The Times - Serving Waitsburg, Dayton and the Touchet Valley

Those of us lucky enough to call Southeast Washington home know what a special place it is. The verdant Palouse hills producing abundant crops of wheat and peas to feed a hungry world take one’s breath away with their May beauty.

The Blue Mountains and the foothills offer unique sporting opportunities for hunters, hikers, bicyclists and nature lovers of all strips. We enjoy an uncrowded and mostly peaceful lifestyle that urbanites envy.

We are also home to a lot of honey bees. Go anywhere in the world and say you are from Washington state and people think apples. The tree fruit industry of Washington requires 500,000 honey bee colonies to pollinate its $3.5 billion crop each spring. This is an absolutely vital link for fruit production. No bees, no fruit; it’s that simple.

Around 97,000 of those colonies are based in Washington and the remaining are migratory beekeepers from other states that come for the pollination rental opportunities and then move on to summer honey-producing regions mostly in the upper Midwest.

Now here’s the rub. Bees, just like the rest of us, need to eat all year long. They live solely on pollen, for protein, and nectar, for carbohydrates. They gather both from flowering plants. The nectar is converted into honey and a healthy colony can produce much more than it needs for its own survival. The extra is what a skillful beekeeper can harvest for human enjoyment.

Once the short fruit bloom is over, orchards offer little in the way of flowering plants. The growers sometimes need to use pesticides to protect their valuable crop, and so the vulnerable bees have to be moved someplace else.

Where is someplace else? The southeast corner of Washington offers ideal habitat for summer honey bee locations. You may have seen “bee yards,” groups of stacked boxes, here and there along the creeks and byways of our beautiful area. These are the locations where the bees can recover from the stressful orchard pollination work, gather enough honey to sustain them for the coming winter, and hopefully make a bit extra for a hard working beekeeper to harvest.

Many of the plants that the bees depend on are considered weeds by us humans. From dandelions to thistles, all of the flowering summer weeds provide essential nutrition for these essential creatures. No one questions the need for farmers to control weeds in their crops or ranchers keeping their grazing lands healthy and productive. But surely on the out-ground, steep slopes, fence lines, road sides, set asides, back lots and unused corners there can be a place for flowering weeds.

Please think twice before eliminating weeds indiscriminately. After all, Washington does need bees, and bees do need weeds. And if Southeast Washington isn’t someplace else, where is?

The next time you enjoy a bowl of cherries or a slice of apple pie or some delicious honey on your morning muffin, think of the bees. They’re not asking for much, and we will sorely miss them if they’re gone.

Paul Hosticka has been keeping bees for 35 years and is a member of the Washington State Dept. of Agriculture Honey Bee Work Group, tasked by the legislature with making recommendations on how to improve conditions for bees and beekeepers in Washington. Mostly retired now, he and wife Susan base their small honey operation from their place near Dayton. You are welcome to read the group’s full report at http://agr.wa.gov/FP/Pubs/docs/103-435HoneyBeeWkGroupReport121214.pdf