Published: October 06, 2008 12:47 pm         

Taking risks

Beekeeper enjoys hobby after multiple stings

Even after a trip to the emergency room for treatment of multiple bee stings, Brian Frame still enjoys the work he does.

“Both arms were swollen up to my shoulders,” he recalled. “You have to go in and tell them you’ve been stung by bees and they were your own.”

A beekeeper for the past eight years, Frame said ever since that incident he has worn a special suit to protect himself.

Even though he has been stung several other times, the beekeeper says it’s just something he got used to over time.

While he considers his work with bees just a hobby, Frame has had anywhere between three and 10 hives at one time. The more hives he has set up, he said, the more time consuming the work becomes.

“When I had 10, that’s all I did in my spare time,” he said.

The job requires him to check on the hives for a couple of days in the early spring and the middle of summer to make sure the bees are producing honey and have enough to eat.

When it comes to collecting the honey, the bee keeper said it takes him two days to remove the honey-covered frames from the hives. Processing the honey is an additional week long project.

To get to the honey, Frame uses a utensil known as a smoker.

“It calms the bees down, so I don’t get stung,” he said.

To light the smoker he uses a sock, wood chips or grass. He then pumps the smoke at the hive and inside it. After a few minutes, he opens the lid and uses a piece of metal to pry out the frames.

The bees swarm around the front of the hive and around the beekeeper as he works to see how much honey has been produced.

When removing the honey, Frame said he must leave some for the bees to eat.

Once he has removed the wooden slots from each hive, he will cut the honey out and double strain it into a bucket to make sure there isn’t any sediment in the finished product.

“For the year, I usually get a five-gallon bucket full,” he said.

Frame wanted to become a beekeeper when he was child. He said his father used to have bee hives and would tell stories about them.

“I got interested in it, and he showed me how to do it,” he said. “It all went from there.”

The job does require training, Frame said. Most of the training consists of hands-on work with the bees, so someone interested in becoming a beekeeper would have to find another experienced beekeeper.

Frame said a lot of the work is simply trial and error. Certain things work for some, while other techniques work for others. His biggest challenge is finding a way to prevent his bees from dying off in the winter, he said.

While most of his neighbors are OK with his bees, he said, he has had a few phone calls with the request that he come and get his bees and take them back home. Frame said he usually doesn’t know whether the bees are actually his, but he always tries to take the swarm back to his hives.

He said he had retrieved swarms out of holes in trees, from a fence post, out of a mail box and even off a rock.

“I put the box under where they are and shake them into the box,” he said. “All you are after is the queen bee. Once she is in the box, the rest will follow.”

Frame said he enjoys the hobby and is fascinated by the bees.

“When I first started, I used to sit out there and watch them at the hive,” he said.

He learned a lot from watching the bees and the behaviors of each one, he said. He even learned that the bees communicate by dancing.

The beekeeper said he had no plans to make his hobby into a full-time job anytime in the near future. He said managing 100 to 200 hives at one time is a difficult task he does not want to take on.

“If you have a massive die-out, than you’re unemployed,” he said.

Denise Massie can be reached at (574) 732-5151 or via e-mail at denise.massie@pharostribune.com