| Feature
Teens
help with sweet nature project
by Greg Peterson
Surrounded by a swarm of 150,000 loudly buzzing bees on a hot
summer day, a group of Marquette County teens turned nervous faces
and trepidation into smiles and an education they heard loud and
clear—to protect, rather than fear, pollinators.
At first only two teens wearing protective beekeeping gear entered
the apiary behind the Negaunee township home of Jim and Martha
Hayward. The others, wearing only shorts and T-shirts, soon approached
when they discovered honeybees are not aggressive.
“[Bees and butterflies] are a part of the web of life because
they pollinate all the flowers and fruit trees that provide us
with food,” said Dr. Jim Hayward, a Marquette dentist who
has four honeybee hives on a shaded hillside.
The teens got up close and personal with the honeybees by inspecting
honeycomb trays, each covered with about 3,000 busy bees, and
even handled a drone. Hayward explained do not have stingers like
the rest of the bees in the colony and are identified easily by
a larger round abdomen and bigger eyes.
“It doesn’t have a stinger? Are you positive?”
asked apprehensive teen Keith Gelsinger of Marquette.
“I am positive,” Hayward said while carefully handing
the struggling drone to Gelsinger. “You can grab onto it—it
won’t sting you.”
The Zaagkii Project is sponsored by the nonprofit Cedar Tree Institute
(CTI), Keweenaw Bay Indian Community (KBIC) and the United States
Forest Service (USFS).
In its second summer, the three-year Zaagkii Wings and Seeds Project
protects pollinators through habitat creation that includes teenagers
constructing dozens of bee and butterfly houses while helping
native plants flourish by planting tens of thousands of indigenous
seeds.
In his soft-spoken, calm demeanor that relaxed the teens and the
bees, Hayward told the teens that the sole purpose of the drone
is to mate with the queen; otherwise it has no function. It can’t
even feed itself; the worker bees have to feed the drones.
Hayward pulled out a tray dripping with honey and packed with
bees.
“Oooohh,” several of the astonished youths said at once.
“It’s awesome,” said thirteen-year-old Tanya Nelson
of Ishpeming. “Look at it—it’s honey, it’s
dripping.”
The teens also visited a bee farm along the Dead River operated
by Dr. Lisa Long and Lee Ossenheimer in Negaunee Township and
heard from beekeeper Jon Kniskern of Marquette.
Honeybees often have sacks of yellow or orange pollen on their
legs, Hayward said.
“They are busy bringing their nectar and pollen back to the
hive,” he said.
Billions of bees have died worldwide in an ongoing syndrome dubbed
“Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD).” Suspected causes for
CCD include pollution, pesticides, climate change and habitat
destruction.
Bees always have been killed by a wide-range of predators.
Natural bee killers include black bears that raid hives for honey,
bald-faced hornets who kill the queen and feast on the colony,
birds that pick them off in midair and skunks who scratch on the
hive with an insatiable taste for guard bees.
Feral and commercial hives are attacked by viruses, bacteria and
parasites like a tracheal mite that infests honeybee airways and
blood-sucking mites that infect and feed on adult and larval bees
causing wing deformities.
Hayward uses electric fences to protect bees from bears and elevates
hives on cinder blocks to discourage skunks.
“That makes the skunks have to stand up, so their bellies
are exposed and the bees can sting them more easily,” he
said.
Experts say bee colonies have declined seventy to ninety percent
in the past quarter century. Albert Einstein predicted humans
would die off within four years if bees disappeared.
People get into beekeeping to sell pollination services to orchards
around the country, including apple and cherry orchards in Michigan,
Hayward said.
“I got into raising bees after local bee populations died
out because of some disease and we did not have anything to pollinate,”
Hayward said.
The teens learned about beekeeper tools like honeycomb trays,
frame grippers, a hive tool and a bee brush.
“You can brush them off an area with this gentle brush and
it won’t damage the bees,” Hayward said.
While reassuring the teens that honeybees tend to be docile, Hayward
donned himself and two youths in protective gear, including a
bee veil and gloves.
“If I make a false step and jar the hive or move too quickly,
[the protective gear] keeps me from being stung,” he said.
“Honeybees die if they sting you, so they are not anxious
to sting unless they are protecting themselves or the hive.”
The teens gathered along the edges of the hives listening to Hayward’s
honeybee facts. During the summer, the queen lays close to a thousand
eggs a day, he said.
“It takes twenty-one days for a bee to develop,” Hayward
said.
Using a smoker that burns dried sumac, Hayward said the smoke
simulates a forest fire triggering a protective instinct that
causes the bees to gorge themselves with honey in preparation
for leaving the hive.
“When they are gorged with honey, they are more docile,”
he said. “The key is moving slowly and trying to be as gentle
as you can be—so the bees don’t get too excited. Drones
develop from unfertilized eggs; worker bees are developed from
fertilized eggs. If they need to make a queen, they take worker
larva and feed it a special extract from their heads called Royal
Jelly and that larva grows into a queen instead of a worker.”
The teens likely have never been that close to a bee hive before,
said Jim Rule, a child care counselor at Marquette County Youth
Home.
“Even the kids that did not have any protective gear were
right up close, too,” Rule said. “I was amazed at how
brave they were.”
Hayward said the bitter sumac burning in his bee smoker makes
a great tea that tastes like lemon. Later, teens made sumac iced
tea, added a drop of Hayward’s honey and served it to Zaagkii
Project supporters at the annual CTI Midsummer Festival at Presque
Isle in Marquette.
