The Bee Project
help save honey bees
The Koutz Farm Bee Project
Bees are vital for our survival and our food security. Without them, there would be no pollination, and eventually, no life. We hope to convince you to love or at least appreciate these creatures for their crucial role in our ecosystem. So, next time you encounter a bee, consider it a friend and an essential worker helping to keep our planet healthy.
The important role that bees play in our ecosystem cannot be overstated. Not only do they contribute to pollination, but they also play a key role in maintaining our food sources and the survival of various species. It is crucial that we recognize the significance of bees and work to protect them. By gaining a deeper understanding of their behavior and habitat, we can do our part to ensure their survival and, in turn, the preservation of our own food sources. Let us all work together to appreciate and protect these amazing pollinators and the valuable gifts they bring to us all. Read our FAQ below to learn more about our little pollinating honey bee friends.
Bee Project Goals
The Koutz Farm Bee Project is currently on pause because we are planning a move in the near future. Once we get situated in our new location we will kick-off the donation drive to help us reach our goal for the apiary. To get our apiary setup in a way that makes it easy for Mrs. Koutz to manage (considering her fibromyalgia and degenerative disc disease) we need Flow Hives, hive stands, bees, tools, a honey extractor (for the standard hives they already have), bee-friendly landscaping, gardening supplies, fruit trees, and flowers. This is an expensive undertaking and we could use all the help we can get. Once we kick this donation drive off, if you would like to support the Koutz Farm Bee Project to help promote beekeeping, come back after we get moved and help us kick off this donation drive the right way. We truly thank you for your support and pray that God will shower blessings upon you for having a heart of service.
Honey Bee FAQ
Why are honey bees important to our food sources?
1/3 of the U.S. diet is derived from insect-pollinated plants and honey bees are responsible for an impressive 80% of that process.
Honey bees pollinate the plants that are in turn used to feed cattle – making bees very important to our meat and dairy products.
Are honey bees good for the economy?
Honey bees add 15 billion dollars annually to the American agricultural system.
How many flowers does it take for a bee to produce 1 teaspoon of honey?
Bees visit 1,000 flowers and produce only 1 teaspoon of honey. To us, we see only a teaspoon of honey, but to that bee, that honey is a lifetime of work.
What is Royal Jelly?
According to Britannica, Royal Jelly, also known as Bee Milk, is a thick white substance that is nutrient rich. It is secreted through glands found in the heads of the worker bees and is used as food for the bee larvae for the first 3 days of life. If the hive is creating a new queen, it will feed the chosen larvae royal jelly through its full larvae development period.
How many species of Bees are there?
There are approximately 20,000 different species of bees in the world; however, many species of bees are becoming endangered and are at risk of being extinct.
How long does a bee live?
A worker bee typically lives for 40 (forty) days; however, a queen bee can live from 2 (two) to 7 (seven) years!
How many eggs can a Queen Bee lay?
The queen bee can lay up to 1,500 eggs a day in a healthy hive.
How does an egg larvae become a male (Worker Bee) or female (Queen Bee)?
If the hive is healthy, an unfertilized egg will become a worker bee. A fertilized egg can become either a queen bee or a worker bee depending on what the larvae diet is through its development. If it is fed royal jelly for only 3 days of its life, then it becomes a worker bee and if it is fed royal jelly for the full larvae development cycle, then it becomes a queen bee.
What is the Varroa Mite?
The Varroa Mite is a parasite – the single most destructive pest for the honey bees – first detected in the U.S. in 1987. They are tiny red-brown external parasites of honey bees. The Varroa mite can live on adult honey bees, but they mainly feed and reproduce on larvae and pupae in the developing brood, causing malformation and weakening of honey bees as well as transmitting numerous viruses.
What is "Cuddle Death"?
“Cuddle Death” is a way that bees kill an old or diseased queen. Once a queen is deemed unfit to serve the worker bees cluster tightly around her body until she dies from overheating.
What is "Colony Collapse Disorder" (CCD)?
Introduction: Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) was first reported in 2006. Beekeepers began reporting high colony losses where the adult honeybees simply disappeared from the hives, almost all at the same time. There were few, if any, dead bees found in or around the hives. The queen and immature bees (brood) were often found in the hives with plenty of food stores, inadequately attended by a few adult bees.
Cause: CCD is believed to be complex and a result of multiple factors. One study evaluated 61 factors, and found that no single stressor stood out as the primary cause of CCD. However, colonies affected by CCD had more pathogens and more types of pathogens than colonies without CCD. Pathogens are disease-causing organisms. A group of stakeholders that gathered in 2012 found a similar consensus, that a complex group of stressors and pathogens are associated with CCD.
What is European Foulbrood Disease?
European foulbrood (EFB) is a bacterial disease that effects honey bee larvae before the capped stage. European foulbrood disease is characterized by dead and dying larvae which can appear curled upwards, brown or yellow, melted, and/or dried out and rubbery. The causative bacteria, Melissococcus plutonius is ingested by honey bee larvae after which the bacterium competes for food inside the larvae. If the bacteria out-competes the larva, the larva will die before the cell is capped. Alternatively, the bee may survive until adulthood if the larvae has sufficient food resources. European foulbrood should not be confused with American foulbrood (AFB), which is caused by a different bacteria that produces different symptoms and control requirements.
Do Pesticides Kill Bees?
Yes, they do. More research needed by Koutz Farm before we address this bullet point. We know experts are researching the effects of pesticides on bee colonies and we know pesticides are a big killer of our bee population.
