By JOLENE CRAIG
Ohio Correspondent

PARKERSBURG, W.Va. — For the 29th annual West Virginia State Honey Festival, education was key.

“We thought it would be different to have someone come down and talk to people about the problems with the honeybees and what honeybees do for all of us,” said Tom Riddle, president of the festival, of the presentation by Dr. Nancy Ostiguy of Penn State University entitled “What is Happening With the Honey Bee.”

“The idea of having someone come and speak was new and we wanted to have someone knowledgeable about bees,” Riddle said.
Ostiguy has been researching honeybees and the problems with their low numbers of living and high number of deaths – including the colony collapse of 2007 – for several years, and said the number of dying colonies appears to be fewer this year.

“We haven’t done anything to fix it,” she said. “It turns out that most (colony collapse) problems seem to slow after two or three years, but we are still working to figure out the cause.”

Ostiguy said she and her team continue to lose about 30 percent of their colonies, but the loss of bees is better than the up to 90 percent from two years ago. “It’s getting better, but is far from okay,” she said. “Nothing has really changed and we are still trying to figure out what to do to keep it from happening again.”

During her recent presentation, Ostiguy told the more than 200 people in attendance how much bees do for every person and a healthy ecosystem.

“Bees pollinate everything,” she said. “All of the interesting things in our diets – fruits and vegetables, as well as herbs and flowers; without them we really would have a meat and potatoes diet.”
While the colonies are growing and being sustained, Dave Rectenwald with Rectenwald Farms in Kenna, W.Va., and vice president of the West Virginia Beekeepers Assoc., said 2009 has been a difficult year.

“It has been kind of rough on beekeepers,” he said. “All the rain and colder temperatures has kept honey production down about 25 percent of normal, but things are starting to pick up as the weather dries up.”

It is estimated more than 1,500 people attended the first day of the festival, which includes honey and honey products from around West Virginia and parts of Ohio. The festival took place Aug. 29-30 at Parkersburg City Park, about five miles from the Ohio River.
Vendors were pleased with the turnout for more reasons than just the possibility of going home with fewer jars of raw honey.

“Our role here is to promote beekeeping,” said Randi Helk, member of Tri-County Beekeepers Organization, which includes Gilmer, Ritchie, Doddridge and Pleasants counties of West Virginia. “We want people to know that not all honey is the same.”
The group had four different honey varieties out for taste-testing with animal crackers and pretzel sticks. “Nearly every honey has different flavors and are good for different things,” she said.

“People need to learn that not all honey comes in a little bear.”
A constant of the festival for more than 20 years has been Steve Conlon of Thistle Dew Farms and his live bee beards. Conlon places a queen bee on his chin and other bees swarm to it during an educational program.

Conlon does his program from inside a mesh tent on the Pavilion stage, which allows him to work with the bees with the help of his wife, Ellie. “We’ve been coming here since 1984 and don’t plan to stop coming,” Steve Conlon said.