July 2010 679

Pheromones of Affection

T om Parisian pulled up at Honey Bee Genetics in his Suburban wearing a bright yellow storm coat.

As soon as he stepped out onto the road hewas attracting bees: At first just a stray, thentwo, then half a dozen. They alighted on hisshoulders, buzzed around his waist, andlanded on his blue jeans. Was it the brightyellow coat that attracted them? Or was itsomething else? An aura of bee-ness? Apheromone of affection? He paid them noheed. Already he was eyeing the 4X4 forklifts in the yard, unloading supplies, talkingto Paulino, getting a status report from Rick,approving the paint color for the new shakerboxes for Gustavo and – at the same time –greeting me with a warm handshake.

Anyone who believes that bees do all thework around a bee yard needs to watch Tomand his team. It was a time in Mid-March of2010 when all the hectic activities of the

early spring season were bearing down onthis working farm.

For instance, the almond bloom wasnearly over, but the almond farmers werecalling to ask for just a few more days to havethe bees in the orchards. Meanwhile, theprune blossoms were opening, and differentfarmers in different orchards were calling toask if the bees could be moved in a littleearly, before their scheduled day.

Simultaneously, there was a constructioncrew hauling in some final materials for thenew bee barn that was being finished. But al-ready the barn was in use. One corner hadbeen made into a woodworking shop wherenew queen racks were being sawn and newshaker boxes were being painted. In anothercorner they were unloading and inspectingempty nucleus hives. In a third corner, a 4X4forklift was moving an entire pallet of drivertbakery sugar, which – in turn — was beingdistributed into the empty nucleus hives.From the size of this setup and the level ofactivity, it looked like they were planning tostart an awful lot of nucs! I was about to ask

Orchards that need pollination surround Honey Bee Genetics

Tom Parisian

Colonies in almond orchard forpollination Shipping boxes await bees.

Empty nucleus hives awaitcolonies

American Bee Journal680

how many when Tom’s cell phone rang. It was Sharon, his wife, back at their

house. She was busy scheduling the shippingorders for packages and queens. There shewas, working out the shipping scheduling forMid-April when, at that particular moment inthe Mid-March, there were still no packagesto ship and no queens to sell.

I felt as though I’d landed in the middle ofa conjuring act and was about to witness ateam of master magicians perform an amaz-ing trick: Assembling new colonies out ofthin air. How were they going to pull it off?

That was why I was here. I’d come to wit-ness the great transformation of a workingbee farm into the breeding bedroom for dis-ease-resistant colonies of hybrid honey bees.

Honey Bee GeneticsTom Parisian operates Honey Bee Genet-

ics on about 40 acres of level SacramentoValley farmland bordered by orchards andthe distantly encroaching suburban tracks ofVacaville, California. He keeps about 3500colonies of bees in continual rotation with thesurrounding crops: Almonds and other fruittrees in the early spring and sunflowers in thesummer. But pollination and the associatedproduction of honey represent only two partsof his business. It’s the third part – geneti-cally selected disease-resistant bees – thathave made Honey Bee Genetics synonymouswith healthy, productive beekeeping aroundthe world. And the history of this small com-pany runs like a beeline through the scienceand commerce of modern beekeeping prac-tices.

The Changing Fortunes of Bees I first became aware of Honey Bee Genet-

ics in the late 1980s when a friend asked meto set her up with bees. I began a remedial in-vestigation about the best bees for our localarea: Remedial, because I’d not kept bees for10 years. I was surprised and discouraged byhow much beekeeping had changed in sucha short time. Between 1974 and 1984 thewhole etiology and treatment of bee diseaseshad become distorted.1 What had caused suchmassive change? Of course, it was the mites:U.S. apiaries were being devastated first byinfestations of tracheal (Acarapis woodi) andthen varroa (Varroa destructor) mites. By1989, varroa mites were wreaking havoc oncolonies all across the country.

