Keeping Bees

Keeping Bees. I’m Greg Martin with today’s Line On Agriculture.

I have always been fascinated with bees. Something about the way they continue to do what they do as if their life depends on it...and it does. Hank Will, Editor of Grit Magazine says that the topic of bees has become quite a hot button these days. They have just released a special edition called the Guide to Backyard Bees and Honey.

WILL: Bees and beekeeping, those topics are just hugely popular among our readers and so we were looking for a new sort of timely special one-off issue to create for 2011 and decided that bees would be it. You know we also do some surveying among our constituents to see what kinds of topics are popular and of course bees and beekeeping and honey and cooking with honey and doing things with honey, all those really rise to the top for us.

He says one of the great things about the people at Grit magazine that put this special edition together is that they are a group of doers.

WILL: We’ve got folks in the advertising department, in the editorial department and elsewhere that are interested in bees, that keep bees. Some folks do it just for fun. Some folks make a little money selling honey are defray some of their expenses selling some honey.

Hank Will himself has just started keeping a couple of hives and he’s discovered some interesting things.

WILL: I’m brand new. Thought about it for years but this is about as close to a real live active hive I’ve ever been. I think the biggest surprise to me is how docile at least our bees are. I routinely open the hive and take a peek in there just to sort of look what’s going on with absolutely - do not try this at home - with absolutely no safety gear on. The bees are kind of slow in the morning and I move slowly and I’ve not been stung so far and I’ve not really even been aggressed on so that’s really kind of a surprise to me. That you can certainly walk by the hives and the bees are going in and out and they pretty much totally ignore you and if you even open up their hive to take a look and don’t move too fast and don’t make a lot of noise, they pretty much ignore you.

That is really one big misconception that is covered in this special edition.

WILL: I even pulled out one of the frames with honeycomb in it and there were bees on it and everything and I just pulled it part way out to look at it and they completely left me alone. So I think those are probably the two really big surprises for me. That and just that these incredible animals are capable of doing a lot of work in a relatively short period of time with pretty minimal care.

You can get a copy of the new Guide to Backyard Bees and Honey at your local magazine or farm supply store and we will talk more tomorrow with Grit Editor Hank Will on the subject.

That’s today’s Line On Agriculture. I’m Greg Martin on the Ag Information Network.