Roundup Record Tribune & Winnett Times -

John Thomas, or JT as he is known, is a local beekeeper. He is what is known as a "side-liner" in the beekeeping community. There are commercial bee farmers, side-liners, and hobbyists. JT has been keeping bees for about fourteen years, three of which has been in the Lavina area. JT and Karen Merfield, another local beekeeper, have started the Musselshell County Beekeepers Club.

A hobbyist has one or two hives in their backyard, whereas a side-liners has between forty or fifty hives. They are producing enough honey and wax to pay for their hobby, and perhaps a small supplemental income. Commercial beekeepers have four to five thousand colonies which they truck around the country. They take them to California for the almond season in January and early February. After almonds, they then break them down to sell to people as a supplier to side-liners and hobbyists, or move them on to other crops.

Bees are important pollinators for crops. According to JT, you could take 100 percent of commercial colonies in the United States, and you still wouldn't have enough bees to pollinate everything. As a solution, one example is that the almond farmers have come up with self-pollinating trees.

One of the difficulties in the beekeeping business is winter loss. Winter loss impacts pollinators, particular honey bees. Mites, a parasite that carry disease will be in the hive with wintering bees. Mites are deadly to the bees. The mortality rates for hobbyists and sideliners is a forty to fifty percent loss. The mites came into the US in the 80's. Now keepers have to treat the colonies for mites to keep them from killing the bees in the winter. In the fall, the bee colony makes itself smaller. However, if there were mites in the hive, they will stay in there through the winter, so the ratio of mites to bees goes up. From a business standpoint this loss can be very tough for commercial beekeepers. Honey bees during the flow only live for about 45 days from winter egg to when they fly their wings off, a queen will lay between 1500-2000 bees a day, so they can build the colony back up.

JT calls himself a honey thief. During the flow (season of blooms) his five hives can produce a surplus of sixty to one hundred surplus pounds of honey depending on the quality of the flow. This amount is above the one-hundred-twenty-five pounds of honey he leaves on his colony for the winter. This provides for his bees so that he doesn't have to supplement with sugar water. Their own honey is the healthiest winter provision. JT is hoping to increase up to ten hives soon. With his current five colonies, he will have somewhere in the neighborhood of 110-500 thousand bees. JT mostly sells out of his honey every year. He also makes himself Mead. Products of the hive are honey, wax, and mead.

April is the time of year that beekeepers are getting ready for the summer "flow", June through the first week of August, when everything blooms, beekeepers try to catch that, to optimize honey. They will be putting boxes on the hive. JT states that the window of flow is short. Depending on how wet the spring will have an impact on how much honey the beekeepers get. Last year was a clover year, so output was more. Clover only runs every other year. JT is planting bee forage this year, to capitalize on as much flow as possible.

When a beekeeper first gets a bee colony, it is a "package" of three to four pounds. A beekeeper might purchase a "nucleus", which comes as a four or five frame nucleus hive that already has a queen and capped brew. This will be around fifteen thousand bees.

That will be mid-April till May. By summer when main flow is on, those will become fifty thousand bees per colony.

JT has become immune to bee stings. He generally gets around 100 stings a year even with protection on. Due to the low microdosing of venom over time, his allergic reaction has gone away. Many people assume a wasp is the same as a bee bite. JT explains that wasp venom is different than honey bee venom. There are different kinds of reactions that one can have, including; a local-sting with raised bump, a regional-sting with regional swelling, or a full systemic reaction-which affects breathing and is an emergency requiring an epi-pen.

Local honey is good for local allergies. This does not work with store bought honey because when the bees are feeding on local forage, the honey is a microdose of that pollen from the forage for someone with allergies.

Raw honey has different colors. Taste and color of honey depends on the flow, or variation of plants that the bees have fed on. Amber honey is generally wildflower honey, as it is a mix of everything growing during the flow. As the flow changes, the color of the honey changes.

Typically, the first year you have bees, the beekeeper builds up the nucleus, not harvesting honey the first year to build up their resources and see how they do. Then in the spring if there is honey left, the keeper can harvest the left-over honey. To harvest, the keeper begins by separating the honey from the wax by scraping off of the frame into a filter bag, or strainer, preferably on a hotter day. Keepers can buy extractors that separate the honey through a spinning process.

Bees are very interesting creatures. JT explains some things that make them so special. When bees build out the honey comb, they invert the frame 15degrees so that the honey doesn't fall out. There are house bees and foragers. House bees maintain the temperature to evaporate the moisture out of the nectar, then when it gets down to under 18 percent moisture, it is done, and they cap it. There is a bee dance that happens. When bees go out and find a floral source, they come back come up inside the frames, then they do a little dance that tells the other bees how far away it is from the hive, and what direction it is from the sun. Then other bees go out to the forage source and return to tell other bees. They go out and work a forage area till it is done. Inside the bee hive frame, it is two dimensional and dark. Yet, they can go out of the hive and navigate their way to the floral source from the bee dance.

Karen Merfield and JT started the Musselshell County Beekeepers Club. The group meets at the MSU extension agency on first Tuesday of the month at 6pm. Anyone who has bees or is interested in bees can come, and JT usually has a focused talk about a subject. Currently they have been discussing the subject of getting ready for spring. They have started a beginner beekeeping class with about a dozen people. The class is going over the seasonal needs, how to keep the bees through each season, harvest honey, provide winter resources, and mite control.

If you have missed the first class that is ok, JT states that one can start at any time. The beginner course begins at 5pm, then the regular club begins at 6pm or the discussions just continue into the regular club. Interested people can come, sign in, there is no cost, however, there is a book that JT recommends. The class might also be of interest for 4H students. The next class will be the first Tuesday in May.