A honey-good time at club

Jason Casey, of Sun Honey, visited the New Richland Garden Club the evening of Monday, January 15, to share his story and general information about beekeeping and honey production. He discussed the life cycle of bees, demonstrated equipment he uses in honey production, and answered questions. Members of the garden club enjoyed the visit and expressed gratitude to Casey for his time.

 

Casey's beekeeping journey began in 2016 when he ordered two hives each for himself and two of his siblings from a mail-order catalog. Since then he's put hives on local farms and sites at the owners' request and today manages 80 hives. He says he's had to let a few hives go over the years, as he operates Sun Honey alone and doesn't have the time to visit any more hives regularly. “I'm not big enough to hire someone to do it, but I'm too big to do it myself,” he explained light-heartedly.

 

When placing his hives, Casey said he looks for a place where the morning sun will shine on the hive, but will be sheltered during the hottest part of the day, with easy access to both blossoms and water. Sometimes a location works out, and other times a hive needs to be moved before the bees are satisfied. Proximity to people is less of a concern. “Kids and dogs learn quick to stay away from bees,” he said.

 

Worker bees, Casey explained, are female. They live six to eight weeks and cycle through various “jobs” in the hive during that time, starting out as caretakers of larvae, becoming pollinators, and eventually protecting the hive before they die. A hive might have anywhere from 20,000 to 80,000 females, but only about 200 “drones.” Male drones are “lazy,” according to Casey, and live only to eat and fertilize eggs.

 

Each hive maintains just one queen, who can live three to five years if the hive overwinters successfully. When winter approaches, hives save up honey. Drones are pushed out of the hive to die, and the worker bees form a ball around the queen to protect her from the elements before entering a state of semi-hibernation where all they do is eat. Sometimes the hives overwinter, and sometimes they do not. Casey said he doesn't like it when the bees die prematurely, but he's prepared for it each year. Bees who successfully overwinter will be producing honey in the spring by April, while hives that have to start anew will take until mid-May. In spring, when the hives are ready to awaken ahead of the blossoms the bees will pollinate, Casey feeds them a sugar water syrup.

 

During their active season, bees will regularly travel three to five miles to pollinate blossoms. Both the individual bees and the types of blossoms they pollinate affect the structure of the honey on a molecular level as well as its color, flavor, and tendency to crystallize. Casey visits each of his hives approximately every two weeks to check on them and harvest the honey as needed, but the bees themselves handle most of their maintenance. The main thing Casey has to do, aside from harvest, is treat pests. Bees are susceptible to a specific type of mite, which is treated with oxalic acid. The treatment has no ill effects on the bees or honey.

 

A full hive weighs about 75 pounds per box, and often consists of several stacked boxes. Inside each are ten honeycombed inserts. To harvest the honey, Casey replaces a full box with an empty one, then scrapes the wax from each insert and places it into an extractor. The extractor spins rapidly, not dissimilar to the way a washing machine spins water out of clothes. The honey is extracted into pails, then Casey strains and bottles it. He does not filter or pasteurize his honey. During the process, he uses heated mats to prevent the honey from crystallizing before it is bottled. “All pure honey will crystallize,” Casey warned the club. Store bought honey is sometimes diluted with other sugars to prevent crystallization, he explained, but crystallization doesn't mean the honey has gone bad. In fact, pure honey is not known to spoil at all. To liquefy it again, all one has to do is heat it up.