“Bee George” To Meet With Izaak Walton League In Trappe

On Thursday, July 30, “Bee George,” also known as George Meyer, will talk to the local chapter of the Izaak Walton League about his beloved honeybees. This will take place at the Mid-Shore Chapter’s pavilion at Bolingbroke Park in Trappe at their monthly dinner meeting. If you’d like to attend this dinner meeting, and learn more about the benefits, the endangerment, and the rekindling of bee populations, please call Joan Kirby at 410.822.1605

George will tell you how much humans need bees and that the very existence of bees has been severely threatened in recent years.

Honeybees are not native to the U.S. They were brought here from Europe by early settlers and have become integral to the way we produce food. Without bees, we simply could not get the large fruit, nut and vegetable yields on which our modern food system depends, according to the United States Department of Agriculture.

For example, at pollinating time, more than one million beehives are loaded into trucks for a cross-country trek to California, where they are let loose among flowering almond trees to pollinate them. Then, they are loaded up again and the process is repeated all over the country with other crops, such as apples, berries, cantaloupes and cucumbers, according to the Natural Resources Defense Council. All told, bees pollinate more than $15 billion worth of crops a year.

In many places, feral bees are almost non-existent and any bees that you see probably belong to someone’s hive. Generally, bees have work to do so they’re not interested in humans.

A resident of Trappe, George has been keeping bees for 42 years. He manages about 150 hives, most of them located between Trappe and Oxford. And, he sells his honey locally under the Bee George Honey label.

He is the current president of Wye River Beekeepers, a group serving beekeepers in Caroline, Dorchester, Kent, Queen Anne, and Talbot Counties, and adjoining areas.