Miss Gail’s Ramblings
My grandmother always accused me of being “busy as a bee,” but after my outing to Columbus’s Sunshine Apiary, I would have to disagree. Those bees are busy, much busier than I could ever be! And so are their owners.
Patty and Lance Sundberg gave me a tour of their facility and I met a few thousand bees, all doing their work, whatever nature has assigned them to do. The Queen, the drones, and the lowly worker bees, were all abuzz, busy pollinating, and spreading joy to the many people who enjoy the fruits of their labor, including honey, healing powers, beeswax, Royal Jelly and pollination.
The Sunshine Apiary grew from Lance’s 4-H project as a child. He and Patty met at a Conservation Camp in Kalispell and she met his bees before she met his family. They have had a life-long love of bees and beekeeping and began depending on it for their livelihood in 1983. Other than a 7-year drought, with an accompanying over-abundance of grasshoppers during the 80’s, they have continued their work all these years. Patty is now President of the American Beekeeper’s Federation which represents a united voice to the American Congress in Washington DC. It was founded 81 years ago and its 976 members are scattered throughout the US. One of their main issues is the managing the health of bees, including the Tropilaelaps mites which can devastate a hive. Each beekeeper has a territory, by Montana law, three miles to keep bees from one hive getting over into another beekeeper’s hive, and since most bees have a range of about three miles this works out.
Although there are 20,000 varieties of bees, the Sunshine Apiary uses only one, honey bees. We took a drive to look at honey beehives which were positioned near Columbus in a 110-acre canola field. Bees wear themselves out after about six weeks of work, which was easy to see. Three hundred hives with 60,000 to 80,000 bees each were doing their thing, carrying pollen from the canola plants to the hives. Canola is grown in alternate rows, with male and female plants, bees visit one and then the other, cross fertilizing the plants in their flight to and from the hive. The USA has about 300 varietals of honey, just by the different flowers the bees get their nectar from.
The high return of honey that a Sunshine hive produced was a whopping 207 pounds. Most hives yield an average of 70 pound with a low of 9 pounds per hive. Montana production in 2023 was nearly 10 million pounds. There are 56 registered beekeepers in Montana and Montana continually ranks second to fifth for honey production beaten out by number 1, North Dakota. One third of all diets have some connection to bees and honey. Honey is critical in burns centers and other healing facilities. Not to mention Mead, an ancient alcoholic drink made from fermented honey, and evidence of this brew dates to 650 B.C. in China. Stillwater residents have just been introduced to this honey-based brew at the Bearded Viking, wow, you can drink a toddy, sweeten your oatmeal, and be healed by this miracle from the lowly bee.
Speaking of sex, and who hasn’t heard of Birds and Bees, the queen bee, female of course, is serviced by drones, the only males in the hive. All the worker bees are females, but only a Queen can lay eggs and only drones can fertilize them.
Lance and Patty Sundberg move these hives in the fall to California and Washington State, returning in the early spring. The bees do not like our Montana winters, and there are no plants growing to pollinate.
This unique agricultural business adds one more Lego block to the diverse industries around the beautiful Stillwater County.
