HUMBOLDT—Cole Herder has an extensive list of things he is interested in and spring starts the season for one of his favorite hobbies, beekeeping. Whether or not he harvests a significant amount of honey is of no real consequence, it’s working outside with the bees that gives him enjoyment.
Admitting he may be slightly behind the schedule of a professional beekeeper, he was busy Saturday a week ago cleaning the removable frames used in one of his six hives, a necessary chore each new honey season.
“Usually I have this part done by the end of winter,” Herder said. “But, this is the first time I’ve had time and I’m only a couple of weeks behind.”
The old wax is removed from the wood frames either by scraping or being melted off. Each frame holds a sheet of wax embossed with a honeycomb pattern and fits inside the hive boxes, called supers. It serves as the foundation for a new honeycomb. Surplus honey produced in the spring and summer is removed and processed into comb or extracted honey.
“Adequate honey must be left in the hive to sustain the bees through the winter,” Herder said. If reserves run low, he provides them with sugar water until the trees and flowers begin blooming.
“In a ‘good’ year, depending on the age and size, a colony (of bees) can average making 60 to 120 pounds of honey,” Herder said. “We haven’t had a good year for awhile.”
The boxes, or hives, containing the honeycomb frames, are also inspected throughout the summer to ensure adequate space for the colony of bees occupying it. If the hive is too crowded, the bees will rear one or more new queen bees and each will leave the hive with a significant portion of the swarm, thus limiting honey production.
“When everything is blooming, the bees are working,” Herder explained. “While they are busy they are less likely to sting. When there are no flowers or when it’s raining, the bees that gather nector and produce honey don’t have anything to do and they all become ‘guard bees’ watching for predators.”
Herder classifies his as ‘wild bees’ and can easily identify the single queen bees, the non-stinging male drones, whose only purpose is to mate with the queen, and the undeveloped female worker bees that can number up to 60,000. The bees will put off two distinct odors when they sense danger Herder has learned and those smells give him notice if they are on alert and more in the mood to sting.
“Their sound will also change,” he said of the bees communication system.
His interest in beekeeping was sparked around age10 as he helped his father, the late Gordon Herder. “He probably had 30 hives then and I would help him as a kid move the hives to different places.” When the younger Herder went away to college, those hives were eventually sold and he was no longer involved with bees.
That changed about ten years ago when a friend of his, Nobby Davis, called him to do something about the bees at his restaurant, Opie’s, in Chanute.
“I finally told him I would come and look, then tell him what to do,” he said. “When I got there, I realized he had a new swarm of healthy, wild bees on the front of his building. I decided I would capture them and went home to dig out my coveralls and veil (beekeeper equipment) and went back to Chanute with a makeshift hive.
“While I was getting the bees in front of Opie’s, someone from the Tribune came and took my picture and another guy from the Independence newspaper was having lunch there, so it wasn’t any time until I had a dozen more calls about removing bees. I think the animal control officer had me on speed dial!”
He remembers in a short time he had cardboard boxes full of bees and was scrambling to find hives, consequently getting him back into his childhood interest of beekeeping.
