By Cory L. Higgs
Millions of bees work in harmony with the land to produce a farmers paradise in Meadows of Dan, where Tim Service has kept bees for 40 years.
Service said he got into the bee business because he wanted to get back to the land, stop eating sugar and replace it with honey. He worked with the local chapter of the National Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) to acquire grants by and built pollinator habitats that help feed bees. His habitats are a mix of various plants that provide a diverse smorgasbord, for not only bees but other pollinators like butterflies and beetles.
Honey bees have been domesticated for nearly four-and-a-half millennia, and recently have suffered a catastrophic hit to their populations, due in part to pesticides and diseases from lack of genetic diversity and constant relocation of hives by humans.
The European Union in 2018 discussed bans on pesticides that affected bees, and awareness has been raised in other localities, according to online reports.
There has been a substantial population decline of Honey bees in recent years. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) said possible suspects may be pest-like mites, habitat loss — which causes poor nutrition, and pesticides that infect colonies.
The EPA notes that everyone can help bees by reporting bee-killings and providing pollen-rich plants at home.
Working with the NRCS allowed Service to build habitats that would promote pollinators through a new program called “Bobs and Beef,” which seemed a perfect fit for Service, who wanted to venture into the cattle business in a way that would allow him to give back to the native critters that call his farm home.
But first, he was intent on finding a way to rid his pastures of Kentucky 31 fescue, which Service said is a toxic grass. He did not want to harm his bees, destroy the land or pollute the watershed in the process, but did want to also create a habitat for quail and bobwhites. (Bobwhites are the best known of more than 100 different kinds of birds, including several in the grouse family, called quails.)
Again, by working with the NRCS, Service said he learned that the Warm-season Grasses are not only beneficial to cattle but also provide an excellent habitat for quail and bobwhites. That led him to plant two sister crops: Black-eyed Susans, and Warm-season Grasses. The two work in concert to convert the property and rid it of the undesired fescue.
The fields of flowers provide for the conversion of the land to a more cattle friendly grass while the pollinator habitats feed the bees and will remain intact, according to Service. He explained the flowers provide a graph to hold the soil in place and choke out weeds, while the grass grows underneath and will eventually become dominate.
He planted his fields in a thick growth of Black-eyed Susans, but then was concerned that he may have planted them too thick. “I used a half-gallon of seeds per acre, and there are about 1.5 million seeds in a gallon. Next time, I’ll use a few ounces” of seed per acre, Service said, chuckling as he looked out over millions of the blossoming flowers.
A team of grad students from Virginia Tech recently put that concern to rest. After visiting his farm and looking over his crop, the group determined that even with the thick growth of flowers, the Warm-season Grass is coming in strong.
That was good news to Service, who noted that his bee farm produces hundreds of queen bees every season. The bees then are sold to other beekeepers all across the country.
Now, his farm is becoming something of a safe haven for more than bees, and although he now is venturing into the world of cattle farming, the buzz is still about the bees on his farm.
While there is no denying that bees are in a hive of trouble, Service said beekeepers must be committed to maintaining a healthy hive.
A person can’t just buy bees and set them out, he said. “You have to work with them and get dirty. Be a beekeeper, not a bee owner.”
