fatscher
05-06-2009, 12:51 PM
I made a recent trip to Georgia, Reggie Wilbanks' operation in Claxton, Georgia, to pick up 375 packages of bees for several clubs in our Northern Virginia region. It was truly an education and a half.
Starting at the bee headquarters (Wilbanks Apiaries, Hagan, Ga) A crew of about 15 Mexicans, Hondurans, Bolivians and others south of the border (I didn't ask their nationality), load up in several trucks at 7 am and off we go down the dusty red roads of south Georgia, lined with Spanish moss-draped oaks, and tall slender Georgia pines. Amazingly there's little humidity at 7 am at 77 degrees. After what felt like an hour's drive (more like 10-15 mins) we arrived at a bee yard totally in the shade
The workers jumped out, led by two from Mexico, Gomez and Enrique, donned their folding hat veils, and lit their smokers. They all tightly grab a huge clump of pine needles off the ground in their fists, and light from the bottom with a lighter. Once the needles get ablaze, and without setting their clothes on fire, they stuff them down into the smoker. I never once saw them relight their smoker, for the next 2 hours we worked...it defied physics, but they did have the 11 incher smokers, so maybe that made the difference in keeping the fires going.
The 1st beeyard we visited was in pure shade, not dark shade but more shade than dappled, Spanish moss draping from oaks. It was surreal. I felt like I was in Brazil with so much Spanish spoken (yeah, I know for all you smart alecks out there they speak Portugese in Brazil -- there's a smarty pants in every bee blog, isn't there?) in an almost tropical setting. This bee yard had about 60 hives, each was a single deep painted white, with 9 drawn frames and a division board feeder in the 10 frame position---these feeders are made of wood & masonite, lined with tar in the inside. The hives have migratory covers and each sits on two cinder blocks.
Reggie has 80 bee yards like this with some hives numbering up to 75-80 in some yards. Our average shake was about 2 hives to make a 3.5 lb package of bees. Little Mac, the only non-latino employed by Reggie and who's been working for Reggie since Reggie took over the business from his dad years ago, can tell if a package as 3.2, 3.4, or 3.6 lbs of bees just be looking at it. They shake the bees to the bottom and if the top line of bees comes up just under the syrup can cross bar, then that's officially 3 lbs. The bees were shaken into the top hole of the boxes using a 3 ft tall fiberglass funnel fitted especially for the round hole in the tops of our packages. The workmen were able to balance a package onto the top of one foot, and "walk" from hive to hive with the funnel stuck into the hole. You can't drag the funnel with the box or else the funnel will come out. Very efficient.
The 15 or so latino workers were divided up into "pullers" and "locators." There were maybe 3-4 pullers, and 10 locators, to locate the queen, so she wasn't shaken into a hive. I guess 10 sets of eyes are better than fewer.
The pullers would pull the frames (around 5 or 6 or so) that looked most prime for shaking. The locators standing over the pullers' shoulders searching intently for mama and her huge golden abdomen. When located, a puller would grab mama in his hand while also handing frames, and hold on to her until he was done shaking, then he'd toss her back into the hive, restore the frames and top cover.
These pullers used their hive tools furiously, furiously scraping honey-saturated burr comb off the inside of the top cover and the top bars, and throwing it onto the ground into the Georgia sandy, pine-needle covered ground. The bees eat the honey out of the wax, returning into the hive. Then someone else comes along a day or two later and collected the sugar cookie sandy wax, yuck which is then melted down into these 5 gallon bucket size of beeswax cylinders that Reggie keeps in a 40ft ceiling high warehouse.
Ok, this next part is not for the faint of heart. Kids need to be sent to bed for this next part. I saw hundreds maybe close to a thousand nurse bees crawling on the sandy ground, who had been shaken into the boxes, and who missed the mouth of the funnel, confused where home was, never to return, who would eventually die from exposure. Remember nurse bees are youngsters, they've never flown outside the hive before, they don't know what the sunlit world is like. The flap their wings but can't get off the ground. In the ensuing massacre and fury of scraping burr comb off top bars, hundreds and hundreds of poor young nurse bees are sacrificed. It was really a pitiful site, if you have a soft heart. And there's nothing you can do, but watrch or turn away, that was the gory part of this operation.
I asked Reggie about CCD, (like so many average joes who know nothing about it ask me about it). Reggie said he experienced nothing like he had heard on the news. Reggie is a large man, soft spoken, Georgia drawl. He is very friendly but reserved in talk, he thinks before he speaks. He likes people, genuinely does. We wrote a check for over $20,000 dollars straight out to Reggie for the packages. Reggie has likely spent ~$120,000 in sugar syrup since Jan. A freighter truck full of HFCS costs somewhere around $25-$40,000 each delivery. Unsure how many gallons that is.
We went to the 2nd yard, and eventually ended shaking a total of 60 packages on Saturday, 315 other packages had been shaken on Thurs & Friday, and stored in a cooled room back at the warehouse kept 65 degrees to keep the bees from burning themselves up...any idea how much heat one package of bees can put out???
With speed and precision, those workers put the packages into our truck and trailer (an open trailer from Uhaul specially modified with plywood front, side and top panels to keep the bees from blowing in the 635 mile highway wind while also keeping them from overheating. We pulled out of Hagan, Ga at 10:57am eastern time, after leaving for the beeyard at 7:10 that morning. So it took almost 4 hours to go shake 60 packages of bees and get them loaded on to the truck and for us to leave town. Not bad.
