
DATE: Monday, August 18, 1997               TAG: 9708180088

SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B1   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: BY ERIKA REIF, STAFF WRITER 

DATELINE: YORK COUNTY                       LENGTH:  162 lines

TO BEE OR NOT TO BEE KEEPERS WARN THAT A DEARTH OF BEES THREATENS CROP PRODUCTION.

This beekeeper is a crusader. His army of winged warriors thrives at about a million strong. They are Maywood Wilson's answer to a decline in crop pollination by honeybees that ecologists and farmers say is threatening the nation's food supply.

Yet beekeepers like Wilson are dwindling in numbers, too, as is the honeybee population itself.

Honeybees perform nearly 80 percent of all insect pollination of crops. But over the past 10 years, about 95 percent of the wild honeybee population nationally has been decimated by parasitic mites and environmental problems.

``Managed'' bees kept in hives have faced similar destruction, though in lesser numbers. As a result, many beekeepers have become discouraged and given up.

Not Wilson. For 25 years, he has steadily nurtured colonies with patience matching that of the first European settlers who brought honeybees to Jamestown 375 years ago. Those bees flourished so well that Native Americans labeled them ``white-man's flies.''

But their dramatic demise in recent years is leaving some crops insufficiently pollinated, a niche that has not been filled by other types of bees and insects, or by birds and mammals that transport pollen.

For Wilson, the battle is on many fronts. His biggest target is ignorance - people who don't understand the field-to-table biology of pollination that supplies one out of three mouthfuls they eat.

How pollen sticks to the hairy bodies of bees, and carries, from flower to flower, the microscopic male sperm to female receptors. That without multiple bee visits to each flower, the fruit turns out misshapen and knotty, and may fall off the branch or vine too soon, small and worthless.

``It's time for people to wise up,'' says the 64-year-old retired NASA engineering technician. ``It's a crisis in pollination, and the public doesn't realize it.''

The worst of it is that his foes are shadowy targets: urbanization of woods and farmland, industrial chemicals and pesticides, epidemic parasites, and governmental bodies not particularly sympathetic to beekeepers.

``They're concerned about the spotted owl, bald eagle, turkey buzzards and - '' Wilson's voice rises in disbelief - ``crows.''

``And they're not aware their food chain is under bombardment. I'm concerned about those creatures that provide us with food.''

Wilson keeps a dozen hives on property in York County, King and Queen County and in Hampton. Seven of the hives are in his back yard and in a field near his home in the Tabb area of York County. They help pollinate crops on a farm next door, where his brother continues to farm land that belonged to their parents.

Wilson's bees also pollinate his vegetable garden and scattered apple, peach and pear trees. It was gardeners, like himself, who noticed fewer and fewer bees visiting their vegetables' blossoms, who first sounded the alarm that called Wilson to action.

He has been raising bees since the late '60s, when an elderly beekeeper who could no longer tend his hives gave one to Wilson. Over the years, Wilson bought more hives, and in the late '70s, he joined co-workers who had formed the NASA-Langley Apicultural Club.

The club expanded to serve beekeepers from Newport News to the far corners of Gloucester County on the Middle Peninsula, and it meets in a York County nursing home. Wilson said he has asked York County officials to provide a regular meeting room - and was refused.

``It angered me that the county would not support us at least by giving us a meeting place,'' said Wilson, club president for 10 years. ``The educated beekeepers are the only ones who are going to be able to keep bees in the United States. That's why we have these associations and meetings.

``It's a profession that looks like it's on the way out.''

The numbers appear to support that. Of the 200,000 or so beekeepers in the United States, about 1,000 are in Virginia, according to the state Department of Agriculture. That's a statewide drop from 1,500 in 1991 and 2,500 in 1984.

There are no state figures for the number of beekeepers in Hampton Roads, but Chesapeake beekeeper Art Halstead estimates that there are 500. As former president of the Virginia State Beekeepers Association and the Tidewater Beekeepers Association in South Hampton Roads, Halstead believes statewide estimates are low; he knows many hobbyists who don't join organizations and whose handful of backyard hives are overlooked by government officials.

