Of Mites and Bees: How an Interspecies Struggle Affects Hawaiian Farmers

Just by looking at it, one would never suspect the Tolentino’s small, unassuming farm to be one of the front runners of agricultural reform. In fact, at first glance, it looks almost indistinguishable from its many neighbors. Like the other nearby Waianae farms, this one is a small tract of land at the end of a short dirt road no more than five minutes inland from Oahu’s coast. Less than five acres large, its neat rows of pumpkin and bitter melon stretch back in the direction of the ocean, punctuated every so often by papaya plants. It seems deceptively sleepy, misleadingly quiet: all in all, just another modest piece of farmland tucked between countless others.

Nothing could be further from the truth. Contrary to its inconspicuous appearance, this farm is a working model of what can only be called a kind of ‘agricultural re-thinking.’ It is the response to an island-wide crisis, a direct answer to an unforeseen collapse of traditional farming methods.

And it is a very good one. 

 Scott parks the car off to the left of the first rows of bitter melon. It is there that he shows me the key factor that sets this farm apart from the rest. Three dozen feet away and surrounded by a clump of scraggly milkweed, is a modest-sized wooden box, raised up off the ground and weighed down on top by several bricks. At this distance, it is almost impossible to see the frenzy of activity around the small hole in the side facing us. At this distance, with its peeling paint and nondescript exterior, the first of Dory and Lito Tolentino’s three apiaries makes a humble first impression. And yet, this ‘box’ and the colony that calls it ‘hive’ are the reasons why this farm is so critically different from its neighbors.

With Dory running a little late, Scott volunteers to give me a tour of the farm and an introduction to the types of crops in the field. We start with the pumpkin, ignoring those plants that have already fruited, and heading towards the late-bloomers. “Let’s see if they’re still working on these,” Scott says, bending down to survey the pale yellow flowers.

Two years ago, if we were standing in the same place above the same patch of ground, that statement would have meant something radically different. It also wouldn’t have been met by the nonplussed arrival of a domesticated European honeybee, descending like some kind of insectoid homing missile straight to the center of the flower. No, it would have been feral bees from wild hives that would have filled her role and assumed the burden of what is still largely, a thankless job.

It would almost be an understatement to say that there exists a disconnect between farming as a livelihood and beekeeping as a profession in the Hawaiian Islands. The common public sentiment is that the two are separate way of making a living and are, in and of themselves, distinct occupations. Fruit and plant, honey and wax. With the feral hives doing the lion’s share of the pollination for bee-dependent crops, there was no environmental pressure on the islands to promote a hybridization of the two professions. The notion of a ‘beekeeping-farmer’ is still a novelty in the Hawaiian agricultural world and it shouldn’t be.

Here’s the logic.

Converting land into a farm entails the planting of thousands of crops where there were none before. And although space is severely limited in the Hawaiian Islands, the Big Island boasts several large-scale macadamia nut farms, each of which contains on average hundreds of trees. From an ecological standpoint, that’s not so much ‘farming’ as complete environmental ‘reconstruction.’ Even with perfectly healthy feral hives working at the peak of their efficacy, the sheer number of macadamia, eggplant, pumpkin, melon, and, to some degree, corn, would prove too vast to be pollinated by wild bees exclusively. Due to their overwhelming scale, the Big Island macadamia farms have been forced to work in conjunction with beekeepers to ensure that their trees are maximally pollinated. However, they have had no interest in buying and maintaining hives of their own. The smaller, local farms think even less about domestic pollinators, instead, relying on the feral bee populations for routine and guaranteed pollination of their fields, and the continuance of their livelihoods.

It was the traditional way of thinking and doing agriculture, and it all came crashing down sometime in 2008, when an arachnid a little larger than a grain of sand arrived, unannounced, on Oahu. Varroa destructor bears a rather telling scientific name. When viewed under the electron microscope, this mite looks like the illegitimate offspring of an alien X crab cross, eyeless, convex, and oddly menacing on its stubby legs. Like the majority of other mite species, Varroa destructor is an external parasite and can be found attached, vampire-like, to the bodies of bee larvae, pupae, and adults almost twenty times its size. A notorious transmitter of viral disease, the mite found its way onto local bees, into wild hives, and across some 200 miles of ocean to the Big Island, eradicating the majority of the feral pollinators in less than a year.

