Christopher Stowell – A Scout doing a beekeepers job
Apr 1st, 2010 by Robo
A few years ago, I read a statistic that said the average age of a beekeeper was 60. I must say I wasn’t at all surprised, yet I fully understood the consequence of such a statistic. I know CCD is not good for the bees, but could it be the savior of beekeeping? Because of the national coverage of CCD, there has been a tremendous influx of beginners and hobbyist who have been bitten by the beekeeping bug. Yes, all puns are intended 
It is great to see so many hobbyist getting back into beekeeping after varroa pushed a vast majority of them to leave in the early 90s. BUT…… Although the number of beekeepers may be up, and the average age may be more in the high 40s, the future is still not bright. We need more youth involvement.
My son just bridged from Cub Scouts to Boy Scouts this past February, and imagine my disappointment when I discovered the beekeeping merit badge had been discontinued. Along comes Christopher Stowell, a Boy Scout in Troop 250, Skiatook, OK who has taken on the mission to get the beekeeping merit badge reinstated. Here is a young man taking on the task of getting more youth involved in beekeeping, something that we as a beekeeping community should have been years ago. I’m sure this has been and will continue to be a positive life changing event for Christopher’s which is one of the great aspects of Scouting. It is so refreshing to see a young man take on what could be seen as a momentous task for more than just self-gratification. Especially in these times where society is all about entitlements.
It took a young man to start this ball rolling. Now it is our turn, as beekeepers, to help him make it happen. Everyone that is reading this can make a difference. I have been fortunate to connect up Neil Van Dalsem, a beekeeper and neighbor of Christopher Stowell, who has made available some petitions and letters that can be used to show our support. Christopher has set a goal of July 15, 2010 to approach the Council with his proposal, so we must work fast.
What we need to do!
Everyone needs to sign the Online Petition at a minimum, but please try to do more as suggested below.
General Public
If your not a beekeeper or a scout, but are a concerned citizen and want to help out, please print out the following petition, get as many friends and family to sign it and mail it to Christopher Stowell. Remember, his goal is July 15th, so please allow time for the postal system and for Christopher to manage the incoming mail.
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General Petition (26.4 KB) (Downloads - 360) |
Scouts
If you are a Scout, please print out the following petition and get as many of your fellow scouts that would be interested in earning the beekeeping merit badge to sign it. This is very important. The BSA wants to be assured that there is sufficient interest for the merit badge before they will reinstate it. Oh yea, if your up for it and want to really support your fellow scout, Chirstopher, print out the previous petition as well and get all your non-scout friends to sign that.
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Scout Petition (26.84 KB) (Downloads - 345) |
Beekeepers
If your a beekeeper, you are where the rubber needs to meet the road. One of the bigger concerns that the BSA has is merit badge councilors. It seems that one of the reasons the Beekeeping merit badge was discontinued was due to the lack of merit badge councilors. For the BSA to reinstate the beekeeping merit badge we need to demonstrate that we, the beekeeping community, will support it. I can’t think of a better way to get youth involved in beekeeping, then a nationally, well defined program. Let’s all take the effort to make this happen.
If you are aware of any beekeeping clubs in your area, print out the first file and approach the club to commit to supporting any scout in the area that would be interested in earning the Beekeeping merit badge. Next, print out the second file and get as many of your beekeeping friends to commit to be a Beekeeping merit badge council. Those two steps are the most important, but if your still up for more, contact your local BSA council to get the word out and get a scout interest petition going in your area.
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Club Support (27.43 KB) (Downloads - 289) |
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Beekeeper Support (17.55 KB) (Downloads - 365) |
Updates
Latest update – HERE
Christopher was our special guest on the May WpN Beekeeping Podcast. We had a great conversation with Christopher and got an update on how the campaign is going. I strongly recommend listening to the recorded podcast below. It is very reassuring to see such a determined young man of 13 and the dedication and effort he is putting forth. He has definitely grown and matured, and will continue to do so, through this effort and will make a great leader some day.
- Listen now
I have created a forum at Beemaster dedicated to this effort -> BSA Beekeeping Merit Badge Forum
Coverage of Christopher’s Effort
- Häagen-Dazs® – helpthehoneybees.com
- Online Petition – experienceproject.com
- Busy Bee – TulsaWorld.com
- Boy Scout Merit Badge Project – Beesource Forum
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Sorry we missed the date. My son is a beekeeper and a scout. He is in a beekeeping club in our area. We would have loved your petition and so would the club. Go Bees!
Christopher I just Printed out your Petition More signers On the way=)
It seems that the Beekeeping merit badge was discontinued in 1995 due to the lack of interest in the hobby and the number of active councilors. If this is the case then I personally have a hard time believing that these councilors actually kept bees themselves. For this sort of representation I would humbly say “Shame on BSA”.
I am 30 and my great grandfather before me brought bee hives into Utah. Beekeeping is definitely an ancient art but for so few it is something that can be perused full time. Because of this we owe most advancement in the art to individual beekeepers. The main problem with large scale beekeeping is the abuses administered to bees to ensure they adequately pollinate for money profits. Although bees love the work load, they are innocent to their unnatural and harmful work environments. CCD was found most prevalent among commercial farmers. It was the potential loss in agriculture that funded the research for CCD and the test results were not that surprising. Exposure to unnecessarily large amounts of medicine treatments, agricultural pesticides and limited varieties of plants were a few of the problems that gave room for the spread of other disease. There has developed a greater awareness of the problems but unnatural beekeeping is not a paradigm that is about to change among commercial beekeepers.
