Beekeeper showcases honeymaking process at Le Sueur Library

With spring on the way and temperatures rising, honeybees are finally ready to leave their hives and hunt for pollen. That’s good news for beekeepers like Jason Casey, of Sun Honey LLC, who relies on the insects to supply honey and beeswax for his line of products.

Celebrating the season, the New Richland farmer showcased his beekeeping equipment to community members at Le Sueur and Waterville public libraries last week to teach people all about beekeeping.

Speaking to an audience of around 30 people at the Le Sueur Public Library on Thursday, Casey showcased the equipment he uses to take care of his bees. The New Richland beekeeper has around 80 wooden hives where his bees live and produce honey. On a good year, Casey said each hive can produce around 150 gallons of honey.

Each hive consists of several supers, boxes where the worker bees make the honey. The supers are lined with removable frames with wire cells that can be used by the bees for storing pollen and nectar and creating honeycomb.

In the brood box, the largest part of the hive, where new worker bees are born and raised, the hexagonal chambers function as nesting places for the queen to lay eggs. Those eggs then hatch into new worker bees. Since the average male honeybee only lives for about six to eight weeks, the health of the hive relies on the queen constantly spawning new bees to take their place.

At the top of the hive is an inner and outer cover to protect the bees from the elements. During the winter, Casey said he modifies the cover with absorbent material to prevent ice melts from dripping into the hive. The hives are especially susceptible to melts because bees don’t hibernate during the winter. To resist the cold, the bees swarm in a ball around the queen, shivering and generating up to 95 degrees of heat.

“The heat goes up and hits this and it starts to drip down,” said Casey. “That can kill a bee or it can make mold. So that’s why I put an absorbent so it doesn’t go down on them.”

Bees create honey by feasting on nectar from flowers and taking it back to the hive where the nectar is passed mouth-to-mouth from one bee to another. This process breaks down the nectar into simple sugars, creating the gooey consistency of honey. The bees then store the honey hexagonal cells in the hive and fan it with their wings to reduce the moisture content.

During the harvesting process, bees help plants reproduce by transferring pollen from one flower to another. Because of these benefits, 10 different farmers have allowed Casey to keep his hives on their properties near Good Thunder, Mapleton, Freeborn, Waldorf, Gaylord and New Richland.

With hives operating in different locations, Casey’s bees are extracting pollen and nectar from different kinds of flowers, which can impact the coloration of the honey. Some of his bottles are filled with honey that takes a light yellow hue while others are other bottles display a dark gold color.

“Depending on what tree or what plant it’s from, it can be yellow, orange, purple all sorts of colors,” said Casey. “They’ve even said out in Hershey Pennsylvania where they make M&Ms, some people have M&M colored pollen in there because bees will eat them.”

When it comes time to harvest the honey, Casey will put on his beekeeping suit and spray the hives with a smoker to calm the bees down and settle them into the bottom of the hive.

“It’s not that they can’t breathe, but they don’t like the smoke,” said Casey. “So they try to get away from it and go down to the middle of the hive.”

To extract the panels from the hive, Casey often has to use a small pry bar to loosen them up. This is because the panels are frequently stuck together by propolis, a glue that bees make by mixing their saliva with beeswax. The mixture is so sticky that Casey said he sometimes can’t pull the panels out himself, and needs the metal gripper to lift them out.

Under the name Sun Honey LLC, Casey sells his honey in squeeze bottles, glass bottles, jars, jugs and the classic bear-shaped container. He also packages flavored sticks of honey which range from strawberry flavor to peppermint, apple, watermelon and more. During his presentation, each of the audience members had the opportunity to sample the sweet treats.

Casey’s bees also provide the business owner with plenty of beeswax, which he uses to make soaps, candles and sculptures.