The Beekeeper

The Beekeeper

The Work of a Beekeeper Interviewer: Did you get the name " Buzz" because you keep bees? Buzz: No, my parents started calling me Buzz before I was born.

Interviewer: How much work is involved in beekeeping? Buzz: There's a lot of work, and it has to be done at the correct time. A one- or two-week delay can affect your honey crop drastically. You have to make sure the queen is laying eggs. You have to look at your bees every two to three weeks to make sure everything is all right. Removing the honey is a lot of heavy work. I have to lift the honeycomb out of the hives and put it on the truck. Then I carry it into the honey house, where I extract the honey.

Interviewer: What kind of equipment do you need? Buzz: I wear a bee suit to keep my clothes clean. I also wear a veil over my head to protect my eyes and head from stings. I use a smoker to calm the bees. That's a small can with a bellows on it. I build a little fire in there and put the lid on. When you blow smoke on bees, they think it's a forest fire. They fill their stomachs with honey in case they have to leave their tree. That's why smoke seems to calm them, because it keeps them busy.

Interviewer: How often do you get stung? Buzz: I get stung a couple thousand times a year because I don't wear gloves. Gloves are bulky and hard to keep clean, so they can spread disease. I don't swell up from stings anymore, but they still hurt. I work the bees on nice sunny days around two o'clock in the afternoon when all the flowers are producing nectar. When half the bees are out collecting nectar, I only have to deal with the other half.

Life in the Hive Interviewer: Tell me about the kinds of bees. Buzz: There are queens, drones, and workers. The queens and workers are female, and the drones are male. All the bees in the hive come from eggs laid by the queen. In the springtime she lays 1, 500 to 2, 000 eggs a day. Drones are only useful for mating. They don't work at all. Every day they congregate outside the hive, waiting for a queen to fly by. Then they race after her and mate with her.