Starting at the bee headquarters (Wilbanks Apiaries, Hagan, Ga) A crew of about 15 Mexicans, Hondurans, Bolivians and others south of the border (I didn't ask their nationality), load up in several trucks at 7 am and off we go down the dusty red roads of south Georgia, lined with Spanish moss-draped oaks, and tall slender Georgia pines. Amazingly there's little humidity at 7 am at 77 degrees. After what felt like an hour's drive (more like 10-15 mins) we arrived at a bee yard totally in the shade
The workers jumped out, led by two from Mexico, Gomez and Enrique, donned their folding hat veils, and lit their smokers. They all tightly grab a huge clump of pine needles off the ground in their fists, and light from the bottom with a lighter. Once the needles get ablaze, and without setting their clothes on fire, they stuff them down into the smoker. I never once saw them relight their smoker, for the next 2 hours we worked...it defied physics, but they did have the 11 incher smokers, so maybe that made the difference in keeping the fires going.
The 1st beeyard we visited was in pure shade, not dark shade but more shade than dappled, Spanish moss draping from oaks. It was surreal. I felt like I was in Brazil with so much Spanish spoken (yeah, I know for all you smart alecks out there they speak Portugese in Brazil -- there's a smarty pants in every bee blog, isn't there?) in an almost tropical setting. This bee yard had about 60 hives, each was a single deep painted white, with 9 drawn frames and a division board feeder in the 10 frame position---these feeders are made of wood & masonite, lined with tar in the inside. The hives have migratory covers and each sits on two cinder blocks.
Reggie has 80 bee yards like this with some hives numbering up to 75-80 in some yards. Our average shake was about 2 hives to make a 3.5 lb package of bees. Little Mac, the only non-latino employed by Reggie and who's been working for Reggie since Reggie took over the business from his dad years ago, can tell if a package as 3.2, 3.4, or 3.6 lbs of bees just be looking at it. They shake the bees to the bottom and if the top line of bees comes up just under the syrup can cross bar, then that's officially 3 lbs. The bees were shaken into the top hole of the boxes using a 3 ft tall fiberglass funnel fitted especially for the round hole in the tops of our packages. The workmen were able to balance a package onto the top of one foot, and "walk" from hive to hive with the funnel stuck into the hole. You can't drag the funnel with the box or else the funnel will come out. Very efficient.
The 15 or so latino workers were divided up into "pullers" and "locators." There were maybe 3-4 pullers, and 10 locators, to locate the queen, so she wasn't shaken into a hive. I guess 10 sets of eyes are better than fewer.
The pullers would pull the frames (around 5 or 6 or so) that looked most prime for shaking. The locators standing over the pullers' shoulders searching intently for mama and her huge golden abdomen. When located, a puller would grab mama in his hand while also handing frames, and hold on to her until he was done shaking, then he'd toss her back into the hive, restore the frames and top cover.
These pullers used their hive tools furiously, furiously scraping honey-saturated burr comb off the inside of the top cover and the top bars, and throwing it onto the ground into the Georgia sandy, pine-needle covered ground. The bees eat the honey out of the wax, returning into the hive. Then someone else comes along a day or two later and collected the sugar cookie sandy wax, yuck which is then melted down into these 5 gallon bucket size of beeswax cylinders that Reggie keeps in a 40ft ceiling high warehouse.
Ok, this next part is not for the faint of heart. Kids need to be sent to bed for this next part. I saw hundreds maybe close to a thousand nurse bees crawling on the sandy ground, who had been shaken into the boxes, and who missed the mouth of the funnel, confused where home was, never to return, who would eventually die from exposure. Remember nurse bees are youngsters, they've never flown outside the hive before, they don't know what the sunlit world is like. The flap their wings but can't get off the ground. In the ensuing massacre and fury of scraping burr comb off top bars, hundreds and hundreds of poor young nurse bees are sacrificed. It was really a pitiful site, if you have a soft heart. And there's nothing you can do, but watrch or turn away, that was the gory part of this operation.
I asked Reggie about CCD, (like so many average joes who know nothing about it ask me about it). Reggie said he experienced nothing like he had heard on the news. Reggie is a large man, soft spoken, Georgia drawl. He is very friendly but reserved in talk, he thinks before he speaks. He likes people, genuinely does. We wrote a check for over $20,000 dollars straight out to Reggie for the packages. Reggie has likely spent ~$120,000 in sugar syrup since Jan. A freighter truck full of HFCS costs somewhere around $25-$40,000 each delivery. Unsure how many gallons that is.
We went to the 2nd yard, and eventually ended shaking a total of 60 packages on Saturday, 315 other packages had been shaken on Thurs & Friday, and stored in a cooled room back at the warehouse kept 65 degrees to keep the bees from burning themselves up...any idea how much heat one package of bees can put out???
With speed and precision, those workers put the packages into our truck and trailer (an open trailer from Uhaul specially modified with plywood front, side and top panels to keep the bees from blowing in the 635 mile highway wind while also keeping them from overheating. We pulled out of Hagan, Ga at 10:57am eastern time, after leaving for the beeyard at 7:10 that morning. So it took almost 4 hours to go shake 60 packages of bees and get them loaded on to the truck and for us to leave town. Not bad.