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It spurred Merry Point resident Lynn Kallus into becoming a bee keeper.

Lynn recalls traveling through the picturesque Provence countryside several years ago, in the fall, when the fields were blanketed with lavender and the honey harvest was under way.

“I probably over romanticized it,” she said.

She came home from that trip and immersed herself in books about honey bees.

The following spring, peculiar items began arriving through the mail: mulberry smokers, honey spinners, netted veils, industrial gloves and white coverall outfits made of Teflon.

The next thing her husband knew, he was nailing together and painting mail-order bee hive kits.

Then six boxes of live bees arrived, each containing 10,000 bees and packed with syrup for feed.

Lynn was on her way to becoming a backyard beekeeper.

A former electronics buyer for Hughlett Packard and retired Naval intellegence officer and reservist, Lynn moved to a high bank overlooking the Corrotoman River eight years ago with her husband, Bing.

Lynn had never been much of a gardener or naturalist, and she had never before had aspirations to farm anything.

As with any new hobby, the learning curve was steep, and the first summer wasn’t entirely successful for Lynn.

“I didn’t know what I was doing,” she said. “I thought there was a certain way you did this, by-the-numbers, steps you take in order to raise bees. But there isn’t,” she said.

“I’ve read and read and read and every professional beekeeper out there has a different way of doing things. It turns out that it’s more of an art than a science. You learn by making mistakes. You learn from the bees.”

Nevertheless, she harvested 30 pounds of honey from six hives her first fall.

That winter, however, all but one hive died.

Attacked by virroa mites, which Lynn described as “bee bloodsuckers” the hives’ immunity systems weakened to the point where they could not survive the winter.

“It was heartbreaking,” she said, but not uncommon. The mites, along with a virus known as colony collapse disorder, have been decimating hives across the country in recent years, endangering agricultural operations, from vegetable farms to nut orchards, which rely on bees for survival.

Lynn is now trying several organic methods for combatting the mites, including sugar syrup cubes and selective breeding.

“I try to let my bees live as naturally as they please,” she said, and she refuses to resort to chemicals.

Lynn has some 800,000 bees in eight hives this year in three different locations, and so far she has collected about 35 pounds of honey this year, despite the drought.

She hopes to some day have 50 hives, the limit for a non-commerical backyard beekeeper. With those 50 hives she could produce enough honey to sell at the local farmers’ markets all summer, she said.

Her family has been incredibly supportive of her new hobby, she said.

Her husband helps her gear-up – while some beekeepers pride themselves for going into a hive without protective coverings, Lynn said she isn’t ready to take that risk – and occasionally accompanies her to tend to the bees.

And her mother, who plans to move to the Northern Neck later this year, is already talking about ways to market the honey.

She wants to help make the jars pantry pretty, Lynn said. “I’m into the honey, she’s into dressing it up.”

Lynn hasn’t started selling her honey yet, but she already has an idea for a label. “Honey in the Buff,” she wants to call it, “because there is nothing I do to it that the bees haven’t already done.”

The jarred honey doesn’t even require preservatives because it has a natural antibacterial quality.

While she’s working on her marketing schemes, Lynn’s seeking feedback from the experts. She entered two varieties of honey for competition at the Virginia State Fair earlier this week, including her wildflower variety and her organic garden variety.

The honey will be judged for its taste, clarity, color and cleanliness.

Lynn said her new hobby has changed her in some ways:

“Having the bees – something so natural – is causing me to pay more attention to everything about nature. I watch the weather and think about how it will affect the bees. I like to search for and figure out what wildflowers are available to my bees. When I see flowers, I stop and look to see if they have my bees on them. I think it’s brought me closer to nature. It’s making me a naturalist.”

About Honeybees

When Lynn was trying to decide what kinds of bees she wanted to raise, she had to consider their different personalities.

All honey bees currently found in the United States were originally imported from other countries. Native strains no longer exist.

“If you see a hive bee out in nature, it’s because somebody is raising them nearby,” Lynn said.

Italian bees are docile. Russian bees are aggressive. The most infamously aggressive honey bees are the Africanized version, which are illegal to import into this country.

Aggressive hives are hard to work with, Lynn said, but they are more productive. Lynn opted for a mix of Italian and Russian, which turned out to be a wise decision. While Lynn’s Italian bees didn’t produce a honey crop at all this year, given the drought, the more aggressive Russian bees have done well.

Honeybees live in a natural caste system.

At the top is the queen bee. The queen determines whether the hive is successful. She is responsible for the organization of the hive. She sets the work pace. She lays all the eggs.

But, she can’t take care of herself and is completely dependent on her attendants to feed her and keep her clean.

In nature, the queen will rule a nest for three or four years, but in a cultivated operation, she is replaced every year.