It would be impossible to over-state the sheer damage or the horrendous impact V. destructor has had on Hawaiian agriculture. Similarly, it would be hard to down-play the speed at which this invasion took place. By the time both farmers and scientists had realized something was terribly wrong, most of the mite’s harm had been done. Single-handedly, it had vacated an environmental niche and left crops sitting fruitless in the fields.

            Dory’s farm with its ordered rows of cucurbits and sedately droning bees is the direct response to this island-wide agricultural crisis.

We head past apiary number two on our way to the younger bitter melon, giving it a wider berth than we did for apiary one. “This is the crazy hive,” Scott explains. “Crazy queen means crazy hive, and these girls are a little high-strung.” Angling past it, we skirt eggplant and papaya and eventually arrive at the rest of the bitter melon. There’s a lot more bee activity back here: apparently, ‘high-strung’ carried over into their harvesting efficacy. Again, we walk through the rows, watching the bees come and go. Scott finds a decent-sized bitter melon and he’s just pointed it out to me when Dory appears, seemingly out of nowhere, grinning and adjusting her sun hat.

The first thing that strikes you about Dory is her enthusiasm. She has an inexhaustible supply of energy and eagerness, and a great sense of humor to go with it. It’s easy to consider the farm itself as THE exemplary of change, but if not for Dory and her husband’s willingness to embrace chance, the apiaries wouldn’t be here. The bees wouldn’t be here. It is a combination of intelligence, fearlessness and dedication that have made this Filipino husband and wife team so successful. Without any previous experience in beekeeping, they rolled up their sleeves, and devoted their time and money to learning.

It is also important to realize that they didn’t have the reassurance of other success stories to nudge them into beekeeping. The undertakings on their farm: the switch to bee-dependent crops, the upkeep of domesticated hives, was one of the first attempts as countering the effects of the Varroa mite on small, local farms and the stakes were high. The Tolentinos weren’t just passively changing tactics; they were taking a risk.

As we walk back in the direction of apiary number one, I ask Dory how she found the courage to leap into beekeeping.

“It was too much,” she answers. “We knew something was wrong. Before we had these hives, my husband went out at four in the morning and pollinated everything by hand. He was our bee.”

“So the beekeeping- it made sense to you?”

“Oh yes.” Another great Dory grin. “I love them. They are my babies.”

The second thing that strikes you about Dory is her sincerity. She wasn’t just being humorous with me: she was dead serious. For a local farmer to buy into beekeeping is progressive enough, but to have that farmer form a personal and affectionate relationship with their hives, is another thing entirely. It’s just another indication of how unique the Tolentinos are. Despite the investment, the risks, and the uncertainty, they have bonded with their colonies. They have made it a priority to know their bees.

But, just like child-raising, bee husbandry is part of a learning process and Dory and Lito didn’t receive a complete trouble shooting manual. A kink has come up with one of the hives and that’s why Scott is out here today, to assess its status.

Scott Nikaido and my mother, Ethel Villalobos are researchers at the University of Hawaii. In 2008 they received funds from the Hawaiian Department of Agriculture to research and hopefully retard the spread of the Varroa mite. Increasingly, however, they have been working to promote beekeeping among local farmers as a way to counter the devastating loss of feral pollinators. They’re also on hand to help stop mites from infiltrating the hives of those that buy into the idea, and to smooth out any wrinkles in the transition from ‘pure farmer’ to ‘farming beekeeper.’

One of those ‘wrinkles’ greeted Dory a couple days of ago, when she saw apiary one swarm. A belated honey collection from the hive convinced the workers that they had reached maximum capacity. The signal went out, workers switched into ‘evacuate mode’, and the queen was prodded into motion by her caretakers. Rather than continue on in a crowded hive, half of the colony absconded with their matron, setting out to find a new refuge. Tragically, with V. destructor still around in force, the chances of this swarm surviving as a feral colony are slim. The exodus was, in all likelihood, a fatal one.

