HOPING HIVES THRIVE.

Byline: Andrea Damewood The Register-Guard

COTTAGE GROVE - Turns out there's more than one way to get stung in beekeeping.

Besides taking the bad end of a bee, those who choose to tend hives also can lose their swarm to mites, fungus, winter starvation or the much-dreaded Colony Collapse Disorder.

Sometimes, 30,000 honeybees can just pack up and leave with no explanation whatsoever.

"There are dozens of reasons why bees leave," said Jason Rowan, who tends an apiary of about 70 hives with his wife, Elizabeth, south of Creswell. "The living system is always variable," said Rowan. "You're keeping the bees, but they can take off. Control is a loose word."

The Rowans were among a dozen people who buzzed about the challenges of keeping combs Sunday afternoon at a "Bee-in" at Aprovecho Research Center west of Cottage Grove.

Aprovecho, a nonprofit center focused on sustainability, is working to build a better local food network, and homegrown honey is a healthy alternative to sugar, land steward Josh Fattal said.

The object of Fattal's and others' affection is the Apis mellifera - the Western honeybee. Fattal, who keeps three hives on the Aprovecho farm, began last spring with one hive, and realized the difficulties that newcomers face when trying to build a colony.

"This forum encourages people to tinker and to get together and figure it out," he said.

Participants posed questions to one another while drinking tea sweetened with honey from Aprovecho's garden. None reported any signs of Colony Collapse Disorder - a phenomenon of worker bees abandoning their hives, which has plagued other areas of the country.

Beekeeping allows people to decrease their use of soil-depleting sugar, and also has many health benefits, Fattal said. Unfiltered pollen has protein and may help with allergies. Propolis, the sticky glue worker bees use to seal crevasses, has been shown to have antibiotic qualities.

Some, such as the Rowans, are veterans of the protective bee veil, but most of Sunday's crowd was looking to tap into the perks of keeping.

"On a good day, I can tell a bee from a mosquito," Cottage Grove resident Alan Kemnper joked. Inspired by his father, who used to keep bees when he was young, Kemnper is considering starting a hive and an orchard on his recently purchased 120-acre farm.

"I'm not intimidated by bees, and honey seems like a good idea," he said before donning a white bee suit that made him look more as if he were going to the moon than into a hive. "Bees and orchards seem to go together."

Anna Wemple, who lives on nearby Cougar Mountain, had lost her hives to bears, swarming and other maladies. By spring, her six colonies had dwindled to two, and she was looking for answers.

"I'm very interested in hooking up with local beekeepers," Wemple said. "You can do all the reading and talking in the world, but when you go to apply it, it's so different. I figure I'll get it down by the time I'm 60."

Other resources touted Sunday were the Lane County Beekeeping Association and GloryBee Foods Inc. in Eugene.

First-timers can find themselves spending a lot of time keeping bees fed on sugar water, culling extra queen cells and harvesting honey.

Even within Eugene city limits, residents are allowed one hive, Rowan said, although - for obvious reasons - it's best if they can be kept in a low-traffic area. Proximity to water and plants is also essential.

"The biggest challenge is time management," he said. "We were buying bees and asking ourselves if we were crazy."