The good new is that the advancements in the knowledge and art of beekeeping have taken on some tremendous strides within the past 5 years. Many farmers including our company are small enough that we can make cognitive decisions that will effect how we develop in the future. We run approx. 600 hives and are beginning to use essential oils and provide apiaries surrounded by large varieties of natural melliferous plants. Keep in mind that beekeeping is not about saving the bee population. It is an art form that manipulates the natural ability of the bee which produces 30 lb of honey in the wild to 100 lb or more in a box. The techniques and secrets of this delicate art form can make most any other hobby look simple in comparison. It requires a continued interest in the study of Entomology, Botany, health and nutrition, and even Chemistry. It tests ones level of dedication and responsibility. Likewise it helps to develop these attributes along with a love and respect for all things living.
The new age of beekeeping MUST go hand in hand with these fields as well as cultivate a close relationship with the health benefits of Apicultural (Bee) products such as Honey, pollen, Propollis, Bees Wax, larva, and Royal Jelly. Many revolutionary breakthroughs on this topic have been published only within the past few years. See research studies published by Dr Ron Fessenden, MD. MPH
, Mike McInnes, MRPS)
I myself am a queen breeder this topic reaches by far the most technical and delicate aspects of beekeeping and has become a very joyful and rewarding pursuit.
I fully support the reinstatement of the beekeeping merit badge and would like to suggest a few of the requirements. These are based off of sound reason and understanding in the modern world of appiculture.
1. Study a hive of bees. Remove comb. Find queen/ queens. Analyze the brood, hive population, presence of honey and pollen. Use your figures to determine that the hive is healthy and the queen in strong.
A strong queen should have 3-7 frames of solid brood sections. A strong population of bees should be between 30 -60 thousand bees and weigh aprox. 15-20 lbs.
2. Show the differences between drones, workers, eggs, larva, and pupae at different stages. Tell the differences among honey, wax, pollen, propollis, and royal jelly. Tell how bees make honey. Tell where wax comes from. Explain the parts played in the life of the hive by the queen, the drones and the workers including a few of the many tasks that bees are required to do (There are more than 20).
Drones are large fat bees with large connecting eyes they live only to eat and mate. Once they mate they die. In the fall they are deported from the hive. Healthy queens live 3-5 years and lay 800-1500 eggs per day. If she begins to fail the hive will begin to make a new queen. Once a new queen hatches she leaves the hive to mate. After which she never leaves the hive again accept to swarm. A hive will most often house only one queen. Worker bees work themselves to death in about 5 weeks during the summer but will last several months while confined in the winter. Bees do most of the work which include: Wax cleaning, cell polishing, wax collecting & comb building, larva feeding and royal jelly production, queen and drone feeding, temp control, water scavenging and humidity control, in hive guarding, entrance and vicinity guarding, Honey production and processing, Nectar scavenging, Pollen scavenging, propollis scavenging, scouting and dancing, and when necessary self sacrifice to intruders or old age.
3. Hive a swarm or divide at least one colony. Explain how a hive is made.
A hive can regenerate and be divided over and over thus giving the organism an indefinite life expectancy. Ensuring the survival of a new hive requires a break off of at least 2 lb of bees with a healthy mated queen. It can be done with ¼ lb of bees and a queen cell but this is not easy. When a swarm of bees are spotted in a tree, one can guess that the parent hive grew too large in number and the old queen left with a following. A swarm can also represent subsequent swarms and may contain one or more virgin queens. Swarms do not wait around and must be captured quickly. In order for a queen to feel at home and not leave again, a box with drawn comb and feed must be used to hive the swarm.
4. Prepare a frame with foundation. Fill supers with frames. Remove filled frames or supers from the hive. Extract honey from frames.
Raw honey is very rare on the market and is often sought after for higher prices. Regulations and preference usually means further processing takes place before honey is marketed in stores. Processed honey may involve but is not limited to the following ; Heating, Micro filtering, blending with other sweeteners or flavors, diluting to regulatory moisture content, controlled crystallization, & dehydrating into crystalline powder. Only 45% of honey consumed in the US is grown locally the rest is imported. Most honey is refined and consumed indirectly thru commercial products. The average citizen consumes less than 2 lb of honey and more than 50 lb of sugar each year.
5. Write in not more than 200 words how and why the honeybee is used in pollinating farm crops. Include a list of daily foods that are dependant on beekeepers.
Contracts securing pollinating rights for beekeepers provide payment in exchange for the presence of their beehives on or near agricultural farms. Pollinating seasons for various crops usually only last a few weeks in which the presence of bees improve harvest yields from only a few hundred pounds to several hundred thousand pounds of crop. These crops make up over 80% of the food we eat.
6. Identify some of the diseases that are most common to bees
American and European Foulbrood of which the American is far more devastating. Also varroa mites, Tracheal mites, wax moth, hive beetle, and dysentery are among the most common threats to bees. And new strands of an Indian virus are what scientist believe may be the main thread linking the 2006 pandemic of CCD.
7. Identify a few techniques beekeepers use to manipulate a bee’s natural behavior.
(Supers maximize honey productions, queen excluders localize brood chambers, Smoke calms the bees, queen breeders can yield over 100 queens from a hive in a few weeks, they can also manipulate the production of Royal Jelly which is usually produced in minuscule amounts etc)
The beekeeping merit badge should not focus on Commercial beekeeping but rather on the art and respect of beekeeping.