Back at the truck, Scott fires up the smoker. A hybrid between old-fashioned oil can and a bellows, this convenient little device holds burning coffee bags- the smoke of which can be pumped up and out of its nozzle. Bees have an inherent aversion to smoke, and by using it Scott can keep the workers from getting unduly aggressive when we open up the hives. With the smoker fired up and ready to go, we shrug our way into our half-bee suits; adjust out face nets, and share a round of thumb-ups.

“Alright,” Scott says, collecting the smoker, “Let’s go see what’s up with this hive.”

We set off towards the surrounding clump of milkweed.

“My neighbors used to come over and collect it,” Dory tells me, eyeing the milkweed as we troop up to the apiary, “but then I got the bees and they won’t come near. I told them that as long as they didn’t bother the hive, the bees wouldn’t do anything to them, but they didn’t believe me. They were too scared of getting stung. It’s not the mites people worry about- it’s the stings.”

“That’s what a lot of people worry about, isn’t it?”

“Oh yes. My other neighbors had a wild hive a couple of years ago. They destroyed it. They didn’t want to get stung either.”

Truth be told, neither do I, but as we congregate on the apiary it becomes easier to see what Dory meant about the passive nature of her colony. We are standing over their hive at this point and they still seem oddly nonchalant about it all. It’s only when Scott starts actively handling the apiary, with his ungloved hands I should add, that we see a spike in their activity. And even then, it’s nothing more than a few bothered individuals buzzing around out faces. A quick couple puffs of smoke calms things right down, and Scott and Dory pull out the mite trap from the base of the apiary.

Dead mites stud the trap, visible only as bright red specks from this distance. That the majority of agriculture on Oahu could be compromised by something this tiny, this seemingly innocuous, is just silent testimony to the fragile intricacies of an ecosystem.

“Not too many, eh?”

“Nope. It’s looking good, Dory,” Scott replies. “Looking very good actually.”

The trap is emptied and slotted back into the bottom of the hive where it will continue to catch and strain more dead mites. Organic methods of mite control are still being tested by my mother’s research: key among them, the use of formic acid. The natural chemical seems to have no effect on the bees, but is quite lethal to the mites for reasons we don’t quite understand. Dory’s hive looks healthy enough not to warrant immediate mite control, but the status of the queen is still unknown.

As I watch, Dory and Scott begin extracting the ten frames that make up the bulk of the apiary.  The first couple are pulled out rife with perplexed workers and substantial amounts of honey. Scott scoops out a glob of honeycomb with his finger so I can get a better look at it. Dory’s pleased with the substantial amount, noting that she’ll have to come back soon to harvest the bulk of it.

The frames are replaced and more are withdrawn. Each one is carefully studied on both sides, for either queen or queen cell.

Scott replaces his and draws another. “See anything yet?”

“Yes!” A happy exclamation from Dory. “I think I found her!”

The ‘her’ refers not to a mature queen, but to an expanded clump of cells that have been merged into one.

“Is she in there?”

“I think so.” Dory tilts the screen and beckons us closer. “See?” The queen cell isn’t yet capped off and, after some angling around, I can just make out what I presume to be the head end of a fat, white larva deep in its sumptuous quarters.

“That’s her,” Scott confirms. “So they’ve already started making a new queen. That’s great.”

New ‘queens’ would have been more accurate. As the rest of the screens are pulled out, we find at least two more queen cells, each occupied by a would-be-Highness. This surplus of rulers is the equivalent of an insurance policy for bees. If one doesn’t make it, there are others in reserve. If all hatch, it will be an outright Queen death-match, with the strongest Queen killing off the competition.

I would be lying if I didn’t say that, by this point, I was coming to grips with a new respect for these insects. As ruthless as hive politics are, and they could indeed be ruthless, these colonial creatures are the proud product of millions of years of evolution. They are the inheritors and practitioners of intricate survival behaviors: swarming, Queen insurance policy, drone production, and the intricate waggle dance to name just a few.

