Polk County
Living
Polk County Itemizer-Observer • August 5, 2015 6A
Steven Coffman, 30, of In-
dependence has been a
beekeeper since he was
15. The Central High
School graduate worked
with other animals while in
FFA, but found his groove
when it came to bees. Now
the bees of Coffman Farms
help pollinate crops
throughout the Willamette
Valley, as well as the al-
mond production in Cali-
fornia, where they join 1.6
million other hives to work
on the 800,000 acres of al-
mond trees — the largest
pollination event in the
world, Coffman said. Look
for Coffman Farms honey
at the Independence
Riverview Market on Satur-
days.
EMILY MENTZER/
Itemizer-Observer
Steven Coffman finds his calling in commercial honey production, pollination services
By Emily Mentzer
The Itemizer-Observer
INDEPENDENCE — Bees
buzz around the hive, mov-
ing in and out of the
Langstroth box that serves as
their home, working away.
Some check on the newly
laid eggs. Others feed larva
with a nectar-water mixture.
Still others clean out co-
coons from a wax cell of
honeycomb where a full-
grown bee has just
emerged.
The rhythm and sound of
the insects is soothing in its
own way.
“They work in harmony,”
said Steven Coffman, owner
of Coffman Farms. “They
can’t survive on their own,
so they prosper by working
together. If you get a bunch
of lazy bees, the whole hive
will die. If you get a bunch
of hard-working bees, the
hive will flourish and do re-
ally well.”
Coffman, 30, started
working with bees when he
was 15. The Central High
graduate was active in the
FFA and tried his hand at
pigs, goats and chickens be-
fore he found his true call-
ing as a beekeeper.
His grandfather and
uncle both kept bees when
Coffman was a young boy.
He said he got started be-
cause of them.
His grandparents owned
a slaughter house in Inde-
pendence and used honey
in their hams and bacon.
“But by the time I actual-
ly got started producing
honey, they had retired,”
Coffman said. “So my honey
never actually went there.”
He still makes honey and
sells it mostly wholesale in
55-gallon drums for use in
making mead, or to be bot-
tled and sold under someone
else’s label, or for baking.
The honey is just one
product of the bees. Really,
their most important work
is pollinating.
“There’s always been a
demand for bee pollina-
tion,” Coffman said. “We
have a network of farmers
here in the valley that I
work with.”
As crops get close to
blooming, they call Coffman
and arrange a time for hives
to be placed in the fields.
“We move all the bees at
night, that way all the field
bees are in and we’re not
leaving anyone behind,”
Coffman said.
The largest pollination
event is in California. From
February until mid to late
March, beekeepers from
around the nation swarm
on the 800,000 acres of al-
mond fields.
“It takes two hives per
acre,” Coffman said. “So
they (almond growers) need
1.6 million hives.”
When the news reports a
big bee loss, it’s usually be-
EMILY MENTZER/Itemizer-Observer
Steven Coffman uses a breed of bee called “Italian,” which he finds to be more docile
than darker bees. The honey bees are calm — as long as you are, too.
cause they don’t have
enough hives to pollinate
these almonds.
“There’s only a little over
2.5 million (commercial)
hives in the nation right
now,” Coffman explained.
“With the winter losses, they
can get down to about 1.6
million, sometimes lower.”
Unlike news reports,
Coffman said it isn’t the
mysterious bee colony col-
lapse disorder that causes
the most problems for bee
populations, but rather par-
asites, bad queens and
chemicals used.
Ensuring a good queen
bee is tricky.
“There’s one queen per
hive,” Coffman said. “That’s
kind of a lot of weight to put
on her shoulders to keep
that colony going. If you
don’t have a good queen,
usually the colony declines
and is more susceptible to
diseases.”
Whether or not a queen
is good depends partly on
the weather. If it is rainy
and cold on the days she
has to mate with drones,
she is less likely to gather
enough of their semen to
sustain her requirement of
1,200 eggs per day for the
rest of her life.
“If she doesn’t have good
genetics to lay good eggs,
then her daughters — the
worker bees — can’t do what
they need to do to sustain a
healthy hive,” Coffman said.
The other major chal-
lenge is the varroa mite,
which has been around a lot
longer than colony collapse
disorder, he said.
“It’s killed way more hives
than colony collapse disor-
der,” Coffman added.
The varroa mite punc-
tures the bees’ exoskeleton
and feeds off its he-
molymph — the bees’ ver-
sion of blood.
“When they’re feeding on
it, not only are they weak-
ening the bee’s immune sys-
tem, … but it leaves an
open wound and other
things can get in there,”
Coffman said. “It makes
them more susceptible to
Come to Me all of you
who are weary and carry heavy burdens
and I will give you rest
— Matthew 11:28
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those diseases.”
The third challenge for
beekeepers is chemicals
used on crops. Some effects
of pesticides are known, but
others, like that of fungi-
cides, are just being discov-
ered.
“When big chemical
companies want to register
a product, they only test it
on adult honey bees,” Coff-
man said. “But we see a lot
of side effects in the devel-
oping brood.”
The last several years
with news about colony
losses have brought about a
surge in beekeepers, but
there’s not enough flowers
to go around, Coffman said.
“Sometimes there actual-
ly can be too many bees in
an area,” he said. “There’s
just not enough forage for
all the bees to make enough
honey to go into winter. If
people really want to help
honey bees, support the
local beekeeper that’s al-
ready doing it, and try to
plant things around their
yard that are bee friendly,
usually something that
blooms in late August to
September.”
EMILY MENTZER/ Itemizer-Observer
Worker bees check on the brood, or eggs.
EMILY MENTZER/ Itemizer-Observer
Bees gather pollen to make honey to feed the colony.