Tell a golf course superintendent there is something they can't do, and chances are pretty good they are going to find a way to get it done.
Jeff Sexton, CGCS at Evansville Country Club in Indiana had read enough about dead bees and pesticides and attempts by many to link the two to golf courses, that he decided he would do something about it. One story in particular that bothered him.
When a landscape company in 2013 sprayed several linden trees at an Oregon shopping center with an insecticide to control aphids, they also eliminated an estimated 50,000 bumble bees, and in the process implicated virtually all professional pesticide applicators as playing a key role in the demise of bee populations across the country.
Five years into raising bees, Sexton is one of many superintendents who are helping show others that there are many misconceptions about golf courses and their contributions to their respective environment.
"The biggest reason I started doing this was with the bee deaths in Oregon," Sexton said. "People have been criticizing golf course superintendents, and quite frankly it pissed me off. I wanted to prove a point. We use all these products, and we've never hurt a single honey bee. I think I've lost one hive here in seven years. We started with two hives, and now we're up to six."
What started as a hobby and a way to make s statement has turned into a wildly popular endeavor where members appreciate the environmental message the bees send and the honey they produce.
"It has turned into a good thing for us, and now there is a level of expectation from the members," Sexton said. "No one else around that I know of is doing it, and the members take pride in being a step ahead."
Evansville's hives produce about 75 pounds of honey a year that Sexton sells to members for $22 per pound. A second harvest this fall has helped yield about $3,600 in sales, which goes into the turf operation. Sexton has used the honey revenue to buy things like uniforms, rain suits, work gloves, etc., for his team.
Fred Gehrisch, CGCS, had a two-fold motive when he started keeping bees six years ago at Highland Falls Country Club in Highlands, North Carolina.
He thought it would be a fun hobby, but, like Sexton, Gehrisch, too, had grown weary of those who thought he and his contemporaries were guilty of killing everything on a golf course except the grass.
"Same," Gehrisch said. "I got tired of hearing it all."
It was so bad, Gehrisch said, people working for the company that initially sold him two hives in 2014 were upset when they learned they were headed to a golf course.
"She said ‘you guys spray all those pesticides that kill all the bees,' " Gehrisch said.
"They told us we wouldn't get any honey that first year, but we did. We were more successful than many of the experienced greenkeepers around here."
Gehrisch started with just a couple of hives and has eight now, many of which are native wild colonies he has captured.
"It looked like a fun hobby," he said. "Now, members expect it and want it. They like that we are doing something positive for the environment and they can't wait for the honey."
He is able to capture wild bee colonies by setting one of his own hives in proximity to them and baiting the contraption with a solution that contains lemongrass oil, or an alcohol wash derived from pheromones of expired queens.
His years of success, he said, speaks not only for the programs in place at Highland Falls but the work of other superintendents, as well.
"I look at them as the canary in a coal mine," he said. "If we were doing something to harm them, they wouldn't be thriving here. And they're thriving."