Beekeeping seminar a gateway for aspiring apiarists
Arnie Mezera, one of the presenters at the beekeeping seminar this past Saturday, shows the audience different pieces of equipment necessary for an apiary, including frames, supers and other tools used in harvesting honey. (Steve Van Kooten/Courier Press)
By Steve Van Kooten
Prairie du Chien got a sweet taste of beekeeper basics this past Saturday when Nelson’s Ace Hardware hosted an apiarist presentation by Tad Beutin and Arnie Mezera.
The seminar covered equipment needed to start beekeeping, timeframes to complete maintenance and other needs for bee colonies and general education to better understand working with the most common honey bee species.
“The way that bees do what they do fascinates me, and hopefully, I can pass that on to some of these people,” Beutin said.
Mezera and Beutin provided examples of the essential tools needed, including hive kits, frames, supers and starter kits. They also reviewed protective supplies, like ventilated suits and gloves, and different options to purchase bee colonies.
According to Beutin, a large portion of the work happens before the summer to get hives established and ready to work productively during the warm months.
“Basically, you’re setting up a hive and dumping bees in there, and then all summer long you’re just watching the hive. In the winter, you’re extracting it out,” he said.
For beginner apiarists, the first nine months of their new venture include getting new hives ready in March, adding new bees and placing feeders in April, monitoring hives periodically and expanding space in the hives with new supers throughout the summer months, harvesting honey in September and feeding bees to prepare them for winter until December.
They also suggested taking time to watch your hives to learn what they’re doing, recognize normal behavior and locate the queen. Monitoring for diseases, parasites and fungi, such as Acarapis woodi, that can harm the colony is an essential beekeeping duty.
Mezera said a standard-sized hive super can weigh up to 70 pounds when full — and it takes a lot of busy bees to make all of that honey. One bee will gather enough resources to make approximately 1/12 of a teaspoon of honey during its six-week lifetime. Bees visit around five million flowers to produce one pint of honey. The most common honey bee species will travel around two or three miles from their hive to gather pollen.
In the upper Midwest, Beutin and Mezera said the most common honey bee species are the Italian and Carniolan. Honey bees are not from North America; most of the species used in apiaries are indigenous to Europe or Asia. Only eight of the 20,000 species of bees are considered to be honey bees.
Some other species that are used include Russian honey bees and Buckfast bees, the latter of which is a crossbreed developed in England to be disease resistant.
“The honey bee is a non-native species,” Beutin said. “So, we spend a lot of time getting rid of non-native plants and animals, but we’ve embraced the honey bee because we exploit them. It’s funny that we would take a non-native invasive species and make it our state insect.”
Tad and Arnie will host another beekeeping seminar at the Viroqua Nelson Ace Hardware Agri-Center on Jan. 25 at 9 a.m.
For more information on beekeeping and to connect with experienced apiarists, contact the Ridge and Valley Beekeepers Club at their Facebook page to find out when their next meeting will be held.