Yet Halstead doesn't argue with the trend, which also can be seen in statewide reductions of honeybee colonies. According to the state, about 30,000 are managed today, down from 90,000 in 1984.

Many fields and gardens are nearly barren of bees, says Rick Fell, professor of entomology and state extension worker at Virginia Tech. ``I would say I've seen a sufficient decline so that I'd definitely be concerned.''

The U.S. Department of Agriculture estimates that $19 billion worth of U.S. crops benefit annually from honeybee pollination: About $5 billion in crops is directly pollinated, and the remainder is based on pollination of crops such as hay that is used as feed for cattle and cows.

``You probably cannot rely on any kind of natural pollination to take care of that,'' Fell said of the monumental amount of crops pollinated by honeybees. ``You need hives in or near a field to accomplish that.''

Yet rural areas are disappearing. As development spreads, wild bees that nest in hollow trees or holes in walls of abandoned buildings move away or die.

In growing urban areas like Hampton Roads, development puts bees closer to their human neighbors, whether the bees are wild or in tended hives. And urbanites afraid of being stung are more likely to view them by their biologists' nickname - ``flying Swiss Army knives'' - than as farmers' helpers.

``City dwellers don't know about agriculture,'' Fells says. ``Do they really understand . . . that melon they had for breakfast, what the biology is of where it comes from?''

Yet those fuzzy, buzzing creatures still have a strong selling point as honey-makers. Even if the nearly $200 million worth of honey they produce annually doesn't approach their crop-pollination value, it draws people in.

The vast majority of beekeepers are not interested in turning a profit. That's the impression you get talking to them and to organizations like the National Honey Board, based in Longmont, Colo. Beekeepers are hobbyists wanting to try their hand at harvesting honey.

Like Yorktown lawyer Mike Maguire, 51, who attended his first beekeeping meeting last month.

He brought sketches of hives that had failed, and newer hives in limbo, looking to Wilson and other longtime beekeepers for advice. In the two hives he keeps near his Poquoson home, Maguire says, he's experienced every possible beekeeper's mishap.

A cluster of stings from a tear in his bee suit. More stings for his son and springer spaniel when he let them get too close to the hives. Using smoke to calm a colony, but overdoing the smoke until the bees ``got spooked,'' and up and left for good.

Then, he let the hive get overcrowded and discovered that the bees had ``swarmed'' to find roomier quarters - that on the morning of his first beekeeping meeting.

``I had no idea the complexity of it,'' Maguire says, even though he has studied beekeeping like a science since starting out last year.

``Most of my mistakes have been from doing things too quickly or aggressively. I don't think you can hurry it at all.''

Very much like he witnessed in the movie ``Ulee's Gold,'' which opened in this area last month. ``Gold'' refers to the honey collected by a beekeeper, played by Peter Fonda, whose labored movements accurately reflect the pace of life in the Florida panhandle swamps, says Maguire, a Florida native.

And the slow pace of tending to bees.

``It's the kind of hobby you can really get wrapped up in,'' Maguire says. ``I get a feeling that some of these hobbyists raise this to an art form.''

In his back yard on a recent afternoon, Wilson was suited up like a moon-walker, in a stiff cotton jumpsuit with masking tape closing gaps at the ankles and wrists. Leather gloves. A veil attached to a safari-like hat and secured with string around the body.

The metal smoker dangled from his hand, releasing puffs as pine straw and burlap burned inside. After he finished inspecting the hive, a few bees raced after him to the front of his house, and lingered while he unzipped his suit.

No matter. A few stings here and there keep the body's immunity up, Wilson said.

And he grinned as he held a jar of 100 percent Pure York County Honey over his head to see the gold light shine through. ILLUSTRATION: [Color Photo]

TING-LI WANG/The Virginian-Pilot

Maywood Wilson removes his protective veil after checking up on a

bee colony in his back yard. He is adamant that attention needs to

be paid to the dramatic drop in honeybees because the nation's food

supply is at risk.

TING-LI WANG/The Virginian-Pilot

Maywood Wilson, who has been raising bees since the late 1960s,

inspects the productivity of his bee hives, checking to see whether

the bees are capping the combs. About 100,000 bees live in this

colony.