Pandemic gives woman chance to try beekeeping
Apr. 10—When COVID closed the world last spring, it also opened an opportunity for one St. Joseph woman to follow through on a long-held dream.
Tammy Bergland had been pondering beekeeping for several years, ever since reading "The Secret Life of Bees." And by the time the pandemic led to her working from home, she'd done enough research to ready her for housing bees of her own.
"I was already planting a lot of things bees like and could pollinate, so it seemed like it could be a good partnership," she says.
Bergland adds that prior to bringing bees to her four acres at the edge of town, she received approval from her neighbors, "because bees don't stay in a fence." She also reached out to a beekeeping couple near Chillicothe, who sold her two beehive boxes as well as the bees to reside in them.
She found a place on her property where the hives would be most likely to thrive: one that faces southeast on a downward slope and that receives sun as well as shade. With bees being largely self-sufficient, she didn't need to do much to prepare the area but did opt to place a tarp, wood chips and mulch on the ground surrounding the hives, as she didn't want to disturb the bees by mowing directly around them.
When Bergland brought her bees home last April, she had about 10,000 per hive. Her work as a beekeeper consists of keeping water nearby and checking the hives about once a week to ensure they aren't hindered by pests or disease. This may sound simple but it can become complex when an issue arises, in which case she must sift through an abundance of information to determine how to handle it.
"I'm finding there are as many different answers for how you approach different problems in the hives as there are beekeepers," she said.
She also notes that, ideally, she should know how to address a problem before encountering it so she can take any necessary measures during her routine inspections rather than disturbing the hives with additional visits (since each visit sets back the bees' work by a day or two).
Her first year came with its share of challenges, including both hives losing their queens over the summer. These setbacks kept the hives from building as high or producing as much honey as they could have otherwise. As a result, Bergland didn't harvest any of the honey for herself last year, since the hives needed all they'd produced simply to sustain themselves.
Another setback came in the form of Varroa mites, parasites that feed on bees. Between these and the winter cold, one of Bergland's hives didn't survive until spring. (A silver lining to this sad outcome was that she did harvest that hive's remaining honey.)
Now starting her second year as a beekeeper, she has addressed the mite problem and plans to repopulate the hive that died. She'll also continue learning, although she's already gained a lot of expertise she didn't have initially — not only about dealing with challenges bees face but also about the bees themselves.
She's learned they are surprisingly gentle, for example, and that they prefer not to sting — which is helpful for her since she's also learned from being stung a couple of times that she happens to be allergic.
But this hasn't dulled her affection for her bees, whom she calls her Amazon girls — since, like the Amazon women of Greek mythology, the largely female hives are amazing in what they accomplish.
They operate as a complex community in which every bee has a job, such as collecting pollen, cleaning the hive, feeding the young or — in the case of the queen — laying eggs to maintain the hive's population. Even the gender balance in the hive is carefully orchestrated, with only fertilized eggs (producing females) allowed until the hive is established enough to dedicate some of its resources to helping other hives, through unfertilized eggs that produce males.
Witnessing this bee world up close has been one of the rewards Bergland has received for her efforts. Her main motivation, though, is to do her part in benefiting the world at large, since bees are so vital for farming practices. She noted that in this respect, although not everyone is a fan of bees, they're important.
And for her in particular, they're also an adventure.
"I don't think any two years will ever be the same," she said. "I'm going to keep learning and trying to help them ... and maybe get some honey."
