Kerwood at [email protected] or by telephone at 762-9364 or 774-0475.
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