The youths made other natural hors d’oeuvres like honey and
wild mint in an appetizer cup.
The teens visited Laughing Whitefish Falls in Alger County, the
organic Dancing Crane Farm run by Natasha and David Gill in Skandia,
and planted native species plants at the Borealis Seed Company
owned by Sue Rabitaille in Big Bay.
Meeting three days a week for five weeks, the teens walked dozens
of miles during numerous hikes, climbed Sugar Loaf and swam in
Lake Superior and the Dead River.
Martial arts training and Tai Chi lessons were provided by Rick
Pietila of Marquette. The teens built a huge beehive with help
from Jim Edwards at the U.P. Children’s Museum, who created
a large butterfly for the Zaagkii Project in 2008. Facts about
monarchs were taught by Susan Payant of Marquette, nicknamed “The
Butterfly Lady.”
The students learned about different species of native plants
and insects during several outings with an Ojibwa brother and
sister—Levi and Leora Tadgerson—who are Zaagkii Project
interns from the NMU Department of Native American Studies.
The students learned “different uses the Ojibwa had for edible
and medicinal plants” like “the saps of different trees
and the roots,” said Levi Tadgerson, 22, of Marquette, an
NMU senior.
“We explained this plant is good for keeping bugs away from
you and this plant is good for a breath mint,” Tadgerson
said.
The Tadgersons were impressed with the teens’ ability to
grasp Chippewa language.
“We would tell them the different native names for plants
and two days later they would remember it,” Leora said.
“I think the earth is suffering,” she said. “Indicator
plants like wild rice don’t grow as much anymore because
of the way we have abused the earth.”
The pair taught the teens to seek a symbiotic relationship with
the earth.
“Nowadays, we are more of a parasite to the planet,”
Levi said. “We need to respect the gift we have been given
by Mother Earth. There are ways to heal by just getting into the
woods and learning knowledge from elders. There are gifts and
teachings every day that you will get from the earth.”
Both passed on respect for the earth inherited from elders and
knowledge about native plants learned from NMU Anishinaabemowin
Professor Kenneth Pitawanakwat, who offered the closing prayer
at the CTI Midsummer Festival.
“We greet each day and end each day with a thank-you prayer,”
Pitawanakwat said.
“In Native America, all events begin and end with prayer.
It’s a spiritual component that’s all done with prayer.”
A few weeks earlier, the sounds of hammers and saws filled Grace
United Methodist Church in Marquette for several days as the teens
built and painted thirty-six mason bee houses with help from carpenter
Bruce Ventura and artist Diana Magnuson, both of Marquette.
In 2008, other Zaagkii Project teens built and painted seventeen
butterfly houses. Shaped like a birdhouse, the mason bee houses
have five pieces of wood below the roof, with thirty-three holes
each turned into a private nursery.
Mason bees are very particular and want a five-sixteenths inch
diameter hole, Ventura said.
“If the holes are too large other insects get into them,
and if the holes are too small the mason bees can’t get in,”
he said.
After laying a single egg into each hole, the mason bees deposit
some pollen and mud that hole closed, hence the name mason bee,
Ventura said.
Mason bees are solitary bees; they’re not colonial like honeybees.
While mason bees do not make honey, Ventura said they’re
great pollinators, like honeybees.
Ventura is impressed with the teen’s carpentry and artistic
skills.
“The young people are terrific,” he said. “They
did a great job putting the mason bee houses together and decorating.
They did a lot of sawing and nailing and screwed in the tops.”
Lessons on protecting pollinators was not lost on the Zaagkii
Project teens.
The students learned that butterflies are just as important pollinators
as bees.
The mason bee houses and last summer’s butterfly houses were
put up around the Keweenaw Bay Indian Community and one of each
was placed by the USFS in the “The People’s Garden”
at U.S. Department of Agriculture Headquarters on the National
Mall in Washington D.C.
USFS officials said the Zaagkii Project is spreading the word
effectively about the importance of native plants and the teen
mason bee and butterfly houses have a positive impact on the survival
of pollinators.
“In point of fact, the mason bee houses are very useful,”
said Jan Schultz, USFS botany and nonnative species program leader
in Milwaukee. “The mason bee houses are used by mason bees
and other types of solitary bees. They really like them and they
will have customers.”
KBIC is happy to be partnering with Cedar Tree Institute and the
U.S. Forest Service in trying to protect native plants and bring
them back home, Swartz said.
“One day we hope (KBIC) will be regarded as pioneers to bring
these native plants back here,” he said. “So it’s
only fitting that the (KBIC) become involved in helping save those
native plants.”
“We have been working with the Cedar Tree Institute for a
number of years and they are great to work with,” said Swartz,
noting the Manoomin Project to restore wild rice and native plants
at the KBIC Sand Point beach on Lake Superior.
Teaching respect for Native American culture and the planet are
goals CTI plans to continue for another decade, CTI officials
said during the festival.
“We honor the presence of the Native Americans,” said
Marquette banker and CTI board member Steve Mattson. “It’s
tremendous that [KBIC has] shown the leadership and the vision
to have the first greenhouse for native species plants in the
U.S. on their native land.”
Working behind the scenes, the CTI will continue efforts like
the Zaagkii and Manoomin projects because they are important,
Mattson said.
“We’re the quiet people and we like to keep it that
way,” Mattson said. “We like to do big things and we
can only do big things through each of you.”
The Zaagkii Project contributors include the Marquette Community
Foundation, Marquette County Juvenile Court, the M.E. Davenport
Foundation, the Kaufman Foundation and the Phyllis and Max Reynolds
Foundation.
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