Hobby keeps Howland man as busy as a bee
A negative interaction with a bee can lead to a lifetime of avoiding them at all costs. For Scott Lealand of Howland, the opposite is true — getting stung as a child didn’t diminish his interest in the winged insect.
“The fascination with them today is more of an addiction in that the more you learn about them, the more you want to learn,” he said. “It’s something that simply never gets boring. Even today, I keep a chair out in the apiaries so I can just watch them come and go. It’s a great way to decompress from the stresses of everyday life.”
For Lealand, that relaxing location resides at his Mirquegan Apiaries on North Road in Howland. He explained that the name comes from the combination of his children’s first names — MIRanda, QUEntin and ReaGAN.
“It’s a whole family thing. And proudly so,” he said.
His children and wife, Alysia, have worked with him in some capacity. Miranda promotes the business in person and online, Quentin has helped with the bee colonies for nearly six years and Reagan has been involved since Mirquegan started eight years ago. Last month, she gave a presentation to more than 200 people at the Lorain County Beekeepers Association Field Day.
“Alysia has supported me 1000% through it all. For the first three or four years, she did all of the behind-the-scenes stuff — recorded the videos, narrated them, extracted the honey, researched and created her own line of beeswax products and balms, etc.”
Lealand admitted that he needed all the help he could get from her because Reagan was still learning the craft of beekeeping and the bee population grew to “almost triple in size and volume immediately.”
During that time, Alysia also became a licensed and full-time Certified Occupational Therapist Assistant and helped with the Trumbull County Beekeepers Association, where Scott was president for three years.
Lealand credits his bee journey to his dad.
“Although he wasn’t a beekeeper, he was someone who always said that ‘You gotta be happy doing what you’re doing. If you’re happy, it’s not work.’ I have spent almost 54 years on this Earth and have yet to find any type of work that makes me happy except for keeping bees,” Lealand said. “I believe that I got confirmation of his telling me I was going in the right direction when out of nowhere, a swarm of bees landed on my mom’s fence, shortly after he died in 2016. It was the first swarm I’d ever seen in person, and I’d been keeping bees for about a week at that time, though I’d been studying and researching becoming a beekeeper for over a year at that point in time.”
The 1989 Niles McKinley High School graduate drives a delivery truck for Gia Russa on a full-time basis while his passion for bees occupies him at home and at another location on a friend’s farm in Southington.
Since he took the position of Trumbull County Apiary Inspector earlier this year, Lealand has less time to spend among his bee colonies.
He explained what his work entails.
“The goal is primarily the same as when I was president of the Trumbull County Beekeepers Association. It’s always been about the education of the beekeeper and the public at large in anything pertaining to bees. Now, instead of presiding over a nonprofit organization whose sole mission is education, I, as the inspector, am able to reach beekeepers who might not be able or interested in being part of the county association for whatever reason.”
Current records, according to Lealand, show that there are a total of 125 beekeepers with 161 registered apiaries, and an estimated 874 colonies in the county.
He inspects the bees and the hives where they reside and checks for any possible diseases or viruses. Lealand also offers guidance on management practices and recognizing unhealthy colonies.
Lealand said beekeepers enter the field for a variety of reasons — maintaining a family tradition, as a rewarding hobby, improving their gardens and helping with environmental issues. His advice for those who desire to tend to their own colonies rests with education and real-world experience.
“Read a few books, join their county association, and maybe find a mentor, buy a bee suit and help in the mentor’s apiary before buying beehives and bees or other equipment,” he said.
“Learning the basics before buying a bunch of expensive stuff can go a long way in their endeavors to be successful. There’s a lot to learn and the season is relatively short. So, the learning curve is both steep and fast. It’s an expensive hobby and having your bees die is both frustrating and heartbreaking, but does occasionally happen.”
Ohio’s bee population suffered significant loss in the mid-1980s because of disease. In the past 30 years, the number of bee colonies in the state has fallen from nearly 300,000 to 50,000.
“In the 80’s, a parasitic mite called Varroa Destructor found its way to the U.S. and our honeybees,” Lealand explained. “Our bees, never having been exposed to the mite, had no defense system against it. It devastated many bee colonies, eventually leading to what was called Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD). Add to that, a devastatingly contagious bee disease known as American Foulbrood (AFB) and the need arose for an inspector in each county.”
According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, bees and other pollinators are essential to the survival of more than 100 American crops.
“Pollinators are extremely important in our lives. We must have them in order to grow our food. While we have plenty of food that doesn’t rely on pollinators, our diet would be extremely restricted without them. Even our meat supply would struggle without them as they pollinate the different grasses and cover crops that our equine, poultry and other livestock graze on and forage through. There are thousands of different species of pollinators, and each has their own niche or purpose,” Lealand said.
The connection Lealand feels to his bee colonies comes through in the manner that he expertly discusses beekeeping as well as how he interacts with them. After he uses pine chip smoke to calm the honeybees, he examines the hives in an exacting, yet relaxed, approach. The bees fly around him as if they recognize that he means them no harm.
“There are a lot of misconceptions about them. That’s partly why I became the president of the Trumbull County Beekeepers Association and now the Trumbull County Apiary Inspector. Public perception is important. In general, people are intrigued. They want to know. It’s one of those things where everyone has a fascination with them, but only to the point of knowing the facts. Few want to actually go play with the bees,” he said.