Most beekeepers were being instructed touse miticides and fumigants to manage theinfestations and to save their colonies. Butmy friend was an organic gardener and theuse of insecticides was not an option. Instead,we searched for alternative methods to keepthe bees healthy. This quest led me to Taber’sHoney Bee Genetics in Vacaville, CA. They

advertised a different approach that didn’t in-clude chemical treatment: Bees bred, the adsaid, for their resistance to tracheal and var-roa mites. And Steve Taber was proving tobe one of the most vocal champions of thisnew approach.

Genesis of Honey Bee GeneticsSteve Taber was already renowned as a

USDA bee researcher, lecturer, and authorwhen he retired to Vacaville, California in1978 with the expressed purpose of raisingnew lines of hybrid queens that were moreresistant to disease.

During that same period, Tom Parisianwas working toward a PhD at nearby UCDavis on his own project related to queenrearing. And, in addition, he had his own bur-geoning pollination business.

“Back then, pollination was just extra cash– about $6 per colony,” Tom told me. “Notmuch by today’s standards. But for a poorgrad student with a fair number of hives, itwas good money.”

Tom’s business plan developed from somecontroversial economic research that ques-tioned if pollination and honey productionalone could financially sustain a business inbees. So, he determined to add queen rearingas a third element and discovered that itworked for his business model. From 1980until 1988 he ran his bee business as CalQueens Farm, based in Vacaville. But thenin 1988 a fire destroyed both his home andhis bee buildings.

In hindsight, it seems inevitable that Steveand Tom would team up, and the resultingpartnership blossomed in 1988 under thebusiness name of Taber’s Honey Bee Genet-ics.

“Both Steve and I maintained our breedinglines through instrumental insemination dur-ing that time,” Tom says. “We were identify-ing strains that were resistant to trachealmites, and very few people were doing that.We’d dissect the bees, month after month,using microscopes to examine how they werewithstanding the mites. And slowly – veryslowly – we started to see signs of resistancein the surviving colonies. Then, we’d crossthe queens that showed some resistance withdrones from a different strain that alsoshowed promise. And the cycle would repeat.We lost a lot of bees in the process: A verylarge percentage.”

To sustain an appropriately large pool of

colonies for genetic selection, Tom’s acumenas a commercial beekeeper proved crucial.Tom ran the day-to-day operations of the api-ary, while Steve attended primarily to the bi-ology of resistance. Honey Bee Geneticsexpanded to thousands of working coloniesactively pollinating the fields and crops nearVacaville. Using this resource of activecolonies, Tom and Steve sustained their focuson selecting and breeding disease resistantlines.

“Steve had his own design for nucleushives.” Tom remembers. “I still have some ofthem around here. They aren’t compatiblewith any other equipment, but that didn’t re-ally matter at the time. Steve was happiestjust working through his nucleus colonies,while I managed the day-to-day operations.”

Then, in 1991, after three years at HoneyBee Genetics, Steve suddenly decided tomove to France. It created a quandary for thebusiness, but Tom bought out Steve’s part-nership, and the company was renamed sim-ply “Honey Bee Genetics.”

Yet, in talking with Tom, it was very clearthat Honey Bee Genetics had become morethan a mere business venture. It had trans-formed into one of those rare and uniquepartnerships that — founded and nurtured onprofessional skills — flourished with a mu-tual, abiding respect and a deep underlyingfriendship. That friendship even survived thissudden dissolution of the partnership, and

Early photo ofTaber and

Parisian at HoneyBee Genetics

1“Inheritance of Resistance to Acarapis woodi(Acari: Tarsonemidae) in Crosses BetweenSelected Resistant Russian and Selected Sus-ceptible U.S. Honey Bees (Hymenoptera:Apidae)”, Jose´ D. Villa and Thomas E.Rinderer, USDAÐARS Honey Bee Breeding,Genetics and Physiology Laboratory, 1157Ben Hur Road, Baton Rouge, LA 70820.

