Feature

Story Last modified at 9:41 a.m. on Thursday, May 10, 2007

Beekeeping - The ultimate farming endeavor

By MARY M. RALL
Alaska Star

Rick Fouts collects a yearly harvest provided to him by tens of thousands of his charges that he can neither contain nor control.

As one of dozens of beekeepers from the Chugiak-Eagle River area, Fouts has found a hobby with a sweet but challenging payoff.

Fouts keeps four hives of bees at his Eagle River home, where he lives with his wife, Denise, who has shared his hobby through
the Southcentral Alaska Beekeepers Association.

“I've always loved insects, so I'm just naturally attracted to the insect world, but I really like the idea of being able to gather honey for
our own use,” Fouts said.

Fouts is just beginning his fifth year of keeping bees and admits it's not without its challenges which includes avoiding being
stung since he is allergic to the insects. Sporting a finger swollen to about three times its normal size from a sting, he downplayed
the perceived danger of beekeeping.

“I'm not severely allergic, but I do carry EpiPens,” Fouts said of the antihistamine auto-injectors he uses at the first sign of an
allergic reaction.

“Once I'm suited up, it's pretty safe, so I'm not concerned,” he said. “I'm more allergic to yellow jackets than I am to honeybees.”

Fouts said there are far more challenging aspects to beekeeping than his allergy, to include getting honeybees to Alaska, as the
insects are not indigenous to the state.

SABA president Joe Carson, said the trek toward getting Alaska honey in state cupboards begins with the almond crop in
California.

“Many will try to bring them out of California because that's where the almonds have just finished pollinating, so that's where your
fast brood buildup has begun,” he said of the millions of bees that are collected for transport by airplane to Alaska.

Timing is everything in transporting the bees, which must have very particular conditions to survive the flight and flourish upon
arrival.

“The variables that we have are the weather in California, the weather in Alaska, the temperature, the humidity, the snow we can't
control any of that,” Carson said.

“So all we need to know is when are the flowers going to blossom exactly - and what is the weather going to be,” he laughed. “It's
farming at its most intense. You have no control and yet you try to manage and hopefully produce a crop.”

Add to that curious bears who have never encountered honeybees or their stores of honey in the wild and unpredictable Alaska
weather, and Fouts said beekeepers can have a real challenge in producing a worthwhile crop.

He said some precautions, like electric wire around the hives to prevent bears from taking advantage of an easily-accessible food
source, can help prevent the hives' stores from being eaten, but no one can count on what Mother Nature will do from year to year.

“Last year was not a good year because it was cool, and it was wet,” he said. “Our honey that we extracted was high in moisture
content, so it was a little runny.”

In a good year when it's sunny and dry, Fouts said he could collect as much as 80 pounds of honey from his hives, which varies in
taste from year to year depending on what blooms.

“There's little nuances,” he said. “You could go a mile down the road and someone may have a different variety of flower that is
more abundant down there than we have right here, so the color and the taste will vary accordingly.”

Beekeeping season spans from mid-April to August, at which time flowers begin to die and honey is harvested, Carson said,
adding that crops throughout the country are dependent on honeybees.

“All food sources in America are pollinated by the honeybee, and if we lose those, of course, we lose one-third of our crop
immediately,” he said.

He said Alaska honey stands out among other states because of the purity of what's produced.

“We're producing a product that is made in Alaska by Alaskans. It is absolutely a holistic, healthy, organic product,” Carson said.
“Our honey is coveted all over the world because we do not have major agriculture, we do not have all the pesticides, herbicides or
any of that.”

Of the 300 registered beekeepers spanning from Homer to Fairbanks, 40 to 50 live locally and have connected through SABA,
Carson said.

“The meetings are great,” Fouts said. “Everybody has their own techniques on certain things. We all learn from each other. What
works for me may not work for someone else depending on their conditions, so there's just little different things.”

And sampling what others produce is an added perk.

“It's really interesting to sample other people's honey,” he said of what the hives yield, which are a major source of nutrients.

“Between pollen, royal jelly and the honey, you have almost everything critical to survive in life as far as nutrients go,” Carson said,
adding that honeybees are the only insect that naturally produce a consumable product for humans.

“You have livestock, if you will, that you cannot control, that you cannot contain, that you cannot control their food source and yet
you're trying to manage them to derive a food product from them,” he said. “It is the ultimate farming endeavor.”

For more information on beekeeping, log on to www.alaskabees.com.

Reach the reporter at news@alaskastar.com.

This article published in The Alaska Star on Thursday, May 10, 2007.

Rick Fouts holds a 4.5-pound box containing 7,000 bees that
were shipped from California to Alaska at his Eagle River home
April 21. As a beekeeping hobbiest, he tends as many as
42,000 bees annually.
STAR PHOTO BY MARY M. RALL

Beekeeper Kevin Fouts of Eagle River holds a
queen bee, which is separated from the rest of the
hive during shipping.
STAR PHOTO BY MARY M. RALL

Southcentral Alaska Beekeepers Association