The daily operations of the hive are carried out by worker bees, infertile females. They will literally work themselves to death in six weeks during the summer months. They spend two weeks in the nursery, two weeks building honeycombs and two weeks foraging for pollen.

The males, also known as drones, aren’t good for much other than eating and sex, Lynn said; although, in cultivated hives such as these, the queen bee arrives already inseminated, with enough stock to lay eggs for two or three years. So really, all the males do is eat. They don’t even have the ability to sting.

At the end of the summer, the females kick all the drones out of the hive. They eventually starve or freeze and die.

The females spend the winter alone, staying close to the hive for warmth and eating what honey they have stockpiled.

Some 100,000 bees live in each hive. When too many bees populate a nest, they will swarm and leave, searching for a new home. To prevent losing bees when they swarm, beekeepers must conquer the difficult task of dividing the colony in two.

Lynn said this is one of the few times when she has actually been stung.

The new hive must be moved many miles away for several weeks so its foragers won’t return to the old nest.

Eventually, collective memory is lost and the hive can be brought back with the others.

Making Honey

Honeybees are plant specific. When apple blossoms are in bloom, the whole hive will only pollinate apple blossoms. The beekeeper can collect the honey before the hive moves on to another flower.

“Then you can say you have apple blossom honey,” Lynn said.

Lynn’s bees seek out local wildflowers.

Traveling two to five miles in search of nectar and pollen, Lynn’s bees forage up and down the area’s roads and rivers in search of goldenrod, ironweed, locus flower, tulip poplar, sumac and apple blossoms

They will even pollinate corn and soybeans.

Each flower the bees use adds to the honey’s flavor, like grapes with wine.

The flavor differences are subtle: “I can tell its wildflower honey only because I’ve really paid attention,” Lynne said. “Lavender honey, on the other hand, has a very distinct taste.”

Lynn keeps one hive in Weems near an organic farm. Those bees pollinate a variety of fruits and vegetables, from cucumbers to apples.

“The flavor of that honey is very different, exotic,” Lynn said.

Bees are naturally a very clean species. They don’t let anything get dirty inside the nest.

Most honey is harvested in the late summer and early fall. At harvest time, Lynn carefully pulls the frames which contain the combs out of the hive and brings them to her garage. There she places the honeycombs into a giant spinner that works a bit like an old hand-cranked ice cream machine.

The spinner removes all the honey from the combs, which Lynn then returns to the hive, saving the bees from the work of having to rebuild the honeycombs every time. Instead, they can make a few repairs and continue with their business of making and storing honey.

After collecting the honey in the spinner, Lynn strains it into a smaller container, running it through cheesecloth to remove any small particles of wax.

The strained honey is then stored in one-gallon tubs.

One hive can produce 60 pounds or more in a good season; however, an average hive produces around 25 pounds of surplus honey.

Bees fly some 55,000 miles to make just one pound of honey; that’s one-and-a-half times around the world.

By-products of honeybees

For centuries, honey has been treasured not only as a sweetener but for its antihistamine and antibacterial qualities.

It is said that one who eats honey made of the local wildflowers can build an immunity to their pollen. Natural food stores also sell pollen collected from the legs of honeybees in capsules.

In fact, Lynn said, many bee byproducts are more valubale than honey. The beeswax is used in church candles, sewing kits and skin care products.

The propolis, which bees use as a glue on the inside of the hive, is used in skin and shampoo products.

The royal jelly, which is fed to the queen, is also worth its weight in gold and is sold as a dietary supplement in natural food stores.

Best Recipe

Lynn’s favorite recipe to date is an energy boosting drink she learned about in an old book called “Folk Medicine,” by Dr. D. C. Jarvis. It requires that she save the cappings off the the honeycomb. “I put them in a glass with 2 tablespoons of apple cider vinegar and add a cup of water. Pour it over ice, and it’s better than any ice tea.”

For more information:

Why are bees dying?
http://www.hcn.org/bees/?gclid=CK3Cppag344CFR9aQAod0TYvPQ

Wild bees discovered in Virginia
http://www.dailypress.com/news/local/virginia/dp-va--wildbeerescue0920sep20,0,3957717.story

Weather may account for reduced honey crop
http://www.dailypress.com/news/local/virginia/dp-va--wildbeerescue0920sep20,0,3957717.story

Honey and health
http://www.honey.com/consumers/honeyhealth/default.asp

Honey’s healing touch
http://www.latimes.com/features/health/la-he-woundlab10sep10,1,7976092.story?coll=la-headlines-health

So you want to be a beekeeper
http://www.beginningbeekeeping.com/

Va. Tech Bee Course
http://www.ento.vt.edu/~fell/Ent2254/

French lavendar honey
http://frenchfoodgourmet.blogspot.com/2006/08/lavender-honey.html