Mankind has long known the importance of the honey bee. Consider this passage from The Honey Bee and Its Relation to Agriculture, an essay by W.F. Marks published in the New York Dept. of Agriculture’s annual report… in 1906.
“It is estimated that more than a hundred thousand varieties of plants would disappear, if bees could not visit them”; add to these those plants that do not wholly depend upon insect agency in fertilization but whose productiveness is increased by such visitation, consider if you can the countless ages, past and future, these plants have added, and will continue to add to the earth’s productiveness, and you can but slightly comprehend the importance of the honey-bee in agriculture.”
Which is far from the oldest reference to the role of bees in the affairs of nature and mankind you will find if you research it. So, it’s no new revelation that the bee is vital to agriculture, and the food chain. Which is why it makes a lot of sense for the governments of Iowa, where agriculture is vital to the economy, to be taking the humble honey bee very, very seriously.
It was just a few weeks ago as of this writing, on February 22nd, that Iowa Governor Kim Reynolds proclaimed March 14th Iowa Honey Bee Day. And since then our local communities have been following suit. Belmond, Clarion, Webster City and others have, in the past days, declared official proclamations recognizing the importance of the honey bee. Eagle Grove made theirs on Monday, March 7th, at the City Council meeting.
Hitting the nail on the head, the local proclamation declared, “honey bees and native insects are important as pollinators for a third of the food we eat and honey bees are vital in production of over 90 crops grown across the nation, many of which are in Iowa. Honey bees contribute to a healthy Iowa environment by assuring availability of fruits, vegetables, nuts, and flowers for wildlife and all Iowans.”
But this is 2022, and we’ve known all this for a very, very, very long time. So what took so long? Why is it only now that, even in an agriculturally dependent state like Iowa, we’re only now getting around to formally recognizing the humble honey bee’s importance?
“Iowa honey bee day started six years ago,” said Eagle Grove local Dick Ostercamp, half of the husband and wife team of beekeepers who maintain Eagle Grove’s most local bee apiary, and operate the sweet business Blossom St. Honey, just south of town. It started when the Iowa Honey Producers Association and its associated beekeepers clubs asked themselves, “what do we need to do to have more of a voice in the state legislature?” They decided to make a concerted effort to speak to local governments, starting with the Iowa legislature, on behalf of the bees and beekeepers. And they hired a pair of lobbyists, one full time, one part time.
You might say they were pollinating for a future harvest, and that harvest is coming in.
For Dick Ostercamp, who is now a leader in the local beekeeping community, this passion came late in life. “8 years ago I was still working, thinking about retiring,” said Mr. Ostercamp. He decided he better get a hobby. Inspiration struck on a visit to relatives. “We had a head start because his sister was a beekeeper,” said Kristi Ostercamp. They left that visit with their first two hives.
Both hives were essentially lost over that first winter. But the Ostercamps were not deterred, they were more determined than ever. Dick attended beekeeping classes at NIACC. As it turned out, losing their initial two hives was a blessing in disguise. “One day the instructor stopped the class and blurted out to me, ‘why are you nodding all the time?'” It was because he’d experienced everything the teacher was talking about. “All those mistakes, I’d made them. All those things, I’d seen them.”
Having learned what to do and what NOT to do both from instruction and experience, the Ostercamps quickly put their first year losses behind them. Even following that catastrophe, they had grown their apiary to five hives by the second year. By the third year, they had a dozen.
Today, seven years into their beekeeping adventure, the Ostercamps ship their apiary of hives around the country on trailers through Iowa’s colder months, to pollinate crops in warmer climes. Particularly in northern California, where the apple blossoms, onion fields and almond groves that supply the nation are in desperate need of pollination. Not only do the California farmers pay well for the service, but the bees thrive in the warmth, allowing the Ostercamps to split each hive into multiple hives on their return, growing their apiary year by year. And the bees turn all that California pollen into sweet honey for Iowa’s markets, early in the season. Before coming home to pollinate the crops Iowa’s economy relies on, and produce Iowa honey from Iowa pollen.
The Ostercamps make an assortment of delicious products from the bounty their bees provide. Honey, of course. But also flavored honey, creamed honey, honey sticks, bee pollen, honey caramels, honey apple butter, beeswax, chapped lip treatments, medicinal honey, candied honey spoons, and much, much more.
One product they can’t legally sell, yet, is mead, or fermented honey wine. Hailed in ancient times as the drink of kings and gods, mead is less well known in America today. Which is an incredible shame, because it is as delicious as its ancient reputation suggests. And while the Ostercamps still have a lot of legal filing and work to do before they can SELL mead, there’s no restriction on making it, or giving it away.
And so the Ostercamps have put together a private stock of their mead, which was the hands down winner in a blind taste test by honey experts. And they’re preparing to bring it to market, when they’re ready, right here in Eagle Grove. Planning to open one of only a handful of meaderies in Iowa within the next year, they hope.
In the meantime, a bottle of their private stock will be included in each of the gift baskets from Iowa honey producers, that will be given to lucky recipients at the fourth annual legislative reception/breakfast the Iowa Honey Producers association will be hosting in the Iowa Capitol Rotunda, on Iowa’s first official Honey Bee Day, Wednesday March 30th. One basket is earmarked for Governor Reynolds, the other will be raffled off.
But the Ostercamps don’t want people, locally or all around the world, just to care about their sweet honey products. They want them to care about the bees as well. Showing up to the council meeting to witness the proclamation, they wore their dual concerns on their chests. Kristi wearing a Blossom Street tee-shirt, Dick wearing a “Save the Bees” shirt. Both printed locally at Redhead Tribe Logos.
Because honey bees, and by extension the crops they pollinate, and the livestock that eat many of those crops, and the food our pets and our families eat, and thus our local economy, our livelihoods, and even, yes, our very lives, face unprecedented threats. In a changing climate, tiny little pests called mites are spreading. Add to that the spraying of pesticides and other agrcultural chemicals that can weaken a colony, and the mites can move in for the kill.
A single mite that manages to enter a hive and lay eggs early in the season could over-run the hive with thousands of mites, collapsing the colony, the Ostercamps explained. Which is why legislative victories by the Honey Producers, like limitations on the times commercial applicators can spray, which when observed are win/win situations for farmers and beekeepers alike. And which preserve their symbiotic relationship.
“We all need the bees,” the Ostercamps concluded, “not just us. You too.”
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