The wonders of beekeeping
Story and photos by Shea Doherty
Like gardeners, beekeepers have to wait until warm spring weather returns before they can put out the bees. S
o spring is here, and I find myself among flowers in the greenhouse, marveling over some of the new
petunias – or some exotic looking succu- lents, which never cease to amaze me. But on top of this I’m also a beekeeper, which fits in perfectly with gardening. Beekeeping doesn’t start quite as early
as the greenhouse, but by April we’re usually putting bees out, although this year is an exception, with April being colder – like 17 degrees colder – than normal. Not even the bees like that weather, so we find ourselves putting them out much later. Once out, they’ll find flowers wherever
they are. Often you’ll find bees on tiny blossoms in the middle of nowhere. No wonder they’re responsible for 80 per cent of life by pollinating all the wild- flowers and crops! You are probably curious to know
why the bees are dying off. Some say cell phones are to blame, and, true or not,
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there are rumours about this all over the place. One thing for sure, the bees are dying, and they are definitely harder to take care of these days. But rest assured we beekeepers will try to keep on top of things as bees are not just our livelihood, they’re our passion. And when some- thing is fueled by passion, it’s more than just “the thing we do”. It’s the thing we love, and love goes a long, long way. It must do when you think that a beekeep- er gets stung up to 80 times a day! This only grows our passion for them; it doesn’t scare us away. My brother says that a mosquito bite is worse than a bee sting. And he ought’a know, as he is defi- nitely the field guy for this operation. His love for bees goes even deeper than mine. When he is talking about bees, I stand amazed. Take it from a beekeeper that there is
an exception to the remark about bee stings: you do not want to get stung on the nose or the bellybutton. Okay, I
know, out of all the places to get stung, the bellybutton sounds weird. But really, it hurts, and I’m not kidding. When you get stung in either of these two spots, your tears don’t come out freely, instead they shoot out, and there’s no holding back. And, no, in this case, I don’t think you could even say, “Take it like a man!” Because it just hurts. In spite of this, the rewards outweigh the cons. I still say there’s nothing like a warm summer day with bees. Sometimes it’s not bees that sting!
Instead it’s a WASP, but bees get blamed. Bees and wasps don’t even look alike. They do have distinct differences. Trust me I’m a beekeeper: WASP would be the insect you would use to invade a country. And BEES would be the insects used to safeguard the country. How it all works
So let me take you on a little journey
to show how the bee operation runs. It begins in early spring, with a Queen bee.
Early Spring 2014 • 9
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