The pairing of apples and honey is a staple during Rosh Hashanah. It’s tradition to dip apples in honey to show our hopes for a sweet and fruitful New Year.
In the spirit of the holiday, we spoke to local beekeeper Sheryl Kaplan about her “sweet” hobby. Kaplan has been beekeeping for about five years on her farm in Linn County, Kansas.
How did you get started in beekeeping?
We bought a farm about six years ago, and I just needed a little something to do, to be my project down there. My daughter is an environmentalist and very passionate about the environment, and so I started looking into beekeeping, took a couple of little classes and I thought, ‘Well, I can do this.’
Can you explain how bees tie into the environment?
All the food that we eat is pollinated by the bees, and bees are dying out because of the pesticides used in farming and in people's yards and all that stuff, and that's killing out the bees. They pollinate the fruit trees, the vegetable gardens, all the foods that we eat. Without the bees, we are in a bad way.
What does it take to set up a hive when you’re just starting out?
We had nothing, so we had to purchase our bees… I purchased my bees for somewhere close to $500. I got my hive bodies, my big suit, a smoker, my tools to get into my hive, and my bees. You can purchase a package of bees — I got what's called a “nook,” which is half of a hive. It’s an established queen, which means the queen has been mated and is already laying eggs. It comes with five frames of honey and brood, which are the eggs that have been laid.
When you buy a nook, the hive is already working. So you put it into your hive, and then the queen lays up to 2,000 eggs a day. She mates once and lays 2,000 eggs a day for life. Different bees have different jobs in the colony, so it just kind of all perpetuates itself from there… When you get a new hive, it's about 25,000 bees, so a colony of bees is like 50,000 bees.
What were some of the challenges you faced as a new beekeeper?
My first year I did pretty well — they survived through the winter. Your biggest concern is not them freezing or anything in the winter — it's them running out of food… In my second or third year, I lost a hive due to wax moths, which are parasites. If the hive is weak, parasites will move in — either hive beetles or wax moths — and they kind of take over. The biggest obstacle around this area is going to be the parasites that you can get.
How much time do you spend on your beekeeping?
I get down to the farm every week. I'm kind of more of a hands-off beekeeper because I figure the bees have been doing this a lot longer. If we're out there and I see them all active on the outsides of the hive, then I'm not going to worry about it.
How much honey do you get from your bees?
I don't exactly know how much it weighs — usually you do honey by weight. This year, we did not get quite as much as we have in the past. I have a big five-gallon bucket, and then another third of a five-gallon bucket. In the past, I've gotten two five-gallon buckets, which is a lot of honey.
What do you do with the honey you collect?
I sell it, and I also experimented with spun honey. It's like a spreadable honey. There’s lavender, and I have some cinnamon (flavored spun honey). A lot of my friends know that I sell it and word just gets around, because local honey is really good for you for allergies and stuff because the pollen that’s in your area is in there.
Where would you recommend that new beekeepers start?
I would say start with your local beekeeping club. Here, it's the Northeast Kansas Beekeepers Association… I would just get online and find a local class and start that way. Learn the basics, and see if it's something you think you can handle, and then go for it because you learn very quickly. Once you get into the hives, and you're looking at everything that's still going on, you catch on quickly. It's helped me a lot to have a mentor, to have someone to show me the way. I think that's really the way you need to do it as well.
It's a sweet business, it's fun. I know I'm doing what I can do to help the environment. And people find it very interesting, so I always have something to talk about.
More about Kaplan and her bees can be found at blackdogfarmks.com/bees.
