Is your morning coffee from Kona or Kauai? Are cucumber, zucchini and squash part of your diet? Love lychee? You can credit our kamaaina honeybees, descendents of European stock, for doing much of the work to pollinate our local produce.
Spring swarming, when the bee colony starts a new hive, is a requirement for honeybee survival. Around midday, half of the colony leaves their old home with their queen. The migrating swarm is quite impressive with thousands of bees filling the air with loud buzzing. Slowly they coalesce around their queen on a tree limb or other object.
Contrary to popular myth, if left alone, swarms are generally quite gentle and often move on within 24 hours. However, if they are attacked, dead bees release a chemical message to defend their queen and colony. Keep children and pets away from swarms to avoid accidents. Pay attention, too, as they might attempt to enter your home and build a nest.
Bee swarms are one of the ways we can increase our honeybee population. Bees cannot be shipped in from the mainland or interisland. Honeybee swarms are important to maintaining bee populations. Swarms should not be destroyed. Instead, they can often easily be rehoused by a beekeeper and become another productive hive. This is far preferable to calling an exterminator or spraying with pesticides. Remember we need those bees for pollinating local gardens and crops.
Honeybee pollination is critical to many important local crops such as macadamia nuts, pumpkin, winter melon, coffee, rambutan and lychee. Hawaii honeybee populations have declined so much that many local gardeners and farmers must now resort to pollinating their crops by hand with a paintbrush! Our kamaaina honeybees continue to be under serious attack from parasites, diseases, poor diet and pesticide poisoning.
I love the saying, "The hum of bees is the voice of the garden." The sound of a swarm is unmistakable — beekeepers have described it as akin to the sound of a jet engine. The sight of a mass of fuzzy puff-ball pollinators during their transitory stop in a nearby tree, on a fence, the side of a house or other "safe" resting spots reminds us of the wonder of nature. If you are lucky enough to witness this phenomenon, feel blessed, and call a beekeeper.
If you find a swarm of bees on your property, please do not spray them with pesticides. Simply call the Hawaii Apiary Program at 352-3010 to get referrals from a statewide list of beekeepers who are interested in catching bees.
And don’t forget to buy local honey.
For more information, visit go.hawaii.edu/L8.
Pam Hinsdale and Jody Smith are Oahu Master Gardeners and can be reached at OahuMg@ctahr.hawaii.edu.
On the Net:
» Hawaii Apiary Program: hawaiibee.com/FAQ.html
» UH Honeybee Project: uhbeeproject.com
» Honeybee swarms: bit.ly/1Oz4N4R
» Pesticides: xerces.org/pesticides
» The Importance of Honeybee Pollination: bit.ly/1BMCPIG
