GLEN RIDGE, NJ — A program on bee sustainability and beekeeping is scheduled for Tuesday, March 28, at the Glen Ridge Public Library, at 7 p.m. The talk was originally scheduled for the train station. The location was changed because the Glen Ridge School District referendum vote had to be postponed due to the snowstorm last week. The vote is to take place at the train station.
The library speaker will be beekeeper Jim Feeney who has installed a hive at the Benson Street location of the “A Lot to Grow” community garden.
Feeney will speak of bee colony collapse disorder. It has been a concern for food growers and environmentalist for about 10 years with tens of thousands of bees — pollinators — vanishing overnight.
Feeney said there are a number of reasons for the decline in the bee population.
He said one reason is the varroa mite, a parasite.
“When bees are weak, that’s when the mite can take over,” Feeney said in a telephone interview earlier this week.
Another reason is the loss of forage on which bees collect nectar.
“Now, everyone has the perfect lawn,” he said. “People get rid of dandelions. There use to be a lot more 50, 60 years ago.”
At one time farmers would also rotate their crops, putting in plants that restored nitrogen to the soil but also produced flowers, according to Feeney.
“Now, they just use fertilizer,” he said.
Another problem is migrating beekeepers. These beekeepers come from all over, including NJ, and travel to California with their hives.
“Almond growers in California need a million hives a year,” Feeney said. “The bees get stressed out. They are in unfamiliar surroundings or catch diseases from other bees and come back to New Jersey.”
Seeds implanted with pesticides take their toll, according to Feeney. Bees collect nectar from the plant of an implanted seed and ingests a quantity of the pesticide.
Plant engineering hurts the bee, too, when flowers are grown with purposely altered colors.
“These plants were colored for pollen,” Feeney said.
But the bees cannot recognize the flower because its color has changed.
“The bees are thwarted,” Feeney said. “They say every three bites of food has been pollinated by a bee.”
The community garden was a good place to have a hive since bees are pollinators so he contacted Patrice Kelly, who runs the garden and got the OK.
The hive at the Glen Ridge garden was started by Feeney recently. He made the hive himself and bought a package of bees. The package has a queen, in a cage, and three pounds of bees — about 10,000 workers. The queen is placed in a chamber sealed with a sugar cube. The workers are put into a compartment attached to her chamber. They eat the sugar cube and meet their queen. And now with winter over, she will begin to lay eggs. Eventually, the colony will increase to as many as 50,000 workers.
Feeney said in NJ, flowers produce nectar April through July — a short season. But surprisingly, he said most honey does not come from the nectar found in the flowers one might tie in a bouquet but from the flowers of trees.
This will be Feeney’s first season at the Benson Street garden.
“Bees will travel up to three miles for nectar,” he said. “My hope is that they will pollinate Pat’s flowers.”
Most of the honey the hive will produce will be left to the bees to consume during the winter.
“You can get 50 pounds of honey from a hive but you leave 70,” he said.
Warm winter days can fool a bee and are not welcomed by beekeepers. Feeney said when the weather warms up, bees will leave the hive “to cleanse” themselves of digested matter.
They do not do this in the hive. But flying about cleansing themselves takes up more energy than if they stayed in the hive in the hive because of the cold.
So when they return to the hive “cleansed,” they have to eat more. But what they eat is required to make it through the cold of winter.
Another surprise was that bees, according to Feeney, love Japanese knotweed, an invasive species and the bane of home gardeners.
“Bees love it,” he said. It is a good source of nectar and makes a good-tasting honey.”
Feeney, a Verona resident, learned his beekeeping from the Essex County Beekeeping Society.
“A lot of people in Glen Ridge have bees,” he said. “It’s bigger than you think.”
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