“What should I do with them? Do I need to remove them? They don’t seem to be doing any harm. I think they’re just making hives,” said Rogers, thinking out loud during a phone call to the Review while watching the spectacle unfold from inside her home.
After scanning the Internet for a local entomologist or bee specialist, she shot an e-mail to the Beekeepers Guild of San Mateo County. Comprised of several local beekeepers and enthusiasts, the guild offers a free bee-removal service to homeowners in such predicaments.
  
(Use arrows above to view more photos) |
His recommendation to someone in Rogers’ position is to phone a beekeeper – hobbyist or professional. They make house calls to capture swarms and relocate them in more remote areas. But Rogers didn’t know anyone near her with the tools or the know-how.
Enter Montara family man Tim Oldham, a horticulturalist and 30-year employee at Nurserymen’s Exchange. A recreational honeybee keeper, he’s been building hives and cultivating honey for about 15 years in his backyard and at a friend’s ranch in Sunshine Valley.
“It’s a great way to connect with nature,” he says of the hobby. “It’s interesting to watch the hive develop and grow – to watch the hive adapt to nature and have nature respond to it.”
Currently, Oldham oversees two hives. One has about 60,000 bees; the other he purchased in spring, and it buzzes to the tune of about 15,000 bees. The hive structure resembles not a classic nest but a stack of white wooden boxes called apiaries. At the base of each apiary is a tiny slit that serves as the sole access point to and from the hive. It looks like a loading dock for flying couriers dropping off baskets of pollen to a honey factory. In fact, that’s the long and short of what honeybees do.
Clad head-to-toe in beekeeper garb on a gray day last week, Oldham gently removed the lid from his smaller hive, exposing about a dozen slats crawling with thousands of worker bees. He withdrew one of the slats with a metal claw tool, and, flipping it over, eyed both sides. Beneath the clutter of shuffling insects, Oldham noticed a deformity.
“This is pretty much useless,” he said, peeling off a piece of knotted wax.
After a brief inspection, Oldham added a third apiary to the stack, replaced the lid, placed a weighty stone on top, and de-suited.
“Just keeping up on what’s going on in their little world,” he said.
Every couple weeks Oldham visits his colonies and studies their behavior – like an overlord peeking into a burgeoning feudal civilization, or a scientist examining a biology experiment. If they need food or medication, Oldham intervenes.
“Sometimes I actually feel guilty for not taking care of them … I have an obligation to them. They’ve made little babies. I feel responsible,” he said.
Apart from his fascination as a horticulturalist, Oldham’s beekeeping dates back to his childhood. His father kept bees.
“I was terrified,” Oldham recalls, handling one of his father’s tools. “I remember I would sit in the car, lock the doors and roll up the windows. But some of (the interest) stuck.”
These days, Oldham contemplates purposely getting stung to kick up antibodies in his immune system.
“I used to get hay fever in a bad way,” he said. “Then, one summer, I remember I got stung by a bee … and it didn’t come back after that. I’m thinking about making it something I do every year.”
At the end of each summer, Oldham harvests the sweet sticky substance the bees deposit in each honeycomb cell with a device called an extractor. Each of his hives renders about two gallons of medium-hued honey, which he jars and gifts to friends and relatives during the holiday season.
Though Oldham isn’t aligned in any official way with the county beekeepers guild, he assumes the responsibility of neighborhood bee catcher when opportunity knocks.
“It’s fabulous of him to do what he does,” said Jan Stegmaier, a neighbor who called on Oldham to remove a swarm in a redwood tree in her yard last year. “At this point I know three or four beekeepers in the area. They embrace the fact that bees are part of our environment.”
About five years ago, people took notice of a huge dip in honeybee populations across the state. A phenomenon known as “colony collapse disorder” shook hives down between 30 or 40 percent their normal numbers, Cervenka said. Reactions among beekeepers and farmers ranged from temperate concern to near panic.
This year, the bees appear to be “holding their own” against the disorder and against a strain of deadly mites as well, said Cervenka. He’s been keeping his eye on population levels.
Beekeepers like Oldham, Cervenka added, help stabilize and control honeybee populations, thus filling a void in the food production process.
“The most important thing about honeybees is that they provide about one-third of the amount of food on everyone’s plate, every evening” he said. “Directly or indirectly, we’re all connected to honeybees.”
w