 

And, as I watch Scott and Dory replace last of the frames, I realize that what I’m seeing is the current-day continuation of a 5,000 year old tradition. The mutualistic relationship, the co-evolution, of these complex insects and our own species. It all seems so natural, out in these fields. Take care of the bees and they’ll take care of you. For too long, local Hawaiian farmers had lived with the assurance that the local pollinators were out there, largely unseen and un-recorded, doing their work. No efforts were made to accommodate them: pesticides and herbicides were still sprayed during peak pollination hours and in un-moderated amounts. The sad truth is, if it hadn’t been Varroa destructor in 2008, it would have been something else, sometime in the not too distant future: it’s the consequence of placing all your ecological eggs in one basket.

            Luck of the draw, it just turned out to be Varroa destructor. It came, it wreaked havoc, it jeopardized the livelihoods of entire local farming communities. As I mentioned before, the damage this tiny mite caused cannot be ignored or understated. However, the more shocking thing, at least in my humble opinion, is that two full years later, local farmers are still reeling. The Tolentino’s farm is only one of a dozen or so that have embraced beekeeping as a means to fill in the niche the feral pollinators were eradicated from. Which of course, brings up the looming question of: why? Why is it taking so long for small farms like the Tolintino’s, to look into domesticated bees? What is holding them back?

            Dory had given me part of the answer. People don’t like bees because bees have the potential to cause us pain. Blame it on bad childhood experiences, or the nature shows that like to emphasize the killing power of a swarm of African bees, but there’s an inherent caution built in to our minds. Why work with animals that could hurt you? Why handle hives with thousands of the things, buzzing in your face and crawling on your clothing? Why take the risk of installing three or four apiaries and their accompanying populations, if you’re a farmer with small children on your property? Pets? I can understand the sentiment, but I can also pin it down to a lack of basic education about how bees behave and why they do what they do. For, as Dory just proved, three people can walk up to a hive in proper attire, prod at honey cells, expose Queens-to-be, and then saunter away without a single sting.

            In fact, it’s that lack of public education that I believe is the largest hurdle between local farmers and sustainable bee keeping. Many farmers don’t yet know that they have the option to maintain their own hives, let alone what it would entail to keep bees. Many don’t realize that they can also make quite a bit of profit from honey and wax cells. It’s just too new a concept for them. When confronted with this alternative, they automatically assume it will cost too much (the USDA can offer financial support to get initial hives and equipment), that it will be too much work (Dory doesn’t seem to think so), or that it will interfere with other basic farming practices like pesticide spraying (Yes, but only insofar as the suggestion of: Spray a little less, closer to dusk).

In many ways, the outreach part of my mother’s and Scott’s program will test the farmers’ ability to set aside these pre-conceived notions. In a perfect world, this testing would be for the sake sustainable bee-keeping itself, and not in response to the invasion of a vampiric mite and the ensuing island-wide crisis, but- if one good thing can be said to come from all the chaos of V. destructor, it is that it is forcing people to shift mindsets. No longer can they take an ecosystem service for granted; they have been given a brutal wake-up call about just how tenuous ecological connections really are. It wasn’t the kindest of eye-openers, but V. destructor provided the ‘elbow-to-the-ribs’ shove that the Islands needed to begin thinking about sustainable beekeeping and sustainable agriculture.

Back at the truck, we peel off our bee-keeping suits and douse the smoker. As Scott packs everything up, I shake Dory’s hand and tell how grateful I am for all this insight she’s given me. She laughs. “It’s not a problem. I really love my bees.”

            Apparently, the sentiment’s a bit one-sided, for she cuts off in mid-sentence and, with a whoop of laughter, begins flailing her bee hat in the air. A stubborn worker, still a bit peeved with our presence, has come buzzing up from the apiary and is now circling above us. Dory’s hat waving is doing little to deter her, so we quickly scatter into our respective vehicles. Scott and I call out ‘thank yous’ as we quickly roll up the windows- an unneeded precaution as it turns out, for the bee has drifted off after Dory, like a miniature, irate, balloon. Dory’s still laughing as she starts her truck and follows us out, back up that little dirt road in Waianae.