Bears Make Beeline for All of Hive

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Created on Friday, 25 August 2023 14:31

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By CAROLEINE JAMES

Wrangell Sentinel

It’s more than just a sweet tooth that directs bears to honey.

Beekeeper Christi Henthorn of North Carolina explained the relationship between bears and beehives in a presentation at Wrangell’s BearFest on July 29.

The Winnie-the-Pooh story popularized the idea that bears raid beehives to steal their honey, but this is only partially true.

 Beekeeper Christi Henthorn holds up a beeswax frame. (Photo provided)

“Bears really want to eat, not just the honey, but the honeycomb and the bees themselves as well,” Henthorn explained.

Bee pollen is one of the most complete sources of protein available in nature and beeswax provides bears with healthy fats. The hive’s brood — or baby bees — is also a source of protein and nutrients for bears.

“The bears are actually primarily wanting to eat the brood,” she said. “Like, ‘great, there’s honey,’ but they’re really going after that protein and those baby bees.”

She shared pictures of demolished hives that had been ripped apart by bears, with their beeswax frames strewn more than 100 feet away into the forest.

“This doesn’t look that deadly,” she said, “but it was 45 degrees and raining. That equals death for a honey bee. If it was just raining and it was a nice day like today, they’d be fine. If it was just cold, they’d be fine. But when you add the cold and the water, generally (they do) not fare so well.” Of the three hives that were damaged that day, she was able to get only one back up and running.

Southeast Alaska is a difficult place for beekeeping, Henthorn explained. The cold, wet climate and the prevalence of bears would make it difficult for a Wrangell beekeeper to produce enough honey to sustain a small business, but they’d have plenty for at-home use and small gifts for family and friends.

“I don’t know if having a successful honey operation here is reasonable, I think it might just be too wet,” she told her Wrangell audience. “But if you want to make maybe a little bit of money, if you want to do pollination, if you want to increase the yield in your gardens, (if) you just like science,” starting a beehive would be a great choice, she said.

Henthorn acknowledged that being a beginning beekeeper can be overwhelming. She recommends joining with other community beekeepers to swap tips, offer mutual support and help each other keep the hives alive.

“If you do it as a group, you can kind of borrow from each other and you have that support … not everybody has to drop a bunch of money to get their bees to begin with,” she said.

“If you can get two or three people to get six hives, next year, you take those six hives and you make them into twelve hives. And instead of spending hundreds of dollars on bees from somewhere else, the bees that survived the winter have better genetics for this environment. And so now you have better bees that have a better chance of surviving.”

Henthorn lived in Sitka from 2008-2014 working in the lab at SEARHC. She still holds that position, managing lab computer systems remotely from her home in Oxford, North Carolina. 

She took up bee keeping after moving to North Carolina, and currently manages 20 hives. She makes periodic trips back to Southeast Alaska, where she shares her knowledge with those interested in keeping bees in a more challenging climate.

She passed through Sitka in June to work with a local beekeeper, and plans to return in September to hold instructional seminars on introductory beekeeping and maintaining bees through an Alaskan winter.

“There are a few beekeepers in Sitka, but there’s a lot of challenges to go along with beekeeping and so I walked them through catching the first swarm I’ve ever heard of in Sitka, and they successfully hived that swarm,” she said.

“It’s hard to keep your bees alive in North Carolina – it’s not an easy thing to do– and so when you add the environment (of Southeast), the wet the dark, the immense amount of light in the summer... the beginner’s curve is very steep and very severe. When you add all that together, it’s just harder to do,” she said. “So I want to just try to provide as much education as possible to get people started on the right foot and stay on the right track.”

She intends to hold these meetings September 12 and 17 in Sitka, but has yet to set a venue or time.

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Garland Kennedy, Daily Sitka Sentinel reporter, contributed to this story.

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