Lorraine beekeeper busy as a bee

LORRAINE - Bernie Andrew's best advice to novice beekeepers is don't follow his example.

Back in 1972, Andrew and his brother-in-law "thought we'd take up beekeeping as a hobby," Andrew said. "We did everything wrong that we could do."

But they learned quickly and persevered in the hobby that Andrew, now on his own, has been stuck on ever since.

"We are the largest female employer in Western Illinois," Andrew said. "All worker bees are sterile females. They do all the work. All we do is rob the honey from them."

At one time, Andrew Honey Farm had 225 colonies with 30,000 to 40,000 bees per colony. Andrew cut back to 150 colonies by last fall, but the harsh winter weather claimed 99.

"We have recouped some. Right now we have 80 to 85, and if we don't lose too many this winter, I'll be back to 150 next year," Andrew said.

Taking care of the bees was a full-time job nine months of the year for Andrew at his peak production, but the average hobbyist with a handful of colonies may spend eight to 12 hours a year working with the bees.

"We get stung occasionally, but not near as often as you would think," he said. "When necessary, I wear protective clothing, and I know when it's best to work with bees -- usually midafternoon on a slightly breezy, calm day, sunny.

"If you're comfortable, the bees are usually comfortable, too."

Right now, Andrew is busy in the honey house working with a harvest that's high quality but low quantity because of the smaller number of hives he has and the cool, wet spring weather, which helped crops but hurt honey production.

"Some beekeepers harvest as soon as they have a particular nectar flow and enough to harvest," Andrew said. "We just harvest one time a year and call it wildflower honey from honey locust, sweet clover, white Dutch clover and multiple trees.

"After we harvest for ourselves, we let the bees have the fall honey."

To harvest honey, Andrew removes the frames from boxes where the bees live, known as supers. A machine slices off the small caps of beeswax on the frame along with a little bit of honey. The caps go into a wax melter, then into a separator tank where the honey settles to the bottom and the wax drains off the top.

The frame moves into an extractor that spins around, slinging honey out of the frame into a clarifier tank. The honey is pumped into a storage tank, then heated slightly and filtered, but not pasteurized, for bottling.

"It is a very sticky business," Andrew said. "A sweet but sticky business."

But like farming, beekeeping's profits depend on the weather.

"At times, it is financially rewarding," Andrew said. "One year we had a good enough crop to build an entire building. A couple years later, we didn't have anything."

He said the Midwest has largely missed the colony collapse disorder, a mysterious malady that has decimated bee populations elsewhere.

"I think that stress has a lot to do with CCD. We leave all our bees in one spot, except the past three years, we've been going to Edgewood Orchard providing apple pollination," Andrew said.

"Right now they're on nine different places in northern Adams County and southern Hancock County."

The disorder has prompted more interest nationally in beekeeping, reflected in membership numbers for the Mississippi Valley Beekeeping Association, of which Andrew is a charter member.

"Membership is up to where we started or maybe even better," he said. "People realize how important bees are to them. They're either directly or indirectly responsible for at least 30 percent of the food we consume."