Progress Report
2026
The Koutz Farm Bee Project is on hold until further notice. Mrs. Koutz has undergone spine surgery again, this time to fix the fractured spine and a fusion of 2 vertebrae that had degenerating disc. In addition, we have made the decision to put the place on the market as soon as we get everything packed and cleaned up. The property may not be good for raising bees – but it is great for raising chickens, ducks, and guineas among other types of farm animals. It served us well the 10 years we’ve been here – but raising bees here has proven to be harder than we thought. Their ecosystems are so fragile. We are going to try again once we get moved.
2025
- Mrs. Koutz struggled with a lot of pain from her fibromyalgia and a spine fracture. She learned she’d been living with this fracture for quite a while as it was a “chronic fracture” rather than an “acute fracture”. The broken part of the spine was crushing her nerves – which affected her left side the most. Because of an upcoming surgery and discussions about selling and moving – the Koutz Farm Bee Project has been put on hold.
- A lot of planes have been flying over spraying lately. We have lingering chemtrails (not contrails) hovering above us and disipating into the atmosphere around us. Some of our trees are dying and we wonder if it isn’t a side effect of what they are spraying. If a sturdy tree is struggling, think of how a fragile bee ecosystem could be affected by this kind of spraying going on around us.
2024
- Papa Fred really thinks the bees were swarming and dying off because of something that was being sprayed by one of the neighboring properties since our hives keep dying unexpectedly.
- We saw a chemical truck spraying from the highway closer to a nearby town, but it made us worry about the effects the spray has on our bees – so we decided to continue waiting instead of getting back into the bees while we are here on this property. This is the first time we started talking about selling this place and moving elsewhere.
- The county requires 3 functioning bee-hives to get the ag-exemption on property less than 10-acres and they said that was the only thing they will consider to get the ag-exemption (not our chickens). What makes us mad, if this truck has sprayed anywhere near us and our hives, that would explain why our bees aren’t making it. So, we will be contacting the county to complain and see what they say. If they are going to spray and kill the bees, then they need to change the rules and allow chickens to qualify for the ag-exemption (BUT we really wanted the bees to help our garden thrive and to be able to harvest some of the honey from time to time).
2023
Mrs. Koutz was dealing with a lot of health issues because of her fibromyaglia so the family decided to hold off on getting more bees for a while.
2022
I really enjoyed having the bees while we had them. They pollinated the plants and we had the most amazing berries growing everywhere. The berries were delicious. Super sad and disappointed, we decided to wait a while to try again.
2021
- Currently, we do not have bees in any of the hives. We did receive a gift of bees from Papa Fred for Christmas 2019. We picked them up that following March. The bees were VERY aggressive and wouldn’t stay in the hive. They swarmed twice but we caught them and put them back in a hive.
- We tried a different hive thinking maybe they didn’t like the first one. They did the same thing and we caught them the second time.
- At this point, we bought a ‘bee vacuum’ to be able to safely vacuum up a swarm of bees to rehive them – but by the time it was delivered, the bees had left – not to be found anywhere. The few stragglers died off. This made us sad, mad, and also a little relieved since the bees were so aggressive. We tried so hard to get them to stay and did a lot of work to make them happy. We had them for several months but it was in the heat of late summer that we lost half of the bees.
- Due to COVID-19 and everything getting so expensive (inflation), we have not attempted to get more bees yet. We want to pick out a new area for the bees – maybe they don’t like the area we had picked. We are learning and apparently we are going to have some growing pains with this one.
2020
- One day, during the winter months, we went out and found one hive had lost over half the bees. They were just gone. They had swarmed and the queen went with them or died. The rest of the bees died because they didn’t have a queen and winter wasn’t a good time to requeen such a small group of bees – they wouldn’t have survived even if we had requeened at that point.
- The other hive was doing good, but in a matter of days the other hive was empty and there were dead bees everywhere.
- In March, we went and picked up the bees that Papa Fred gave us for Christmas. These bees were VERY aggressive unlike our first two set of bees. We were always getting stung, so we had to wear the bee suits every time we went out to them.
- The last hive – the aggressive bees – swarmed on us. They were close by and Mrs. Koutz went out and scooped them up and put them back in the hive. She ensured the queen was still there but decided to requeen the hive.
2019
- We have the 3 standard hives – 2 have bees and we are planning to split a hive once the existing ones get big enough.
- Our goal is to get 6 Flow Hives and replace the standard frames on the 3 standard hives we have with the flow hive frames to make honey collection easier. For the standard framed hives, we need a honey extractor (which we do not have yet) to get the honey out.
- In December, Papa Fred let us know he bought us a set of bees for the empty hive we have. We can’t pick them up until March 2020.
2018
- We had a cluster of wild honey bees in the ground in our front yard. We protected them until we could get a hive to put them in.
- Papa Fred built 3 hives with frames, feeders and stands. They included the outer and inner cover, supers and deeps. Papa Fred helped us catch the bees from the ground and move them into a hive. We were able to locate the queen and the bees loved the hive.
- We fed the bees and took care of them properly. But they started making peanuts (eggs for new queens) so we called a bee expert and were told to requeen the hive.
- Papa Fred assisted with requeening ($40 for the new queen) and we introduced her using a candy box (where the bees eat candy to release the queen and by the time she is released, they are used to her and either accept her or kill her).
- Luckily the hive accepted her. They started making honey and laying eggs. We had larvae in the hives and a strong bee colony going.