The Buzz Newsletter

January 2008

 

 

Page 8

Featured Beekeeper of the Month

This month our featured beekeeper is Christian Hurd. He is 15 years old, in the 10th grade and attends Ames High School. His parents are Mike and Julie Swett and they live in Ames, Iowa. Here is the story he wrote for me.

My First Year of Beekeeping
By Christian Hurd

I sat anxiously as I waited to see which one of us would get the scholarship. I was relieved when they announced everyone would be getting bees. That night John Johnson came up to me and told me that he would like to be my mentor, and everyone told me he was one of the best so I was excited by that.

 

There wasn’t much to do in the winter but to take my bee classes and learn as much as I could. The classes taught me so much on how to take care of my bees and how smart they really are. Without these classes my beehive would have never been as successful as it was. Once the classes were over I got my box of equipment and my mentor showed me how to do the first few and then I did the rest.

When I got my bees in the mail I was really excited about starting beekeeping. It was kind of weird shaking the bees right into the hive. We got all the bees in and set the queen cage in and left it. The bees didn’t release the queen so John and I had to let her out and it went well.

Christian Hurd working his beehive. Part of the IHPA Youth Program, Christian’s mentor is John Johnson.

The bees had some work to do at the beginning but it got much better. The bees at first didn’t like the plastic frames too much, but eventually drew them out. When we put my bees in the hive there wasn’t much of a honey flow going on so I fed them for a while. Once their population got higher they were all over the place getting nectar and pollen. When there was a honey flow they really brought it in. I had to use my two honey supers plus one of John’s. I also later helped at the State Fair to sell lemonade.
When we checked how much honey I got it was about 75lbs. of honey. We let the honey sit a day and then we extracted. I went over to John’s house so we could use his extractor. When I first started I was a little slow uncapping but I got the hang of it. The harvesting took awhile because I had a good amount of frames but it was fun.

A little while after harvesting John thought they needed some more feed for winter so I fed them and they got the right amount. I didn’t know what we were going to do to winterize them but it was pretty easy. So now my bees were all snug and ready for winter, and in spring I plan to split my hive into two.

I have really learned a lot during this experience and have had a lot of fun. I plan to continue beekeeping for many years to come. Even when I go off to college my step-dad will take it over as a hobby and as Hurd’s Heavenly Honey. This has taught me a lot about bees and how important they are to us. I would like to thank the Iowa Honey Producers Association for giving me everything I needed to start beekeeping. I would also like to thank my mentor John Johnson for helping me get started and for being a great friend. Beekeeping is now a part of my life.

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Thanks for your story Christian. You’ve done a great job.

Submitted by Ron Wehr