Steve Taber

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Tom and Steve remained in frequent contact– across oceans and across continents —until Steve’s death in 2008.

Honey Bee Genetics TodayFast forward 20 years, and Honey Bee Ge-

netics today has become world-famous as aqueen breeding organization. They haveshipped packages as far west as Guam and asfar east as the United Arab Emirates. They’vesent hybrid queens to France, Italy, andChile. The focus on disease resistant colonieshas intensified in recent years on survivorstock.

“After Steve left, I used instrumental in-semination to maintain and produce breederqueens for the USDA ARS Y-C-1 project2,”Tom says. “This was our YugoslavianCarniolan line.” But that is not all. “One ofour current lines is the Russian Carniolanstock imported by the USDA,” Tom contin-ued. “This line has been overwintered in aharsh climate with snow and low tempera-tures and has been maintained for six yearswithout any chemical treatments for mites.We also offer an Italian line which is crossedto the Russian Carniolan drones.”

And the results?“Many of our customers have been repeat

customers for many years. These customers— from states all over the country — give usfeedback that our bees are surviving andthriving in their apiaries.”

The Skilled TeamToday Tom Parisian is running Honey Bee

Genetics at a full-tilt pace with a team whohas been with him for more than 15 years.

“I don’t think I’d still be doing this withoutthe loyalty and the skill of my employees,”Tom said. “With Paulino Bustamante, Gus-tavo Gutierrez, Rick Frech and the rest of thecrew doing the day-to-day, and I can actuallyfocus on managing the business.”

Indeed, those I met at Honey Bee Geneticswere as enthusiastic about their activities asTom.

But the treat for me as an amateur bee-keeper went beyond the opportunity to talkwith one of the real pioneers in hybrid queenrearing. It was also the chance to watch hisskilled team carefully and efficiently createhundreds of nucleus colonies in a real pro-duction setting.

How many nucleus colonies were theymaking? The goal this season was, accordingto Tom, 4,000.

Counting, counting, countingAs Tom and his team worked, the first

thing I observed was their attention to thephases of the bee reproductive cycle, with aneye on the current weather forecasts and thepollination needs of clients. They clearlyhave the bee math down pat and are using itas the backbone of their schedule for creatingthe nucs.

Each nucleus colony needed a healthyqueen and that meant thousands of newlyhatched bee larva from the best colonies hadto be grafted and floated in queen cups con-taining royal jelly. These queen cups wereplaced in finishing hives where a frame ofnurse bees completed the queen cells as thelarvae began pupation.

Later, four thousand of the best finishedqueen cells were chosen from the queen racksfor implantation into the nucleus colonies.

This reproductive schedule also dictatedthat Tom’s 1000 nucleus hives – each con-taining 4 sections — had to be physicallyready within the twenty-eight day window ofpupation. This meant inspecting the 1000hives, repairing frames, replacing founda-tions where necessary, and loading the 4000

sections with drivert sugar - no small minorundertaking on an operation of this scale. Asa consequence, they stagger the overall hivemaintenance work to coincide with multiplecycles of queen rearing and nucleus creation.

Meanwhile, the actual bees needed to fillthe nucleus hives were gathered from thecolonies that were pollinating in the orchards.Tom’s team uses specially constructed fun-nels, with integrated drone/queen excluders– called “shaker boxes”—that snap into thecustom-built bulk bee cages. They shake thehives of orchard colonies into these funnelsand the bees fall into the bulk cages. Then,the cages were driven back to the farm.

The bulk cages – each holding about 35pounds of bees — were brought into a cool,darkened shed where the fully prepared nu-cleus hives have been staged in a single row.The bees were sprayed with sugar water tokeep them calm, and the cool SacramentoValley morning kept them from flying.

Pouring the NucsThen, began the process where the repro-

ductive cycle of pupation connected with allthe equipment preparation that Tom’s teamhad been working on.

