2024 YEAR IN REVIEW

This year we added new folks to our list of lovely hosts; two I’m really proud of are Mimi’s Pantry and Holliday Montessori. Mimi’s is not only generous with garden space but also gives away honey for free to all their patrons, and their effectiveness at fighting food insecurity is inspiring. Holliday is a great school, and doing a honey harvest and science class activity there has been really fun. Some exciting future partners (which you may have seen on our instagram or newsletters) are Shawnee Town 1929, Union Cemetery, and Bread & Roses Farm. Shawnee Town is a historical site with an original farmhouse and other structures—the original residents kept bees, so we’ll be returning hives to the site for the first time in 100 years! Union Cemetery is another historic gem with graves going back to the 1700s, it’s going to be a lot of fun and they do a ton of events, you should look them up. Bread & Roses is a small midtown urban farm with a regular farmstand, this is a great chance to give pollination and honey where it will have an immediate positive effect.

We’ve visited dozens of classes of all ages to bring bees and talk about pollination, urban ecosystem, the history of humans & bees, and more. One of the most fun things is that every age has tons of questions about bees, the Q & A portion is awesome. It’s also been really gratifying to hear back that kids talk about it even months later, and some have convinced their parents to start their own backyard hives!

On of our most popular undertakings is beekeeping workshops, people of all ages & backgrounds come to learn more. A lot of people just come to have the experience, which is nice to give them. As with the school visits, there’s no charge other than a suggested donation, which allows schools or people with less means to participate.

Having a regular booth at KC’s historic City Market is a really amazing thing, it’s so much fun to spend weekends with other farmers and food producers, artists, and shoppers. It’s resulted in more followers and volunteers, networking opportunities and potential future partners, and allowed for an income without which Bee KC wouldn’t be possible at this stage.

It’s been a lot of fun to talk with folks and see the results in print and video! (It’s also shown me I need more regular haircuts and outfits that aren’t sticky with wax and smell of smoke!) The links are all on our media section on the homepage of this site.

We’ve been able to rehome scores of bee colonies this year, not only is this incredibly fun and good for the bees & the city, but it brings in donations as well! (We do this for free whereas some charge up to a few hundred dollars, especially for cutting into walls, and people always feel a call to donate.) If you google “bees kansas city” or “bee removal KC” or anything similar, we’re close to the top result, and even word of mouth has brought new jobs to us. This is an area where we’ve been very successful, and one in which we can grow easily.

Our supplier was a month late on delivery, which meant our colonies didn’t have time to build up enough bees to build wax and gather nectar when the main flow was on. On top of this, he kept the bees in the nucs (condensed starter colonies) too long, which induced swarming in nearly all the colonies—for comparison, first year colonies almost never swarm, it’s a response to not enough space or not enough food stores or both (among other reasons). Swarms meant even less strength when we needed it. This year I’ll be using a different supplier. This will be more expensive, but the quality of the bees and professionalism will be worth it.

Unfortunately bee hives can be a target for destruction. Sometimes people just want to steal honey, whether on serious drugs (intense sugar cravings), or just being a jerk. This is really only a problem in a few sites; there isn’t money or desire for a camera system and apps, so we’ll simply be chaining some hives down. Sometimes the hives being knocked over kills them, at best it weakens and stresses the colony. One upside is realizing how much neighbors care for the bees, and how they keep a close eye on things.

The number of colonies lost midseason this year was unacceptable. While it would be tempting to blame the spring setback (which certainly did result in weaker hives), the most responsibility falls to me. Starvation was a factor and should have been addressed with more feeding than usual. I believe dehydration was in play, I didn’t pay enough attention to water sources in drier weather (this is one area where volunteers from various neighborhoods will be useful, to simply keep birdbaths full). Above all, my typical varroa treatment failed; in the past I’ve used oil fogs and only gone to chemical interventions when necessary, but I didn't budget time properly and the result was too high of a mite load in some of the apiaries. (Varroa mites can be seen in the graphic above, they definitely live up to their Latin name, Varroa Destructor.) Corrective action: I’m moving to treating with apivar strips in all hives in spring and fall. This is less harsh than acids, safe for people and honey, varroa doesn’t development resistance, and it’s the way most professionals do it—my practices should have evolved along with increased hives. In addition, it was a really bad year for hive beetles, but they’re easy enough to keep at a manageable level, it was only in dying/dead hives that they reached problematic levels (same with wax moths). This is an area where time management and evolving practices will make a big difference.

A better honey harvest will come with improvements to conditions listed in the Spring and Hive Health sections. With bees, every season greatly effects the next two, diseases/pests/stress kill hives, and everything effects honey production. It’s always my goal to get our partners the most honey possible, but even with this meager harvest I’m close to having all I need for a year at the City Market, after which everything can be dispersed. Above all, the main thing is starting early, feeding syrup to help the bees build wax and grow population, and then they can make the most of the nectar flow.

This is an area completely foreign to me, I don’t have the background knowledge, experience, or time to do it effectively. This winter I’ll be able to put more time into it, in order to grow and evolve for the future (detailed below). I’ll be focussing on securing sponsorships for individual hives and apiaries, with perks including honey, hive visits, social media shoutouts, free workshops/consults, special dinners, and anything else we can think of. Individuals or companies could have names or logos on signage, benches near hives, or even have hive boxes custom painted. If any of you have ideas I’d love to hear them, 2025 will be the year of growth and this is the first step.