The Buzz Newsletter

May 2007

 

 

Page 9

Featured Beekeeper of the Month

This month our featured beekeeper is Cecelia Patterson. She lives in Danbury, Iowa, and has had a lifelong love of bees. Cecelia writes and tells us she grew up reading the book, “The Keeper of the Bees”, by Jean Stratton Porter. It was a story about a young man injured in WWI who became a beekeeper. There were bees in the wall of the family farmhouse near Waterbury, NE, and Cecelia enjoyed reading her book in the summers with the windows open so she could hear the bees humming and coming and going. Sometimes she even went out on the porch roof to watch the bees. They would swarm nearly every year around her birthday on June 12. The swarm would land on the box elder tree in front of the house and a neighbor would come and hive them. After graduating high school, Cecelia built a hive out of cottonwood boards, caught a swarm and was in business. Since here mother liked the bees she helped her locate more equipment. Cecelia managed to get both her parents and sister interested in bees. Not necessarily working with them, but helping extract, bottle and sell the honey. Her mother and father took her observation hive to schools to do presentations. Cecelia’s mother became know as the “Bee Lady” and was a self-proclaimed “World’s extra Grandma”.

Over the years Cecelia has bought packages, split colonies, caught swarms and dealt with foulbrood, chalk brood and varroa mites. She has attended a Queen rearing course taught by Marla Spivak and raised queens. For the most part she has tried not to use many chemicals and basically no chemicals since 2000 in her colonies. She believes using varroa resistant bees, screen bottoms and melting down brood combs that have absorbed the chemicals is the most important part of keeping healthy colonies. Now she keeps about 18 colonies and sells honey, comb honey and candles. In 2000 Cecelia found a new table saw in her Christmas stocking and now she enjoys making the woodenware. Another of her interests is painting and there are teddy bears, red headed woodpeckers, butterflies, robins, airplanes, sailboats, a rowboat with Cecelia and her dog fishing and many other items decorating Cecelia’s hives.

Cecelia’s nephew checks out the hive.

In 1982 Cecelia was elected President of the NE Nebraska Beekeepers Association. That was also the year she married Glenn (Bud) Patterson and moved to Danbury, Iowa. Bud had experience carrying deep supers down stairs for extracting and was not necessarily excited about working bees, however he did help pull honey and extract. Selling honey and visiting with customers was more to his liking.

Cecelia is a member of the Iowa Honey Producers and the American Beekeeping Federation. Whitt Spaulding needed a 4-H project in 1999 and started beekeeping at 10 years old with the able guidance of Cecelia. Whitt and Cecelia attended the 2003 meeting of the American Bee Federation and the 2006 Kansas-Missouri Beekeepers meeting. Whitt’s sister, Shiliah, joined the beekeeping project and they are doing very well. Shiliah and Cecelia attended the 2005 and 2006 Iowa Honey Producers meetings. This year Shiliah is the NW Iowa Honey Queen. Cecelia is now mentoring Tova Jessen, who is from Mapleton and in the Youth Beekeeping Partnership Program.

Because of her love for bees, Cecelia has spent countless hours learning about bees and has given her time helping younger people get started beekeeping. What a story. Thanks for sharing.

Submitted by Ron Wehr