May 27, 2013
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Mr. C's Bees in Cedar Bluff a hobby sweet as honey By SCOTT WRIGHT CEDAR BLUFF — An entire generation of high school students in Alabama and Georgia know Rick Clifton simply as “Mr. C.” For over 20 years, Clifton taught science at Cedar Bluff High School before working for the Cherokee County Board of Education and the University of Alabama. He then spent another 12 years as technology director in the Chattooga County, Ga. school system. These days, the system “Mr. C” is most interested in is the sprawling, 21-hive honeybee farm behind his home near Cornwall Furnace in Cedar Bluff. Five years after taking on the hobby, a man who for decades was most comfortable talking about cell membranes, arching parabolas and computer networks is constantly intrigued by the intricacies of beekeeping. “I did a lot of research online before I ever got started, but that in no way prepared me,” Clifton told The Post last week. “I started out thinking I could just go and buy bees. But I had to go all the way to south Georgia just to get some bees.” Clifton said his initial interested was sparked after he noticed his fruit trees and berry vines weren't producing as well as he thought they should. When he checked into getting a hive of bees to assist Mother Nature in pollinating the plants in his own back yard, he heard about “colony-collapse disorder” and soon found himself fascinated. “By some estimates as much as 40 percent of all honeybees have been lost to the disorder,” he said. “It seemed like a natural thing for me to buy some bees, get my trees pollinated, and help the bee population rebound in the process.” First reported in 2006, colony-collapse disorder (CCD) has led to the estimated increase in bee colony loss, up from a typical rate of around 15 percent annually. Scientists have no hard evidence about what causes CCD, but parasitic mites and a fast-spreading bacterial disease from Europe are leading suspects. New studies have also linked the use of pesticides to the U.S. collapse. Honeybees perform a vital service. In addition to providing honey—the only natural substance known to mankind that never spoils—they also pollinate many different types of plants by collecting pollen and nectar in the spring when flowers and plants are blooming. “Albert Einstein once purportedly said that if the bee population collapsed, the population of the world would be four years behind,” Clifton said. “Two of every five bites of food that humans consume can be related back to the honey bee.” As the bees fly back to the hive, the nectar in their stomachs interacts with enzymes produced by the bees, converting it into honey. The bee then drops the honey into the comb inside the hive, repeating the process until all the combs are full. As scientists work to figure out what is causing the death of insects responsible for pollinating crops worth $200 billion a year, it may be up to small beekeepers like Clifton to help keep the species viable. “Scientists are working really hard on this, there's a lot of research going on,” Clifton said. “It's a lot of factors rolled into one. We better get a handle on it.” Hearing all the buzz Motoring out to Clifton's bee farm on an ATV earlier this month, the afternoon sun cuts through the trees and casts shadows on an empty field. The work shed where Clifton stores his beekeeping equipment sits nearby. Even though we're a hundred yards from the hives, there's already a distinctive buzzing in the air. After suiting up, Clifton leads the way to the hives. As soon as he shuts off the ATV, the buzz is overwhelming. Now the source of the sound is plain to see. There are bees everywhere—they're in the sky, darting back and forth and on the hives, lighting and then crawling into the entrances near the bottom of their stacked, microwave-sized white boxes. “Don't swat at them,” Clifton says. “You'll make them mad.” They seem mad already, but Clifton says they are quite docile and simply going about their business. Slowly, the realization that the thick beekeeper's jacket and netted helmet don't have any holes big enough for a bee to fly through begins to take hold in the subconscious. The urge to swat does not go away, but it becomes controllable. Mostly. For the next 45 minutes, Clifton walks from hive to hive, blowing cedar smoke into the entrances to calm the bees. Then, he slowly lifts the tops on nearly all his hives to perform day-to-day maintenance and check for progress on the slowly-filling honeycombs. “I've got one hive I could show you, but those guys get mad and will probably follow us for the rest of the day,” Clifton says. “We'll skip that one today, unless you really want to go over there.” (We skipped it.) Clifton said starting a bee farm consists of building the hives, buying the bees to inhabit them, and taking care of them every day through harvest time. And all that work doesn't include keeping them alive through the winter. Years ago, Clifton started small with only two hives. He said enough bees to populate a hive—around three pounds of live, buzzing workers and drones—cost around a hundred dollars. And don't forget about the queen, he adds. “When I got back with the bees, the first thing that happened was the queen died, or I lost her,” he says. “So within a few days—no queen. What do you do then?” Clifton said losing the queen ended up being a good learning experience. Now, he incubates his own queens and understands much more about how his tens of thousands of bees interact. “I’ve expanded my knowledge but I'm still not where I need to be, by any means,” Clifton says. “There are people out there who run circles around me. And my bees teach me something new almost every day.” |