The Buzz Newsletter

August 2005

 

 

Page 3

Beekeeper of the Month

This month our featured beekeeper is Dennis Naeve. He and his wife, Mary, live in Toddville, Iowa.

Dennis Naeve keeps on top of things in the beeyard.

Dennis says he started keeping bees about 30 years ago. A friend sold him a couple of colonies and they were brought home in the trunk of a 1965 Ford Mustang. He has been running about 200 hives since he retired from Rockwell Collins ten years ago. Dennis sells mostly bulk honey, retails about 5% of his total produce and also produces some comb honey. He tells me he likes beekeeping. He was raised on a farm in Northwest Iowa and always enjoyed being outdoors. He says, “As it turns out, this is the next best thing to farming for me.” He says his future plans are, “to keep bees as long as I’m healthy or run out of money, which ever happens first. The way the price of honey is going down we may run out of money shortly.”

1988 was a record year for Dennis with production reaching 185#.

Dennis is a member of East Central Iowa Beekeepers and Iowa Honey Producers Association where he attends the annual meetings.

These days Dennis keeps around 200 hives.

His statement about interesting experiences in beekeeping is this, “After keeping bees for 30 years, we’ve had just about everything imaginable happen. Production has been as low as 5# per hive to 185# in 1988. At one time we thought there was nothing else to learn about bees, but as every beekeeper knows there is always something new. Beekeeping was so much simpler 30 years ago. No varroa or tracheal mites. No big winter losses, not so much guessing about what’s going to happen next.” No truer statement ever written Dennis. We have some pictures of Dennis in 1988 with his record harvest. Glad you didn’t fall off the ladder.

Thanks for the information.

Submitted by Ron Wehr