A Sweet Hobby
Maine’s clean farming practices and favorable environment keep bee populations healthy.
Erin MacGregor-Forbes is an Eastern Apicultural Society-certified Master Beekeeper who daylights as an accountant at the Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens in Boothbay. She is heading up the Gardens’ bee exhibit, which opens this spring.
When she ordered her first colony 15 years ago, she said it was like getting a puppy, but far less interactive. She said it takes 17 bees to equal the same mass as a single M&M candy. “When you move beyond the fear of the stinger and you actually look a little bit closer at bees, they are tiny little puffs of air,” she said.
She was always interested in bees and their role in the environment. After she got her first colony, she would watch them like the hive was an aquarium. Their self-reliance enchanted her, she said. She did not have a bee-keeping mentor, so she had to rely on research and her own learning to take care of them.
Her bee hobby turned into a heavy side gig, and now she takes care of about 150 colonies. Taking care of bees in three different locations gives her a unique opportunity to interact with nature and the environment. Erin said most people think beekeepers are brave for working with bees without a suit, but she said the activity is very peaceful one.
“Once you’ve gotten past the fact that they are stinging insects and you’re thinking of them as these golden, magical, flying, fuzzy, cute things that can do a lot of good for the environment, the area of the hives can be a really welcoming and relaxing kind of environment,” she said.
She graduated from the University of Southern Maine with a degree in accounting, an area which is primarily about organization, she said. Bee colonies also involve a lot of organization.
“A hive smells sweet and humid. Honey takes on the scent of the flowers used to create it,” Erin said. “Beeswax is made from a gland secretion, and honey is plant nectar with its water evaporated.”
The idea that bees are simple insects could not be further from reality. There is a complex hierarchy in a beehive that is driven by intentional reason, governing decisions from feeding to laying eggs.
Though their brains are tiny, they can communicate complex thoughts like weather patterns and precise directions to the areas that have the most pollinating plants. Erin thinks this ability to communicate is the most interesting thing about bees. They are one of the most-studied organisms, and humans have learned a lot about how they exchange information.
“It opens a window to the natural world that says everything is much more complicated than we think it is,” Erin said.
The average worker bee lives for only 45 days, but has a profound impact on its environment. Bees can bring about the recovery of natural-disaster areas (like those burned in forest fires) or manmade environmental degradation (like places damaged by strip mining) faster than indigenous pollinators. They bring back native plant species faster, leading in turn to effective rebounds in the local animal and insect populations.
“Having beekeepers and having the skills to know and move and get bees into environmentally degraded places can have a really restorative impact,” she said. “Not to mention the fact that they make honey and beeswax, which is a cool and amazing byproduct of pollination.”
Erin has never had a colony collapse because of pesticide poisoning. She said many people in Maine opt not to use pesticides because organic farming practices are becoming increasingly popular. Organizations like the Maine Organic Farmers and Gardeners Association provide public education about healthy farming operations, which benefits bees.
Maine winters are harsh enough to reduce the types and numbers of pests that farmers must protect crops against. Erin said this aspect of Maine’s climate decreases the likelihood of farmers using pesticides that kill bees. In states that do not have cold, lengthy winters, commercial farms use pesticides that can kill bees and put a strain on crop and plant pollination in the area.
Maine also has no dry season in the summer. Places with dry summers tend to see honey production decreased. In addition to these climate factors, “Bees need clean water and good healthy plants,” she said. “And so, we’re lucky here in northern New England that we still have a clean environment that’s supportive of bees and other insects.”
Bees do not hibernate in the winter, which is why they make so much honey. Maine beekeepers like Erin harvest their honey between July and September, leaving time for the bees to produce enough honey to eat for the winter.
People plant flowers for bees in the summer, thinking it will help the insects survive winter longer. But Erin said it is best to plant early spring-blooming flowers, ones that appear from early April to May. Early spring is the most vulnerable time for bees because they are running low on their winter honey supply and need to find flowers to create more.
She said a bee is most likely to starve to death in early spring because there are few flowering plants to replenish the dwindling winter pollen stock. Scilla and pussywillows are early spring flowers that provide bees with lots of pollen.
Erin said the best flowers for bees, to most lawn owners’ chagrin, are dandelions. To people who want to help bees, she recommends reducing the frequency of lawn mowing and letting the dandelions grow. “Culturally, these weeds are not really super popular, but if you really want to help the bees, let dandelions grow in your lawn.”
