Beehives make a comeback

WILLIAMSON COUNTY, Texas (KXAN) - Bee keeper Conrad Bouffard climbs into his white bee proof suit, fires up his smoke gun and dives into a stack of hives in western Williamson County.

The bees in the hives came a long way to get here. The colony started out in the rear wall of an old East Austin church in May 2008. Church members called on Bouffard to cut into the wall and remove the huge hive, its queen, and the thousands of bees who live with her.

Now, a year and a half later, the bee keeper studies his critters from the shade of some trees in a pen they share with a donkey and several sheep.

"Last year, this hive was teetering on collapse because it was new and there was the stress of the move, and also there was pretty significant problems with drought," said Bouffard. "And then we had all the rains. And it was just a cornucopia of honey for a long time. We've had bee keeping classes out here; we've had other things like that and the honey production and the general health of the hive has been probably twice as good as it normally would be."

But what is normal these days? Three years ago, scientists and bee keepers around the country began worrying aloud about a sudden and unexplained collapse of bee hive populations. Then the Central Texas drought of the past two years devastated the blooming plants the bees thrive on. In early fall, however, the skies opened up and while the drought is still officially with us and area lakes remain relatively shallow, area aquifers are being replenished; lawns are green again and streams are flowing.

"The consequences of the rain now, there is an immediate consequence of, you know, healthier, more vibrant bees," said Bouffard. "But then the momentum that is built up between now, over the winter, it gives them extra health over the winter and extra vibrance over the winter. So whenever we get to the spring, they'll have some momentum going forward."

It's not spring yet, though, not by a long shot. In fact, Bouffard, who owns and operates a local honey company called Round Rock Honey, worries slightly as he peers in the hives. There is honey there, but it's darker than he expected. That could be the result of pollen the bees encountered or it could be older honey.

If it's the latter, then why are the bees not producing now when rains have resulted in plenty of blooms near the hives? The keeper will have to compare these boxes with hives he keeps in other areas to be sure. One thing he already knows, though: The hives are in the middle of something called, "fall dwindle."

"That's why you see the resurgence in the spring; I mean, it's part of a natural cycle," he said.

So, apart from the natural ups and downs of nature, are bee hives going to be all right in the long run? That depends on how people behave, Bouffard argues. Large commercial bee operations transport hives across the country. Bouffard claims that exposes them to disease, toxins and mites.

"They're constantly feeding their bees and medicating their bees and the residues of all those sorts of things build up over time and you end up with kind of a toxic cocktail of factors that hurt the bees, that cause them to die," he argues. "We don't do anything; Mother Nature does everything for us. I mean, there's no chemicals whatsoever used in our bee keeping practices and that makes a huge difference."

The rest of us can also make a difference, he said, by keeping pesticides out of our lawns and gardens and by planting flowers in them. The pesticides kill not only what people want them to kill, but bees, as well. The flowers look pretty, of course, but they also draw the bees. The insects get food from the blooms and the flowers get pollinated by the bees. Both then survive, grow and prosper and so do we.