This time last year, despite lots of snow, I was hopeful we may get a mild winter. Instead, we broke records for low temperatures, and our bees suffered accordingly. Many otherwise healthy colonies of bees died last winter with local beekeepers averaging a 50 percent loss. Prolonged cold weather makes it very difficult for bees to move from one comb of honey to the next. Under those conditions, large colonies were more likely to survive than smaller ones.
The winter and spring months also kept me very busy with beekeeping classes. Three nights per week for most weeks from January to June, I gave 15 adult education beginner and intermediate classes in 10 different regions. Beekeeping seems to be a hobby that connects people from all walks of life. Whereas years ago it was predominantly an older person’s pastime, many of my students are in their 20s, 30s and 40s. In addition to evening classes, I gave three one-day classes Saturdays at my house. At those classes, which included morning coffee and lunch, we also went to my beehives in the afternoons.
April saw me selling products and giving talks at the Bangor Garden show. Along with friends from the Penobscot County Beekeeping Association, we talked to hundreds of folks interested in bees, honey and pollination. Everyone loved the observation hive on display, watching the queen bee lay eggs and thousands of worker bees busily carrying out their duties in the hive.
As spring progressed, many beekeepers came to my place to pick up packages of bees they ordered either to start new hives or replace those that had been lost during our frigid winter. I handed out 330 packages, each containing a queen bee and about 12,000 worker bees. A little bit later in the spring I also sold about 100 nucleus colonies, or nucs. These each had a queen, worker bees and about 20,000 larval bees on the five honey combs included in the hive. I’m taking orders for packages and nucs for this spring.
Late spring saw the Hampden-area school board give the approval to a project my wife, Anne, and I had been working on with the staff at Hampden Academy to have a beekeeping club there. In June, a few days before graduation, we got our first bee hives stocked. More than 20 students and more than half a dozen staff signed up for the club.
They first attended several classes I taught, then built and painted the equipment. The bees were housed in two hives inside the fenced-in compound. Throughout the summer we fed the bees and looked after them in the hopes of harvesting some honey in the fall.
At the end of June, Anne and I spent a wonderful week on Star Island in the Isles of Shoals, where I had been invited to give a series of talks for the National History conference week. We had a great time with more than 100 “Shoalers.”
This year, the group organizing the natural history week have professor Bernd Heinrich as their speaker, and I’m sure it will be fantastic. I would heartily recommend the event for anyone with a love of nature.
Late spring and right through summer saw the usual swarming activity, as colonies that were growing well in the fine weather were splitting in two to form new ones. Each year I get called to capture many swarms, but I saw something different this year. A swarm had moved into the gas tank of an old 1949 Ford pickup. It was one of my more challenging bee removals.
It was a great summer for honey production. This varied somewhat from one location to another, but my bees gave me my best harvest yet with about 1,000 pounds harvested. There were honeys of all different colors and flavors depending on the flowers the bees collected nectar from.
The bees at Hampden Academy produced a small surplus, too. Although they started late, we were able to take honey from one of the two hives. This was bottled up and sold to staff and students, giving the beekeeping club members a chance to learn more about running a small business. The bees also produced a small amount of beeswax, which we made into five different flavors of lip balms. These also were sold. All in all, the students raised more than $800, which will be used next year to start another hive and perhaps buy a few more bee suits.
Also at Hampden Academy, my club Penobscot County Beekeepers hosted the Maine State Beekeepers annual meeting and conference in November. As reported last month, it was a huge success attended by more than 260 people.
With the help of a strong El Nino this year, there is good reason to believe this winter will be very different from the last. Let’s keep our fingers crossed that the new year will bring with it lots of healthy bees.
Interested in taking a beekeeping class? I began teaching beekeeping classes three year ago. In that time, it has grown from 70 students to 340 in a year. Check your local adult education department for one of my classes near you. The first of them begin in January.
Peter Cowin, aka The Bee Whisperer, is president of the Penobscot County Beekeepers Association. His activities include honey production, pollination services, beekeeping lessons, sales of bees and bee equipment, and the removal of feral bee hives from homes and other structures. Check out “The Bee Whisperer” on Facebook, email petercowin@tds.net or call 299-6948.