Busy bees, busy Bischoffs

The world’s bee population is facing a slew of issues, and one local beekeeper is working to keep up with the demand for local honey and keep his hives healthy and thriving.
“I lost about 50 percent of my hives last year,” said Clint Bischoff of Bischoff Honey just outside Eunice. “The queen bees I got from Mississippi and Florida couldn’t survive here. The disappearance of the queens really hurt us last year.”
“Bees are disappearing rapidly.”
What started out as a way to provide honey for his own family and teach his children about business and economics has grown in just a few years from seven hives to 80 in four different locations.
Bischoff’s wife, Jillane, and their children, Clare, Marianne, Meredith, Margaret Mary, Luke and John Paul, all have a role in the family business, whether its checking the bees, harvesting honey, building bee boxes or taking care of the business’s social media and marketing.
According to Bischoff a package of one queen and 5,000 bees costs about $80, and a nuc (short for nucleus), which includes frames of bees with a queen and workers, brood in all stages and honey stores, is about $125. The Bischoff’s received their first batch of bees through the mail from a supplier in Ohio, but the hive did not survive very long.
“We had a lot of trial and error,” he said. “It’s hard to find a package of bees here in Louisiana. Buying bees is not easy. The supply is far less than the demand, and you can only buy them at certain times of the year.”
“It’s a lot more work involved than I originally thought it would be.”
“Yes – dad said he was getting bees and we wouldn’t have to feed them and could check on them once a year,” said daughter Marianne. “It’s not like that at all.”
“Bees are very fragile, the queen specifically,” the father said. “You have to be very careful with the queen.”
A queen bee can live from one to three years, and she is responsible for laying eggs for what Bischoff calls the crew change -- replacing worker bees that only live about 35 days, basically working themselves to death gathering pollen and nectar and taking care of the hive. But even with their meager status in the hive pecking order, worker bees can easily declare mutiny on their queen.
“If there are no bees coming up — the queen is not laying eggs — there will be no crew change,” Bischoff said. “Worker bees can detect failure. They can kill the queen. Finding hives that are honey bound is a big problem right now. The queen has nowhere to lay eggs.”
“Other bee keepers are experiencing this same problem.”
The Bischoffs have strengthened their hives by purchasing queens from the Avoyelles Honey Company in Loreauville, and the Louisiana queens are working well in the Bischoff’s hives.
“They are very good queens,” Bischoff said. “Our success is attributed to good stock.”
Bischoff estimated that he and his family harvested about 150 to 200 gallons of honey last year. They have already surpassed that for this year, and harvesting is not over for the season.
“The demand for local honey is just as much as the demand for bees, and we sell everything we produce,” Bischoff said.
In addition to preventing a hive from becoming honey bound, beekeepers must also work to keep hive beetles and Varroa mites out of hives. The Bischoff’s use traps to keep such insects under control, and there are even species of bees like the Minnesota hygienic Italian line that are bred to be more aggressive at eradicating mites.
Another problem facing the beekeeping and honey industry is colony collapse disorder, and right now, there is no one explanation for what causes the disorder. The problem occurs when the majority of worker bees in a colony disappear and leave behind a queen, food and a few nurse bees, which care for immature bees and the queen.
“We do not know the cause of colony collapse disorder,” said Dennis Ring, a Louisiana State University professor and extension entomologist with the LSUAg Center. “No one knows what causes colony collapse disorder. The problem is very complex, and there are lots of things involved.”
Each year, Ring puts out the state honey summary, and last year, honey production in Louisiana was at 1.69 million pounds, down from the 1.84 million pounds collected in 2013. Ring attributed the decrease to rains that occurred when Chinese tallow trees were in full bloom, reducing the ability of bees to gather nectar from the tree.
While production was down, the estimated number of beekeepers last year was at 448, up from 325 in 2013.
“There has been an increase in the number of small beekeepers and homegrown beekeepers,” Ring said. “It’s becoming a hobby, and more and more people want to do it. Most of them have one or two hives.”
“There is a continued demand for local honeys from commercial and hobby beekeepers. This demand improves the sales and value of Louisiana honey. Local honeys are the most popular in many local markets for the anti-allergenic properties.”
With all the problems facing the world’s bee population, Ring stressed the importance facilities like the U.S. Department of Agricultural Research Service’s Bee Breeding and Physiology Laboratory in Baton Rouge.
“They are working to make line of Varroa mite resistant lines of bees,” Ring said. “It’s really important to keep facilities like this open.”
“Honeybees continue to provide valuable pollination services to Louisiana crops with estimates of the value of these services in the millions of dollars each year. Pollination is important in home gardens, wild settings, and commercial production including fruits, vegetables, flowers and other plants.”