How this Fort Worth crew is working to save endangered bees
Correction: An earlier version of this story misspelled the name of Robert Divers. Updated at 9 a.m. 6/27/20.
Robert Divers scooped up a handful of bees, slowly gathering them from their hive to a box that will serve as a temporary home.
He searched for the queen, ready to transport her as well.
“If the hive does become queen-less, they can raise their own queen from scratch,” he said, as he closed the lid on a box of bees. “Meanwhile we will support them at the bee ranch.”
The bees circled around his head, bumping him occasionally as a warning but didn’t attack. Divers was wearing a full bee suit, but his partner, Shel Higgens, donned only a net over his head.
Divers and Shel Higgens own Rescue Bee Ranch, a donation-based operation that removes bees from Fort Worth-area homes and businesses and gives them plenty of buzzing-around room on a ranch.
The company motto is “saving the planet, one bee at a time,” referring to the importance of bees to our food supply and their endangerment because of pests and environmental changes.
Divers said beekeepers should expect to lose one-third of their hives to Varroa mites, which can cause colonies to collapse by spreading viruses.
He explained that they have to grow the hives faster than the loses.
“Bees have such an incredible relationship with humans, that’s why we are getting more and more interest in them,” he said.
Bees that have survived on their own through winter might be more resilient genetically than those raised by big corporations, he said.
Big beekeeping companies produce hives for the purpose of pollinating California. The bees are transported in from all over the country, but in doing so also share diseases and limit the genetic variations.
“The saver of the bees is going to be one family that has one hive that they take care of,” he said. “The genetics of those bees will be unique to that place.”
The week of June 22-28, 2020, is designated as National Pollinator Week, as a step toward addressing issues of declining populations. This celebration of Pollinator Week started in 2007 when it was designated by the U.S. Senate.
Pollinators are a broad category of animals that feed on pollen and move it with them from plant to plant. This category includes bees, butterflies, and even bats.
Pollinators help pollinate 180,000 plants and more than 1,200 crops, according to Pollinators.org. Besides helping with the making of our foods, pollinators help keep the ecosystem healthy by contributing to cleaning the air, preventing soil erosion and health of other animals.
“Bees are a perfect creature, it’s God’s work at it’s finest,” Higgens said.
This story was originally published June 26, 2020 at 3:16 PM.