Ortonville- Tom Roberts has been stung more than 100 times by bees.
But he insists honeybees are gentle and if they weren’t he wouldn’t keep them in his backyard.
Roberts, 42, is a beekeeper.
‘A lot of people are afraid of bees,? says Roberts. ‘I’m not, because I’ve worked with them for 20 years.?
It’s a sunny afternoon in August as Roberts shows the two hives he has on his property. The bees buzz and fly in and out of openings on the bottoms of two stacks of boxes. One hive is comprised of three boxes and the other has four boxes, or what are known as supers. Roberts uses a ‘smoker? tool to wave around the hives. The smoke, he explains, calms the bees. They may be gentle, but will sting when they are disturbed. He then uses a pry tool to open a lid on the top super. There are 10 frames in each super and he removes an excluder, showing honeycomb.
Roberts began keeping bees two decades ago because he wanted to try it. He has seven hives, but keeps four in Goodrich and one in Clarkston at friends? homes, because his wife doesn’t want that many. Roberts also has a 10-year-old daughter who assists him.
Roberts makes his living as a draftsman, but beekeeping is a year-round hobby. The bees constantly work, but do sleep. When it is cold, they cluster to stay warm. Roberts lost three hives out of eight this winter. The hives could be artificially heated, but then the bees would perish, thinking it was spring.
In late February and in March Roberts feeds them sugar syrup.
‘March is the hardest month for them,? he says. ‘I like to feed them to give them a start. It also gives the queen incentive to lay lots of eggs.?
The queen is essential to the whole process and she gets the rap when there is trouble. In April, Roberts looks for a condition called ‘Queen Right,? when he knows the queen is laying quality eggs. He also looks for disease. If he is happy with the brood, he doesn’t need a new queen. If he is unhappy, he has to requeen. He will get a new queen from an ordering house down south. She arrives in 48-hour mail and once he is sure she’s okay, he kills the old queen and dumps her back in the hive. He then slowly introduces the new queen. Once the bees are used to her scent, they will accept her as their new mother. A good queen lays up to 1,000 eggs a day. A queen can live up to five years, but Roberts says he usually kills her about the third year, because she slows down. Normal bees live about three months during the summer and six weeks in the winter.
By May, the bees? population is increasing and Roberts checks for swarm cells– which he destroys or makes a split. If bees swarm their numbers decrease. A typical hive will have about 60,000 bees.
In June, honeyflow starts and Roberts adds supers and excluders.
In summer, he checks on his bees three or four times. If they fill the excluders, he adds a super to the stack. Around Labor Day, he harvests the honey. This is commonly when he sustains a few bee stings.
‘It’s just part of the game,? says Roberts, who wears a veil, a hood with a facial screen, to help protect him while he extracts honey.
In the process Roberts calls ‘robbing the hive,? he uses the smoker to calm the bees, then pulls the super boxes off and takes out the excluders, full of honey and brushes the bees off. He then takes the excluder into his home’s breezeway, where he cuts the wax off and exposes honey on both sides. He spins the frame using an extractor and drains the honey into a bucket. Roberts strains the honey through cheesecloth to separate wax and dead bees. The honey then sits in a holding tank for a couple days while additional wax and other particles float to the top, as well as air bubbles. He is then ready to bottle it.
Roberts gets on average about 100 pounds of honey from each hive, which he puts into one, two and four-pound jars, as well as 12-ounce honey bears. He gives some away and sells some for $3.50 a pound under his label, Roberts honey. He doesn’t make a lot of money doing it and doesn’t have enough hives to sell at stores, but he says his honey tastes better than what is in the stores, because it hasn’t been cooked and processed. Nothing is added to his honey and it keeps forever.
‘My honey is raw so it will sugar, but if you heat it on low on the stove, it will come back to liquid honey.?
Roberts enjoys his hobby, calling it clean. He likes the smell of the hive, hearing them work and sometimes watching them land.
‘It’s fun and relaxing,? he says. ‘I watch the bees often instead of sitting in front of the TV.?