LAKE COUNTY >> Millions of them have been laying low in Lake County during the cool, wet weather, biding their time until ready to strike out.
But with winter over and spring sunshine in abundance, their time has come and they are now swarming, frightening residents who encounter them from Upper Lake to Lower Lake and points in between.
It may sound like the start of an Alfred Hitchcock movie but the “they” in this story are bees and unlike a horror story, these bee swarms are mostly harmless if left alone. However, people often draw “red lines” when swarms overstay their visit and set up residence in an attic or backyard tree.
Spring, with its sunshine and warm temperatures, is the time of year when bees become active and will swarm around a particular location, often a tree, until they find a colony to join or start their own hive.
Bees started swarming locally near the end of April, according to David Fallstead, a hobbyist and semi-professional beekeeper from Lower Lake.
“I’ve had 10 calls about swarms so far this year which is more than last year,” he said.
April was a difficult time for bees because of this unusual weather, said amateur beekeeper Arnaud Hubert of Kelseyville. Hubert operates the Beekeepers Guild of Lake County’s Facebook page.
“Last year, I was called eight times to remove swarms,” he said. “So far this year, I’ve been called about a dozen times.”
Hubert and Fallstead are among a handful of local beekeepers who will, when called, remove bee swarms from trees and buildings, including attics and roofs of houses, sometimes for free. Fallstead said it could well-be less than a handful.
“I think there are only two of us crazy enough to run around and catch swarms of bees,” Fallstead said.
Actually, there are “about 10” local beekeepers that remove and relocate bee swarms, according to Debra Heimbach, an apiary (beekeeping) hobbyist in the Hidden Valley Lake area. She has six hives in Lake County and responds to swarming calls.
A swarm is a group of bees that have left a colony with the queen to find a new home. They will cluster onto a branch or a structure until the scout bees find a new place for them, according to Hubert.
Sometimes the swarm will stay in a location, sometimes a tree or structure, for days; sometimes it will leave after a few minutes, he said.
April and May are “swarming months,” Heimbach said and added, “This has been a big swarming season because we have had so much rain.”
Hubert strongly advises that people who find swarms not to spray them with anything.
“Leave them alone,” he said. “They are docile and are not interested in attacking you.”
Hubert said that climate change is affecting the life of bees, with swarming occurring in late March this year and will likely continue into June and even July.
“Temperatures are expected to rise this week so we will probably see more swarming,” he said.
Lake County temperatures are expected to top 90 degrees late this week, according to the National Weather Service in Sacramento. The ideal temperature for honeybees is around 95 degrees, Hubert said.
Beekeepers have various reasons for their hobby or profession but one benefit most get is a commodity quite sweet: honey. Even small-time hobbyists such as Hubert enjoy the flowery or fruity sweetness of the harvested raw honey.
Hubert said he gets about 50 pounds of honey annually “…from a very healthy hive.”
He produces so little that he sells his honey only to friends and family. “I hope to have a lot more honey this year,” he added.
Fallstead is a bit more than a hobbyist when it comes to honey, which he sells at several Lake County locations, including Farmer’s Markets, Hardester’s Markets and health food stores under his Dollar Mtn. Apiaries label.
He has 25 hives scattered throughout the county, a number that he said is, “Not normal. I should have around 200 hives.”
The hive decline is not due to pesticides or pests — common causes of bee population declines in general — but rather a local issue: two long summers with major wildland fires. The smoke generated by the Rocky, Valley and Clayton fires was deadly to many bees in the county.
Also, a number of hives with bee colonies were destroyed by flames. “I lost 75 percent of my hives to the Clayton Fire,” Fallstead said. Last year’s blaze also destroyed his extracting house and his apiary equipment along with the family house.
“Everything burned to the ground,” he said. “We’re trying to start over. We hope to start building our new house soon.”
The Rocky and Valley fires in 2015 and the Clayton fire last year had a devastating effect on Lake County beekeeping, especially in the Cobb, Middletown, Hidden Valley Lake and Lower Lake areas.
“I know a woman from Hidden Valley who lost her bees during the Valley Fire,” Heimbach said. “I also know a guy in Cobb who had 35 hives. He didn’t lose the hives but all the bees left because of the smoke in the air and they’re never coming back.”
Fallstead, 67, became interested in beekeeping when he was 24 and while living in Lake County on his parents’ ranch in Jerusalem Valley.
“My dad said he wanted to have bees on the ranch and, more or less, I got stuck with the job because I had read a book on honey bees,” he said. “Also, the social life of bees fascinated me.”
Since then, he has mostly educated himself because, “There are no college classes in beekeeping anywhere near Lake County,” he said.
Some of his education came through reading books on beekeeping while much of it was acquired through trial and error.
Heimbach has been a beekeeping hobbyist for about seven years and started with two hives. She now likes to keep about five hives going at any one time. In her other life, Heimbach is a school teacher.
She said she gets a lot of enjoyment from her hobby.
“It’s fun just to watch the bees going in and out of their hives,” she said. “It’s relaxing, like watching a fire in a fireplace.”
Hubert started beekeeping about nine years ago but was interested in the hobby even as a youngster.
“I had a classmate whose dad was a professional beekeeper and I was fascinated by that,” he said. “Ever since then, I wanted to do this so when I moved to a place in Lake County where I could have bees, I thought, ‘Why not?’ “
He added that he’s happy having a small operation and said having a dozen hives is “ideal.”
All three of the three beekeepers interviewed said they have not had any problems with Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) that is common in other parts of the country and world, and has caused a drastic reduction in honeybee populations globally.
CCD is believed by scientists to result from a number of environmental issues, including climate change, pesticides, diseases and parasites.
“I have not experienced it and I haven’t heard of it anywhere in Lake County,” Heimbach said.
Both the University of California, Davis, and Santa Rosa Junior College have programs in beekeeping, including introductory courses.
Hubert can be reached by email at arnaudh@yahoo.com or through the local beekeeping guild Facebook page.