A finished queen cell was pushed into anuc frame with a single motion. Since therewere four sections in each hive box, fourqueens cells were added to four frames perhive body.

At the same time a team member wasgrafting the queens onto the frames, anothermember was following close behind with ametal handleless ladle, carefully scoopingbees from the bulk cages and literally “pour-ing” the bees directly into each section. Athird member placed burlap inner covers overthe top of the four sections, and then laid theexterior cover on the completed nucleus hive.

2“Status of pollinators in North America”,National Research Council (U.S.), Commit-tee on the Status of Pollinators in NorthAmerica, Science, 2007, page 78.

PaulinoBustamante

selects the bestqueen cells.

Each nucleus hive is divided intofour sections

Specially built shaker and bulkcages can hold 35 lbs. of bees.

Bees in bulk cages await transferto nucleus hives.

American Bee Journal682

As each layer of completed nucleus hiveswas closed up, a new layer of empty nucswas set directly on top, and the process wasrepeated.

By the end of the morning, several hun-dred nucleus hives were assembled by thisoperation, each containing four colonies.

The whole operation was a masterpiece oftiming, coordination, and skill. Watchingthem handle these colonies with such graceand speed, I was awed by the care theydemonstrated with each nuc. These were notsome hired-hand day laborers, but each atruly skilled and dedicated beekeeper. Theyperformed this operation in almost completesilence as a few wayward bees circled thestacks. It was like witnessing a team of mid-wives attending a birth: The creation of newlife in the world.

They left the nucs in the dark for two daysto allow the colonies to settle in and thequeens to emerge. Then, they moved themout into an open bee yard. Within severaldays, the queen in each colony would fly outon her mating flight. When she returned, shewould begin laying her first eggs, buildingup the nuc colonies.

Catching the Queens in AprilOn my fourth visit to Honey Bee Genetics

I rode out with Tom to visit the nucleus farm– the 1000 hives now nestled in an open agri-cultural field. Two team members were in-specting the colonies to make certain theemerged/mated queens were adequately lay-ing a good pattern of eggs. Then, they har-vested the queens and carefully slipped theminto their queen cages. Watching them workin the field, as a couple of Thoroughbredswandered in an adjoining paddock, there wasalmost a festive atmosphere: The sun wasout, it was nearly 70, and it seemed a perfect

California day for searching for queens.Meanwhile, back at the office, these queenswere gingerly marked by Paulino — inpreparation for individual shipping or as thequeens to shipped with bee packages.

The packages, themselves, were also beingassembled. Crew members drove out againwith the bulk cages, shaking the activecolonies to gather workers, and pouring theminto shipping boxes where a queen awaitedwith a can of feeding syrup for their journeyto their new homes.

Shipping and PickupOn April 17th, almost precisely one month

from my first visit in March, Tom asked meto drive over one more time to the apiary inVacaville. His wife Sharon’s meticulousscheduling had already shipped thousands ofbees as far north as Alaska, and as far east asOhio, and their entire stock of packages—pre-ordered by individual telephone calls andemails —had been sold out for severalweeks. Yet the telephone calls were still com-ing.

Some calls were from customers who hadforgotten to order their bees, and now weredisappointed. Some were about obtainingnew queens. Most were from people needingsome help with the installation. One call froman airport shipper in Washington reported

that a forklift truck had pierced through a pal-let of bees headed for Alaska. Fortunately,Tom found a local beekeeper to patch theshipment and it reached its destination. Thefrantic calls, Tom said, probably wouldn’t letup until June when the installation seasonended.

The conjuring trick was now nearly com-plete: From out of thin air Honey Bee Genet-ics had sent another generation of disease

Queen cell inserted into nucleusframe

Bees are hand-poured into nu-cleus hives

1,000 nucleus hives in fields at Honey Bee Genetics

Harvesting queens

Ensuring queens are laying

Marking queens

Packages poured

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resistant bees out into the world.

