As bee populations decline around the world, beekeeping is becoming
the environmentally "in" thing to do, even in urban settings. VOA takes us to the grounds of the Franciscan monastery in
Washington, D.C. for a crash course on the life of bees and their
importance to the environment. Then, we visit the rooftop of D.C.'s
posh Fairmont hotel, where chefs are keeping hives and harvesting the
honey to use in everything from cheese plates to the French delicacy,
foie gras.
Joe Bozik has been keeping bees on the grounds of the Franciscan Monastery in Washington D.C. for about four years.
Recently,
honey bee populations in the U.S. and Europe have fallen victim to
something called "Colony Collapse Disorder," where bees leave the hive
but, for unknown reasons, never return.
"It is happening most
with the commercial beekeepers, and one of the theories is that they
stress the bees by moving them long distances to get them to pollinate
certain fields," Bozik said.
Bees play an integral part in
pollinating fruits and vegetables. There is concern that declining
populations could affect food production. Joe would like to see more
people take up beekeeping as a hobby to increase their numbers.
"By
having people more involved with hobbyist kinds of beekeepers, there
may be some people who will actually raise queens and then offer those
queens to beekeepers that are losing bees," he said.
Each hive
contains about 45,000 bees. There are three types of bees in a hive.
Female honey bees which collect the pollen and nectar. The queen. And
male drone bees which fertilize the queen. The queen is the most
important bee. There is only one in each hive.
The queen lives for three to four years. Her
only job is to lay eggs. Female worker bees live for about 45 days,
which means the queen must lay over 1,000 eggs a day for the hive to
survive.
Today, Joe and his friend Toni Burnham are inspecting the
hive to make sure the queen is laying enough eggs.
"The queen
begins laying in the middle and she lays in a spiral out toward the
edges so you can see that the last eggs laid in that frame are only now
capped," he explains.
In three days, the eggs hatch as larvae.
Worker bees feed the larvae until adulthood. Joe says he gets a lot of
personal satisfaction out of working with bees.
"You have got
thousands of bees that you are handling, bare hands, and you are
helping them," he said. "And there is a satisfaction that they are
producing honey."
Joe's passion for bees is spreading. Across
town at Washington's Fairmont hotel, pastry chef Aron Weber and
executive chef Ian Bens have started a bee colony on the hotel roof.
With
the full support of the hotel, they started their hives about three
months ago. Aron says they wanted to do their part for the
environment. "The honey bees are so important for the environment. For
pollinating all the plants and vegetables, pretty much everything we
eat," he said.
Executive chef Ian Bens says each hive should
produce 100 pounds of honey a year. "I am interested in what
Erin is going to be able to do with the pastries. We are working on
some comb honey as well to go with cheese plates," Bens said.
According
to experts, urban bee keeping is on the rise. The White House recently
added some beehives in the vegetable garden. The jury is still out as
to why bee populations are declining. But demand is still high for
honey, and more urban dwellers are keeping hives and harvesting their
own.
