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Wednesday, August 10, 2011

B1

An accidental beekeeper finds his place

Story by JANET COOK
News staff writer

t all started with a tree. It was a beloved, centuryold silver maple tree that was a fixture in the neighborhood on Sherman Street where it lived. But century-old maples come to the end of their lives, and this one had. It was rotting inside. But even as the tree was dying, a whole lot of living was going on inside it. In one enormous branch was one enormous beehive. What to do? Daniel Pepper, who with his wife, Vangie, lives in the house beside the tree, decided to take the road less traveled on this one. And that has made all the difference. I started getting online and reading about honeybees, said Pepper, a surgeon in Seattle who started coming to Hood River in the 1980s to windsurf. Over the years, he and his wife looked for a home to buy, but never found the right one. Then, three years ago, Vangie walked past the house on Sherman Street owned by Sally and Charley LaVenture, former owners of Waucoma Bookstore and beloved longtime community members. The LaVentures had sold the bookstore and moved to Colorado to be close to their daughters. The Peppers bought the house and soon began to remodel it. A tree expert told them the rotting tree had to come down. Daniel was conflicted. Here we are, he thought, newcomers to the neighborhood and I chop down this beautiful tree loved by the community. But there was no choice. Daniel instructed the tree chopper to cut off the enormous limb where the bees lived whole, and lay it on the ground. The bees swarmed out, but soon returned to their familiar hive. The rest of the tree was taken down, and much of it milled for use. The enormous limb lay in the yard for the next few months as the remodel proceeded. The workers were a little wary, Daniel said. But the honeybees kept to themselves. Eventually, Daniel hired someone from a swarm list experts who come

Photos by ADAM LAPIERRE

and remove unwanted swarms from backyards and such. But the expert was just there to help Daniel move the bees from the limb to the bee box he had ready for them. The tree was gone, Daniel reasoned, but a part of it would live on right there, near where the old tree had been for a hundred years. We made cross cuts, side cuts and pulled off tops of wood, Daniel recalled. These were 40- to 50-pound pieces of wood. They scooped out honeycomb and bees. The hive spanned 8 feet through the limb. It was like opening a sarcophagus he said. They finally captured the queen and put her in the box. Soon, the worker bees followed her. Daniel put the boxes in the backyard. By this time, hed learned so much about the complexities of beekeeping he could converse as easily about it as about the complexities of difficult surgical procedures. Hed become a beek. But then, during the bees first winter in their Langstroth hive (the typical white box you see in orchards and elsewhere), the bees got wet and died. They were in a box and not in their thick, warm tree, Daniel said. But by then, Daniel was hooked. The accidental beekeeper had found a hobby he loved. So he started over. From Ruhl Bee Supply in Portland, he bought some packages of bees a queen, a couple of attendants, some worker bees. But this time, he decided to use the top-bar method, where the bees build the entire comb from simple slats of wood laid across the top of a box hive. Its a more natural way of raising bees, he said. This is Daniels first summer with his new bees. He started with one hive. In the past two months, two swarms have emerged, looking for a new hive, which Daniel readily provided. Now he has three hives. When my wife is looking for me in the house, she now knows where to find me, Daniel said. The Peppers open-door policy (and occasional swarms of bees hovering in their backyard) has brought in curious neighbors and passers-by, many of whom

have become close friends. As for the empty place where the silver maple had been, the Peppers planted a tulip tree. Part of the magnolia family, tulip trees can grow to be 120 feet tall. Bees love the sweet nectar from their colorful blossoms and make

delicious honey from them. Before the tree was planted, a neighbor who had been close to the LaVentures came over with a few of Charleys ashes (he died in October 2009) to scatter among the trees roots. The tulip tree is braced for now, as it

gets a stronger foothold on life. But it already looks at home, like it was meant to be right there. What stories will come from this tree, only time will tell.

AT TOP, Daniel Pepper holds top bar hive, inspecting the comb for brood, or larvae and eggs, as a sign that there is a queen laying eggs. There are only a few reasons you go, in, and one is the see if there is evidence of a laying queen, and these larvae are an indication of that, Daniel said. AT LEFT, in this close-up of the comb, larvae are seen inside the cells just below center, appearing like white seeds. They are the U-shaped white grubs and, like most insects, go through five steps, from laying to maturity. Workers put a cap over each larvae, and ultimately each one metamorphoses into a bee and eats its way out.

DANIEL prepares a frame while his wife, Vangie, looks on, in their Sherman Street backyard.

BELOW, a cutaway of the bee-laden tree maple tree that started Daniel Peppers journey as a beekeeper.
Photo by Daniel Pepper