Published: September 19, 2008 11:18 am            

Back Roads: Hard workers

Originally published in the Sept. 19, 2008, print edition.

Honeybees migrate to Minnesota each spring. They come from California in April, May or sometimes as late as early June. They come in the night on flat bed semi-trailers.

The silver-colored hives, stacked high on the trucks, are covered with nets. Often the drivers drive non-stop to their summer homes in central Minnesota. The bees have spent their winter pollinating the almond, cherry and orange groves in California. California farmers pay bee keepers for pollination services in California.

Not so in Minnesota.

In Minnesota beekeepers have agreements with farmers to put bees in a field or along the edge of a wood lot. The agreements often go back more than a quarter century. They are renewed each fall when the beekeeper arrives on a farmer’s doorstep with a case of jars full of the bee’s sweet harvest.

In Minnesota migrant beekeepers and their winged livestock hope to arrive for the dandelion bloom. If they do, the bees have access to a rich source of pollen. But dandelions aren’t what brings bees and their keepers back to Minnesota’s wooded hills.

They seek white and yellow sweet clover and, even more so, basswood. Basswood is unique to the areas in Minnesota and Wisconsin that once were known as The Big Woods. Stands of the tall and generous trees are often mixed with sugar maple. Beekeepers value good basswood stands.

“Half of the crop is usually basswood but weather has to be good during the week or so they are flowering,” said Jeff Anderson of the California-Minnesota Honey Farm. “White clover and sweet clover are also important. Red clover is not that desirable because it has a deep flower that is hard for honeybees to get into. In August they make honey from golden rod. Golden rod honey is a darker and less valuable than basswood.”

To get a pound of the pale sweet basswood, honeybees work hard. According to Sioux Honey, a beekeeper cooperative, one bee visits between 50 and 1,000 flowers per day, but sometimes up to several thousand. Bees from the same hive call upon roughly 225,000 flowers per day. The numbers depend on weather conditions but honeybees visit approximately 2 million flowers to make one pound of honey.

The next time you see a colony of bees on one of Minnesota’s back roads, tip your hat. They are some of agriculture’s hardest workers.

        

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