My season working with a bee mentor

I completed a season working with a bee mentor! It all started last year in October when I went to Minneapolis and completed bee keeping 101 at the University of Minnesota with my friend Samantha. The class was fantastic and it was attended by 200+people. Having bees up here was one of my goals when we moved to our property. It was more of a romantic day dream....that and having sheep and spinning yarn. The sheep part is for sure NOT going to happen anytime soon.

I came back home all ready to buy bee gear and a box of bees. I stopped myself once I saw how expensive it was all going to be. I thought, maybe I should listen to the advice from the instructors and work with a bee mentor to see for sure this is what I want to do. I started asking around up here for names of local bee keepers to see if they had any interest in being a mentor but no one wanted to give me names or the names I did find, they said no flat out. That's fine, at least they are direct with me. There are plenty of bee keepers but they are sort of a private group. There is no local bee keeping group. I ended up taking a Master Gardeners Class and I was finally put in touch with a gentleman named John that works at the extension office. He agreed to work with me! yay!

So in May I met him at his bee yard to open up the hives from winter.

First time in a bee suit.

 I got to see how he closed up the hives for our long Wisconsin winters. The amount of honey he left in the hives, the pollen patties and the sugar water feed he used. I was able to see what a strong hive looks like, what a weak hive looks like, I am able to identify a queen, larva, brood, pollen, capped cells, wax and honey. He even had some bee nucs to add to a hive.  The term “nuc” is short for nucleus colony. A nucleus colony is just a very small colony of a few thousand bees and a queen. I got to feel the pain of getting stung in the head a couple of times too, no allergies either.  He showed me his log book where he keeps track of how each hive is doing. Each hive is labeled and logged every time he checks on the hive. He logs how many frames and boxes are being used by the bees, if he sees larva or brood (the term brood is used to refer to the embryo or egg), If the queen dies, if the hive swarms or if the hives gets a mites or a disease. 

Pretty much anything that happens to the hive gets logged. 

Nuns and over wintered hives.

We do have bears up here and he went over the electric fence with me and how important it is to have 9,000 volts. 

old honey to feed the bees

 Later in the season I got assist him and his wife with removing the honey super frames from the hives. Its sort of a long process of getting the bees to leave the honey supers. You have to fit new hive caps with this felt and this be spray that has a smell the bees do not like that makes them leave the honey super for the frames and boxes below. You wait about 15-30 mins then remove the cap and check to see that most of the bees are gone. It also helps to have your smoke can going too.  Some of the bees get really pissed off in the process. The honey frames smell so good, fresh honey warmed by the sun. Depending on how much honey are on the frames, each honey super can weight 30-50 pounds. Bee keeping is not for the weak. John had to make sure my bee suit was zipped up tight and he even went as far to duct tape my ankle and wrists of my suit just in case.

The next day I went to his honey house (workshop in his garage). He had the wood stove going to keep the room nice and hot to make the honey flowed easier. He removed the frames from the boxes and used an electric heated knife to remove the capping wax. He handed them to me and I loaded the honey extractor. It looked like it held about 25 frames but I did not count. The frames fit into little slots vertically.

electric knife

capping wax

frames spinning.

A honey extractor is a mechanical device used in the extraction of honey from honeycombs. A honey extractor extracts the honey from the honey comb without destroying the comb. Extractors work by centrifugal force. A drum or container holds a frame basket which spins, flinging the honey out. With this method the wax comb stays intact within the frame and can be reused by the bees.

honey extractor

Honey is poured through this strainer then at the end of the line was his wife bottling all the honey into 1 pound jars to be sold.

At the end of it John gave me a bottle of honey and a chunk of bees wax. The wax smells like summer and sunshine. I am so grateful to be able to be apart of this. I almost don't want to eat the honey because it means so much to me. But this winter I will be enjoying in my tea.