By CELESTE BAUMGARTNER
Ohio Correspondent

OXFORD, Ohio — Bob Rauen has been keeping bees for 30 years, maybe longer, he said. Once he had more, but now he keeps 48 hives and five “nucs,” small hives of five or six frames.

Some of the hives are on his farm but most are spread throughout Butler County. Rauen sells the honey at the Original Oxford Farm Market and local stores. “He’s always been fascinated by bees,” said his wife, Martha. That fascination began when his son, Mark, had bees as a 4-H project. Now a grandson, Brendon Sasser, age 9, is interested.

Rauen’s hives have not been affected by Complete Colony Destruction (CCD) which is typical. So far, CCD has mostly harmed migrant beekeepers. Ohio and the Midwest are largely unaffected.

Until maybe 10-years ago, the main concern of beekeepers was American Foul Brood, a disease which attacks young bees before they emerge from their cell. The entire hive had to be destroyed to control it, Rauen said.

About 10-years ago beekeepers began to have trouble with mites - varroa and tracheal. “There are all kinds of medicated strips used to treat mites,” Rauen said. “They keep finding more because after about two years the medication doesn’t work anymore.”

Rauen’s bees, typical of many in Ohio and other places, had a rough winter although it had nothing to do with CCD. A typical loss of bees during the winter might be 10-30 percent. Rauen lost more than that.

When the weather warmed in January, the bees started to reproduce or “brood up.” February came, and with it, cold weather.
The adult bees had to “shiver” to generate heat to keep the brood warm. That takes energy, which comes from honey. The bees went through the food stores too fast and died.

But enough bees survived that Rauen was able to build the hives up again and they are flourishing - so far.

Last summer the hives produced 1,200 pounds of honey - not a good year. A more typical yield would be 5,000 pounds.

Yet no matter how many pounds of honey, the interest remains because bees are fascinating. Rauen has lots of bee facts:

When a bee leaves the hive, it only visits one type of flower - maybe dandelions. Another bee from the same hive may be working sweet clover, only sweet clover.

“When they come back to the hive after they have found a good source of nectar or pollen they do a special dance on the comb that tells the other bees where to go and about how far to go,” Rauen said.

“You can take a frame out of the hive and watch them, they circle one way, half circle one way, dance down the middle,” he said.

When bees do their dance, in addition to communicating to other bees where the source is, they are trying to recruit bees to go out and gather the nectar or pollen. Much of the time 30 percent of them are not busy, despite what we’ve all heard about bees.

“They’re busy doing nothing,” Rauen said.

This farm news was published in the June 2, 2007 issue of Farm World, serving Indiana, Ohio, Illinois, Kentucky, Michigan and Tennessee.