'Holiday Happenings': A beekeeper's story

A wide variety of products were offered for sale in the dining area at the Golden Age Center. If people were interested in buying something that they could take home and eat, they had the option of purchasing baked goods, jams and jellies or locally produced honey. The honey, which came in a variety of colors, was offered for sale by beekeeper Joe Mesmer.

Mesmer, who has been a beekeeper for five years, said that getting the honey from the bees is part of a mutually beneficial relationship between a beekeeper and the bees.

“We depend on each other,” Mesmer said. “I keep them alive. In the fall and winter, I’ll feed them, and I’ll treat them for mites, which is a big killer of beehives. I depend on them for honey.

In the summer, especially when the weather is hot or dry, bees might need a little extra help staying hydrated.

“I put a little bit of water out there, and I put little rocks or stones so they can have something to land on and sip the water and then take off without drowning. Or I might put grass in a thing of water so they just get the moisture off the grass. Cut grass,” Mesmer said.

“In the morning, I might go out there with a cup of coffee and just watch them go in and out of their hives. At night, I’ll go back there with a beer and have a beer with them, watching them go in and out. It’s relaxing. But yeah, I depend on them for honey, and they depend on me for their lives.”

“I don’t do a whole lot with them in the wintertime. I’ll treat them for mites. I’ll feed them sugar. I don’t like to get into the hives because they want to maintain warmth. In the wintertime, they form a ball to keep each other alive and they rotate from the outside of the ball to the inside. The queen is on the inside. She’s staying warm.”

The queen’s “sole job is to mate with drone bees and to lay eggs,” Mesmer said. “Without a queen, the hive would die.”

A hive can have only one queen, however.

“Usually, in the spring or summer, the bees say, ‘Oh, we need a new queen,’ so they make queen cells in the hive. When the new queen hatches, the old queen, if she doesn’t kill (the new queen) right away, says, ‘Uh oh, I better get going.’ What she does is she takes half the hive, and she leaves.

“So, what they do is they swarm out of the hive. They take a bunch of the honey. They form a big ball of bees in a tree, usually within 20 or 30 feet of the hive. Then, they send out scouts to find a new place to dwell.”

Swarms of bees, however, often frighten people, who may call exterminators to remove swarms near their homes. Exterminators can either remove the swarms themselves or they can recommend to clients that they contact a beekeeper to remove the hives. The other option is to wait for the bees to move on, as they are in transit. That could take a few hours or even a few days.

“We had a beehive over at Kaegebein in a tree,” Mesmer said. “So, I got a call and I went over and recovered it. The (people at Kaegebein) thought it was great. They were taking pictures. I’ve recovered a few swarms. That’s part of the reason that I have nine hives now.”

Mesmer started as a beekeeper with three hives.

All bees in a hive have a task to accomplish, Mesmer said. Honeybees have a hierarchy with several levels, which denote the jobs that the bees perform.

“There are the worker bees,” Mesmer said. “When they’re first born, they become nursery bees. They take care of the bees that have not been born yet. They feed them honey and stuff. Then they become guard bees. They guard the entrance to the hive. Say if a yellow jacket comes in, they can stop it. After they graduated from being a guard bee, they become a forager. They’re the ones who go out and pollinate the flowers and bring back the pollen for the honey.

“Then they have the drone bees. Basically, the drones are the male bees. Their job is to mate with the queen. After they mate, they die. In the fall, the hive says, ‘Well, we don’t need the drones now!’ So, they kick them out of the hive. Basically, the drones eat and mate. The queen bee only mates once. She flies up and she mates with a bunch of drones in the air.”

After returning to the hive, the queen bee lays eggs for the next three to five years, Mesmer said. She can produce thousands of eggs: “A beehive goes from 10,000 in the winter to maybe 50,000-60,000 in the summer.”

Mesmer now gives presentations about bees. He is scheduled to give a presentation to a women’s club in November.

“I’ll let them taste the honey and explain to them what I do,” he said.

Mesmer is available for presentations to groups that are interested in learning more about bees.