Forty acres of farmland at Scott Reynold’s farm in San Juan Valley are dedicated to providing habitat for pollinators. Since bees ‘bubbles’ cover up to a three-mile radius, the location of the farm means the bees could range from American Camp to False Bay to Zylstra Lake to the Town of Friday Harbor.

700 pounds of wild flower seeds were planted on a former hay meadow. After Reynolds’ tractor broke down, it took him and Roger Ellison six hours to cast the seeds using a pickup truck.

Brightly colored bee boxes

Reynolds has 18 bee colonies that survived over the past winter. He entered the winter with 28 hives. Currently some are placed at Seagate Farm and Overmarsh Farm Commons.

According to the U.S. Beekeeping survey 55.6 percent of beekeepers’ hives were lost last year. Reynolds provides a source of food for his hives if needed during the winter.

Every spring, honey bee swarms appear in backyards, on fences, and in trees across the San Juan Islands. Most people have no idea what they’re looking at or who to call. Reynolds, a beekeeper since 2018, collects swarms of honey bees.  The largest colony he removed was from a structure  at American Camp Visitor Center, last July.  If you need a swarm removed contact https://beeswarmed.org/report-bee-colony

Honey bees at American Camp Visitor Center on San Juan Island

Bees collected at American Camp Visitor Center.

Swarms appear after hives become too large. Half the population and the queen split from the hive and meet at a rendezvous point. Scouts then go out to find a new suitable location. They return and have a dance off to reach a consensus. The most persuasive one’s recommendation is acted upon. Reynolds noted that his plum tree often proves attractive to scouts

. Two swarms hanging from a tree.

Bees moving from a swarm into a box. 

The Flow HIve

One of the handiest tools he uses is The Flow Hive from Australia. The device allows beekeepers to harvest honey straight into jars.  A colony can produce from 30 to 80 pounds of honey per year. Reynolds sells honey at the San Juan Island Farmers Market in Friday Harbor.

Reynolds shared fascinating facts about bees including:

1. Honey bees are important pollinators for flowers, fruits and vegetables.

2. Honey bees live in hives (or colonies). The members of the hive are divided into three types:

     Queen: One queen runs the whole hive. Her job is to lay the eggs that will spawn the hive’s next generation of bees. The queen also produces chemicals that guide the behaviour of the other bees.

     Workers: these are all female and their roles are to forage for food (pollen and nectar from flowers), build and protect the hive, clean and circulate air by beating their wings. Workers are the only bees most people ever see flying around outside the hive.

     Drones: These are the male bees, and their purpose is to mate with the new queen. Several hundred live in each hive during the spring and summer. But come winter, when the hive goes into survival mode, the drones are kicked out!

Drone

3. Honey bees produce 2-3 times more honey than they need.

4. If the queen bee dies, workers will create a new queen by selecting a young larva (the newly hatched baby insects) and feeding it a special food called “royal jelly“. This enables the larva to develop into a fertile queen.

5. Honey bees   fly at a speed of around 25km per hour and beat their wings 200 times per second.

6. Each bee has 170 odorant receptors. They use these to communicate within the hive and to recognize different types of flowers when looking for food.

7. The average worker bee lives for just five to six weeks. During this time, she’ll produce around a twelfth of a teaspoon of honey.

8. The queen can live up to five years. She is busiest in the summer months, when she can lay up to 2,500 eggs a day.

9. To share information about the best food sources, they perform their ‘waggle dance’. When the worker returns to the hive, it moves in a figure-of-eight and waggles its body to indicate the direction of the food source.