RIVERTON - Honeybees swirl about as men pull wooden frames from hives and pump in a mixture of corn syrup and sucrose.

Larry Krause moves from one box to the next, checking the queens for signs of disease. Dressed in a short-sleeve shirt, he seems unconcerned by the buzzing vortex.

Even so, Krause is not foolhardy. He wears a beekeeper's hood over his head. But his greatest protection is experience.

"They go for your face first," he says. "Because that's where it hurts. Even if you get stung in the arms, it doesn't hurt as much."

Krause, owner of Wind River Honey Co. in Riverton, has worked with bees for over 30 years. Before him, his father worked with bees, and before that, his grandfather kept honeybees, a tradition stretching back to 1925.

The family's first hives were shipped by railroad from California and started producing honey near Arapahoe on the Wind River Indian Reservation. These boxes are not too far from that spot, past a rocky cemetery and tucked among the sagebrush.

Though they are agitated, the honeybees are almost entirely nonviolent. Only one sting is reported despite an incalculable number of easy shots, and none are suffered by the veteran beekeepers.

"The new guy that goes out in the field for the first time always gets worked over by the bees," he says.

In all, Krause has 3,000 hives, in colonies set out in Fremont County and near Farson in Sweetwater County.

In a good year, a hive might produce 130 pounds of honey for Krause, most of it from alfalfa. The bulk of the honey goes to Dutch Gold Honey of Lancaster, Pa., while small quantities are sold in local grocery stores.

The honey's color is determined by flowers the bees visit. Fireweed honey is nearly clear, while buckwheat honey is almost black. Krause's is a golden hue.

Honeybees are not native to North America, but were introduced by white settlers. "In fact, the Indians called them the white man's fly," Krause says.

Before table sugar, honey was the sweetener of choice. Krause says in the 1870s a pound of honey sold for twice as much as it does now.

In recent years, however, the real money in beekeeping has shifted from honey production to pollination, which means hives from all over the country end up on the West Coast to pollinate crops like almonds, cherries and apples.

While the travel has opened new opportunities for beekeepers, it means additional perils for the bees.

Several thousand hives from three states might be concentrated in a single orchard. So if disease is present, it can spread rapidly, and then be widely dispersed.

"Diseases and parasites are translocated across the country in a matter of days in beehives," Krause says.

This spring, honeybee hives in many states were hit by a mysterious disorder dubbed "Colony Collapse Disorder."

While the cause of Colony Collapse Disorder has not been determined, theories have included viruses, pesticides, parasites, and even genetically modified crops and cell phone towers.

So far, Krause's hives have not been affected. But bees everywhere are under stress.

"The way we handle bees anymore, we move so much," Krause says. "The things we do to them now, my dad 30 years ago would have never, ever thought of handling a hive like we do now."

Honeybees can't even count on the predictable change of seasons. Krause's bees work the spring in California, then are moved to colder Washington, where they think it's still winter. When the weather warms, they work in Washington, then are shipped back to Wyoming, where they might encounter cold weather again and it's back to winter mode.

"Each time they hit a new spring, the queens gear up again like it's going to be summer, and they hit the cold weather and they shut down," Krause says.

As a result, the queens burn out more quickly than in years past. Queens are the heart of a honeybee colony, capable of laying 2,000 eggs in a single day.

Honeybees and flowering plants are part of an elegant ritual that helps ensure the survival of both, while adding richness to the human diet. One congressional study estimates the worth of honeybees to the food supply at $15 billion a year.

Honeybees pollinate a variety of crops, including nuts, pears, celery, strawberries and cucumbers.

"We're not going to starve to death if all the bees die, but it'll be an awful bland dinner," Krause says.

Bees use the nectar of plants to make honey; honey and pollen are mixed for use as bee food.

For their part, flowering plants use honeybees in reproduction. Pollen carries the male DNA of a seed plant. As bees forage, they carry the pollen to the female portion of other plants, which results in fertilization and eventually the ripened ovaries, together with seeds, of the flowering plants. Such fruits are the means for disseminating a new generation of seeds.

"Plants develop showy flowers and showy petals and fragrances to attract bees for pollination," Krause says. "So without the interaction of the plants and the bees, we wouldn't have all the pretty flowers we have."

Honeybees see colors, including ultraviolet humans don't, they have a powerful sense of smell by which they can detect nectar a mile away, they air-condition their hives and Krause believes they are capable of learning. And even after 30 years, he's still learning about them.

"They never cease to surprise me or amaze me," he says.

Business Editor Tom Mast can be reached at tom.mast@casperstartribune.net, or call 1-307-266-0574.

Go inside the Wind River Honey Company by viewing our audio slideshow. Please click here to view.