Tuesday, May 08, 2007

Sweet news is DeSoto bees still healthy



As dark clouds threatened rain Friday morning, Charles Force cautiously checked his bee hives.

"Bees are mean on rainy days," said Force, a hobbyist beekeeper in Nesbit.

Force, one of five beekeepers in DeSoto County, has several hives throughout the Delta region and gives away jars of the golden nectar to his family and friends.

"After I retired, I got into my hobby full-time," said Force, who retired in 2000 after 33 1/2 years with Smith & Nephew. "I'm not a salesman. I just like messing with the bees."

A mysterious killer, known as Colony Collapse Disorder -- CCD -- has wiped out bee colonies in the past few months, killing one-quarter of the bees throughout the country, U.S. beekeepers have reported.

But CCD has not landed in DeSoto County, said area beekeepers and agricultural officials.

"I haven't lost any bees," Force said as he used a smoker to calm the bees at one of the five hives behind his Nesbit home off Starlanding Road. "CCD has hit the border states, but not in Mississippi."

Local beekeepers are thankful, saying honeybees do more than just make honey.

"They keep food on our table," said Walls beekeeper Tim Durham. "They pollinate our food, from peaches to apples, and them dying in other states has gotten all of us concerned."

Durham has been a beekeeper in the area for 30 years, and at one point had more than 900 hives throughout the county.

He has been so successful at his hobby that he turned it into a business and is president of Durham's Bee Farm.

Along with his wife and adult children, they use the honeycomb from his hives to make everything from medicinal products such as bee pollen, used to help with allergies, to a beauty cream made from bees' pure royal jelly.

They sell the products online and have customers from China to the United Kingdom, said Durham.

Harry Fulton, director of the Mississippi Department of Agriculture and Commerce, wrote in his Bee News and Views newsletter that he has conducted a survey among commercial and hobbyist beekeepers in the Mississippi area asking about CCD.

"I talked with several of our larger beekeepers a few weeks back when CCD hit the news and am glad to say beekeepers in Mississippi don't have a CCD problem this spring," Fulton wrote in the March newsletter.

CCD was reported to have started in November and has spread to 27 states, Canada, Brazil and in parts of Europe. The cause is unknown, but scientists have theorized the problem could be a disease or parasite.

"Mites could be the parasite, but no one really knows," said Force.

His honeybees have been thriving this spring. May is a good month for honey production.

In fact, his bees have made his youngest son's upcoming wedding next Saturday even sweeter.

His future daughter-in-law asked that bottles of honey be given away to wedding guests as a party favor.

Force's wife, Margaret, spent seven hours filling 150 four-ounce bottles with honey for the wedding.

"I thought it was neat idea to give the honey away at the wedding," Force said. "In fact, I was very pleased."

-- Yolanda Jones: (662) 996-1474

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