ALTAMONT — Beekeeper Stephen Wilson wouldn’t have started keeping bees if it weren’t for helping a neighbor over 40 years ago. Now, Wilson has been honored for helping many local beekeepers: by speaking out on their behalf for the protection of honeybees.

At the annual meeting of the Empire State Honey Producers Association in Syracuse on Nov. 4, Wilson was given the Beekeeper of the Year Award. Wilson has pressed to place a faculty member in Cornell’s entomology department, said Chairman Jon Ryan in his speech at the event. Ryan also lauded Wilson for his work on the Commissioner of Agriculture’s Apiary Industry Advisory Committee for 15 years, serving as its chairman for 12 years.

“I feel really, really distinctly honored,” Wilson told the Enterprise this week. “It was a total, total surprise to me.” He added that the path was laid out by other “fantastic beekeepers” who had won the award before him.

Wilson first became involved with beekeeping when his neighbor Don Schierbaum asked if some of the bees he commercially raised could be brought to Wilson’s property to pollinate his vegetable garden and orchard. Wilson would observe Schierbaum working with the bees, and eventually began to help him extract honey or transport the bees to pollinate large farms and orchards.

“He offered to give me a set-up,” said Wilson. He started raising his own bees, and later joined the Southern Adirondack Beekeepers Association, which is part of ESHPA.

Wilson has been involved with a number of organizations. He served as the Executive Director of the Hudson River Environmental Society until 2010.

“That was my fifth retirement,” said Wilson, who is 83. He also is currently an officer with the Capital Region Nordic Alliance. He says that beekeeping includes periods of time when very little needs to be done but that “there are some periods of time when my wife thinks I don’t do anything else,” he said.

Wilson raises bees as a hobbyist, meaning he has fewer than 50 hives (he keeps between eight and 12). He produces Wilson’s Natural Honey, selling it at local venues. But his work with bees has also included advocacy for the insects. He has pushed for Cornell University to add a faculty member position to its entomology department.

Importance of research

“I’ve kind of led the team of people who’ve been pressing Cornell,” Wilson said.

Cornell’s College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, explained Wilson, receives state funding as being part of the university’s land-grant mission. When the last professor retired in 2013, the program did not seek to fill the position because of a lack of state funding. The group Wilson led arranged people to make pledges of money to pay for the position.

While this position has not been filled, the university has brought in Emma Mullen, an extension associate who has set up a course to become a master beekeeper, and Scott McArt, a researcher scientist who studies pollinators. The two reopened the Dyce Laboratory in 2015, which had been closed two years before. They also run the Honey Bee Research and Extension Program at the university.

Understanding the link between beekeeping and the rest of agriculture is important, explained Wilson, because honeybees pollinate so much of what is grown.

“About a third of what you go get in a supermarket is produced by honeybees,” he said. Crops that are grown for food, he added, cannot be pollinated in the same way as, say, wild plants — by native pollinators like butterflies and bumblebees — because there aren’t enough pollinators.

“We’re moving more and more toward monoculture,” said Wilson. “Therefore, there needs to be a large amount of managed bees, e.g., honeybees.” These commercially raised bees are brought in large numbers by commercial beekeepers to pollinate crops, but these honey bees are currently under a variety of threats.

Such threats, explained Wilson, include a recent drought, as well as exposure to pesticides found in the pollen consumed by honeybees.

“This is the equivalent of you going out to lunch, eating a sandwich, and it being loaded with toxins,” he said.

The exposure to a tolerable level of pesticides can weaken a bee’s immune system in response to diseases, funguses, and viruses that can lead to colony collapse disorder.

Wilson has testified at the state legislature to bring more funding to Cornell’s program, but has also testified to increase efforts to help honeybees. And, he was on the state’s task force to develop a pollinator protection plan.

In order to understand more about honeybees and the impact of disease on them, Wilson has traveled to places such as New Zealand, South Africa, and Chile. He has also attended meetings at the University of Guelph, in Ontario Province, Canada, and the world congress known as Apimondia.

“It is not only our backyard, but what’s going on in the rest of the world,” he said.

Wilson said that his efforts to help bees and programs studying them is far from over.

“(This award) has inspired me to want to do more,” he said, adding he will keep pressing the state to fund more efforts to protect bees and to have Cornell fill its faculty position in entomology.

Updated on Nov. 22, 2016: Stephen Wilson supplied additional information about his international efforts.