The Future at Honey Bee GeneticsStill, Tom had one more special thing he

wanted to share.Each year, on three weekends, he invites

the amateur beekeepers to drive out to theapiary and personally pick up their packages.Forty people had already come through thatmorning by the time I arrived at 9AM, andsome had driven in from as far as Mill Valley,two hours away. Several had come with theirchildren and their grandchildren. Othersbrought their spouse or neighbor to share thisunique experience. I asked each how theyhad found Honey Bee Genetics, and each de-scribed a personal past connection to thecompany.

Then, Tom took each little group over to atable where he offered instructions on thebest strategy for installing their packages.

One young beekeeper stared wide-eyed,looking for assurances from his grandfather.Another stood by, silently tracking a fewstray bees as his father asked detailed ques-tions. Tom spoke softly, authoritatively,showing a knack for filling in when a ques-tioner seemed hesitant or uncertain. Then,one by one, Tom led each family to its pre-cious package, and soon the morning pickupswere complete.

Finally, we pulled up a couple of emptysupers and we sat outside in the beautifulCalifornia sunshine and talked about all I hadseen. As we talked, bees from the finishingnucs strayed over and carelessly circledaround his shoulders. Soon we were dis-cussing a wide range of topics: About ColonyCollapse Disorder; about the new pesticidesin agribusiness; and about the amateur inter-est in bees. Finally, I asked how the HoneyBee Genetics of today had changed, and howthe change related to the original goals thathe and Steve Taber had set out more than 20years before.

“Our vision has always been on customerservice,” he said. “We do that by supplyingthe highest quality bees and bee products,and assisting the farmers in improving theircrops by supplying them with strong, healthybee hives.”

These were the precise elements of Tom’sbusiness plan from more than 20 years ear-lier: Pollination, bee products, and genetics.It was a great response to hear from the

owner of this small company: A true commit-ment to quality and customer satisfaction.

Beyond the Business VisionBut as an amateur beekeeper who had vis-

ited the apiary, and had witnessed how itsbees performed over 20 years, I had my ownpersonal vision of Honey Bee Genetics, andit seemed to stretch a bit further beyond thebasic business model. And this same visionseemed to be reinforced by every beekeeperI met there that morning.

When colonies were being devastated bythe new organic challenges of tracheal mitesand varroa, Steve Taber and Tom Parisiancharted a new direction for managing bees.They saw that chemical management of pestswas as hard on bees as it was expensive forbeekeepers. They seemed to understand thatit was the adaptive biology of Apis melliferathat held the key to its own survival, and thattreating the bees with chemicals actually re-tarded the long-term chances of the species’survival.

It was this sort of vision that created theenterprise of Honey Bee Genetics. SteveTaber and Tom Parisian – along with a fewothers organizations – had set up a chemical-free breeding refuge for the species to workout its own fate. This fate included hybridiza-tion, but it also relied upon reproductive

adaptation—the propagation of survivalstrains—over years of careful and skilledprofessional management.

I wonder if this is the true legacy thatSteve Taber and Tom Parisian will one dayleave behind, and the reason Honey Bee Ge-netics will continue to thrive in the years tocome.

Which is the true vision and future of thissmall and dedicated company? The businessmodel or the scientific biological insight intothis species called Apis mellifera?

As Tom took off on his next errand of theday, I watched as yet another handful of beesswirled around his shoulders. With a bit ofimagination, one might believe they werewhispering in his ear.

(above) Tom Parisian makes sure customers knowhow to install their package of bees (r) Future bee-keeper on bee pick-up day listens to installationdemo.

Package beepick-up day

at Honey BeeGenetics

Tom Parisian inspects the broodpattern on a nucleus frame

TABER’Son the web...

Queens & PackagesNew USDA RussianARS YugoslaviansFree Brochure Call

Phone 707-449-0440Fax 707-449-8127

P.O. Box 1672Vacaville, CA 95696

www.honeybeegenetics.com