NATURE: Seasons

The nectar flow is an intense period of nectar availability. For the western portion of the Columbia Gorge that becomes the blackberries. For east of Mosier, it is a series of floral presentations.

Bee colonies have two major goals post winter: 1) Feed the troops, and 2) accumulate sufficient honey for the winter months. The average hive must store approximately one-hundred and twenty pounds of honey and approximately fifty pounds of pollen.

There are two phases in the honey bee worker life: 1) inside work tending to brood (babies), and 2) foraging for nectar, pollen and water. The forager, weighing about 0.1 gram, is capable of bringing back half its body weight. It takes 10,000 bees, foraging over four trips, to produce 2.2 pounds of honey. The foraging worker, those bees four-weeks and older, literally fly themselves to death in their effort to support the colony.

Most assume the bees in the backyard are for the sole purpose of providing honey to the beekeeper. Yet, one must consider the needs of the colony first before stealing any. The earliest record of humans collecting honey was in Spain around nine-thousand years ago. There is also historical evidence the Neanderthals gathered and consumed honey for nutrients during the Stone Age.

While we, here in the Columbia Gorge, have fretted about the Hood River Bridge and the heat wave in July; our honey bees have suffered significant challenges in their survival. First, the bees’ larvae (babies) require feeding every two seconds. The brood thrives on a mixture of pollen and nectar. Since our spring failed to support foraging, the “grocery shelves” were rapidly depleted starving the brood and adults.

The nectar flow was delayed as plants and flowers did not appear until June. Many a colony suffered from malnutrition this year. Didn’t mothers struggle to acquire baby formulae during COVID?

The honey bee colony that entered the new year with fifteen-thousand inhabitants rapidly expanding to fifty-thousand, soon begins to decease back toward their winter numbers. The availability of nectar diminishes in the Gorge from July onward. Thus, the need for the army is no longer required.

No matter where you are in the Gorge, foliage is also shifted from blooms to fall and winter preparation (sleeping). Yes, there are flowers in bloom, but far less than the spring offers.

The queen reduces her egg laying as the colony no longer needs an abundant population.

Another phase shifts from the “summer bee” to the “winter bee”. A higher amount of vitelloginen is expressed in the eggs the queen begins to lay in August. This vital egg yolk protein allows the honey bee to extend its life from the six-weeks to six-months. This is not a time to have a weak queen unable to provide the shift.

This becomes the ideal season for beekeepers to extract the excess honey build up by the foragers. But some thought must be entertained not to bring the hive to its knees without sufficient groceries for the impending winter.

I t also becomes a time to assess the three critical issues a hive must have to sustain the winter: 1) Must be disease free, 2) Must be pest free (Varroa destructor mite), and 3) Have sufficient stores.

Humans are consumed with thoughts surrounding their needs for the hour, day and possible a few days. Honey bees are planning, from January, the work necessary for winter preparation. Why? In order to survive the cold winter months, the colony clusters around the queen. The workers are able to vibrate their flights muscles approximately 50,000 times a minute which creates heat. This workout may only be supported with a lot of energy, which for the bee comes from honey.

So it becomes a circle beginning in January and ending in December that the planning and work of the hive must be in unison with the environment surrounding the hive in hopes of winter survival. In the Pacific Northwest colony losses are around 40%.

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This story originally appeared in the September 2024 issue of Columbia Gorge News' Home and Garden section.