Actually, I only became a beekeeper myself when I was nearly 70

The old man (he always seemed old to me, even though he was in his 50s when I first came to know him) was nothing short of a perfectionist. Everything he touched or sold had to be as close to prefect as he could make them.

He was considered an expert beekeeper and was the most respected beekeeper in his area. Other beekeepers came to him for answers with problems they might be having with their colonies.

He was deeply interested in bees and their history, culture, biology and habits.

I went with him to collect swarms in the early summer, helped rob his hives of honey supers and extracting the honey for bottling and sale. He had a small stand in his front yard along Highway 15 that was used in the fall to sell honey.

When I was a kid, I would take his ABC-WXYZ of Beekeeping, written by the Root brothers of Medina, Ohio, and read it from cover to cover.

The book, along with the hands-on work with him, gave me a foundation in beekeeping that I never lost.

When I was in my teen years, we lost my grandmother, and our relationship changed, resulting in my moving out of his home and eventually boarding in town until I finished high school.

That’s another story, but even though he and I parted ways, he left a lifelong interest in beekeeping for me.

On top of my bucket list when I retired was to become a beekeeper with wanting only one to three hives. When I was nearing 70, I realized I better get into beekeeping before I became too old.

Bees have always held a fascination for me, because of what such a small insect could do.

When you think about it, bees are the only insect that man has attempted to keep throughout history, going as far back as the caveman era.

Bees were minor gods in ancient Egypt, Greece and Rome. The pharaohs crown was shaped like wild honey comb.

To this day, a bishop’s miter is shaped like a wild bee comb. Bees have been an integral part of human activity since the earliest cave drawings in Asia and Europe, that show men collecting honey comb.

Eventually, humans found ways to keep bees in hollowed-out logs, clay cylinders, straw skeps, boxes and our current hive bodies.

The early beekeepers learned the habits and action of bees, swarming, how they gathered pollen and nectar, turning it into honey, what they could use wax for, including candle making, balms, embalming mummies, wax to seal their boats and the endless other uses they had for honey and wax.

Over the centuries, men started to understand bee behavior and started to tailor beekeeping to the bees’ needs, instead of for the convenience of man.

Where we once destroyed the colony to get the honey, we developed methods to make it easier on the bees and ourselves.

We learned that smoke doesn’t calm the bees, but triggers a reaction from them. When they smell smoke, they naturally assume that the forest is on fire (honey bees evolved in forests from a predatory wasp).

Sensing fire, they gorge themselves on honey, preparing to abandon their current home for a safer place away from the fire. A little smoke puffed into the entrance of the hive makes the bees react instinctively, and what we see is not calmness, but a survival reaction.

Another thing smoke does is helps the beekeeper from getting stung, because honey bees have a barbed stinger that she leaves behind with a venom sac that emits a pheromone that attracts other bees that then attack.

She can’t sting if her stomachs are full of nectar or honey, because she has a hard time bending her bottom to sting. And yes, only female insects can sting, because stingers are an adaptation of their reproductive organ.

We also finally developed the Langstroth-type hive that we see today. It is composed of a base, landing board, entrance reducer, brood box or deep super, honey supers, removable frames, inner cover and telescoping cover.

We make new frames that we put in the frame with a wax foundation, wax sheets embedded with wires that add strength to the comb, This innovation changed beekeeping like no other development in beekeeping over the millenniums that we have interacted with bees.

The hive is a study in simplicity and common sense. We can add or take off supers (how we rob the hive after the nectar flow ceases) and pull the frames of honey comb, remove the cap on the honey frame and extract the honey with an extractor.

After robbing the hive and extracting the honey from the frames, we can either return the empty comb to the hive to be refilled by the bees (this saves them from having to build new comb) or we can store them until needed the next year.

Bees, unlike any other insect, produce more food than they use and will continue producing food (honey) no matter how much they have.

Bees are even more important because they are one of the main pollinators and contribute to the growing of most fruits, vegetables and nuts. Without bees, our food sources would be very limited.

Pollination is the adaptation of plants and insects where they came to understand, at a fundamental level, that if the plant put out nectar, the insect would move pollen from plant to plant.

Flowers developed sweet nectar to attract insects and bright flowers for insects to find them.

These are just some of the reasons that make bees and beekeeping so interesting for me. If left to my own devises, I could fill a small book with the reasons to keep, observe and study bees, but unfortunately this space is limited.

If you are at all interested in bees, there are many YouTube videos and books on this subject, and if you get hooked on bees and want to keep them, there are many local, state and federal associations that are willing to introduce you to beekeeping.

Our local chapter of beekeepers, the Kentucky Beekeepers Association meets at 7 p.m. on the fourth Thursday of the month at the Farm Bureau in Paris. 

BERNARD LESLIE is a beekeeping expert who lives beside Kentucky Lake in the northeast corner of Henry County. His email address is bleslie0515@gmail.com.