Busy bees
Albert Fine stands in a patch of woods at Triple B Farms in Monongahela. Bees buzz all around him, zipping among the 18 beehives that he maintains at three locations on the property.
He carefully lifts apart the section of the hives, searching for the queen through his beekeeper’s veil as the bees carry out their work, caring for larvae, building intricate combs, maintaining the hives and making honey.
For Fine, owner of Fine Family Apiary in Monongahela, beekeeping is a passion.
He was always interested in bugs and insects, but became fascinated with beekeeping when he was 9 or 10 years old and his family found a bee swarm in a crabapple tree on the property.
“My dad came home and called my cousin, who was a beekeeper, and he hived it for two or three years. That got me hooked,” says Fine, who graduated from Penn State University with degrees in horticulture and agronomy and purchased his first hive of bees from a Montgomery Ward catalogue in 1981. “I found out getting into beekeeping is a great way of spending your time and your money.”
Last year, Fine’s 135 beehives, located on properties throughout Washington and Westmoreland counties, yielded just under 3,950 pounds of honey.
Today, beekeeping is on the rise in Pennsylvania. According to the state Department of Agriculture’s apiary division, there are about 40,000 registered beekeepers in the state, which includes commercial apiaries and backyard beekeepers who operate 25 hives or fewer.
The Washington County Beekeepers’ Association, which guides beekeeping hobbyists on getting started in beekeeping and creating healthy hives, has grown to include around 90 members. All hives in Pennsylvania must be registered with the state Department of Agriculture.
Perry Arlia, president of the Washington County Beekeepers Association, links the increase in backyard apiarists to the growing concern over the fate of the honeybee, whose population has been decimated in recent years.
Beekeepers across the United States lost 44 percent of their honeybee colonies during the year spanning April 2015 to April 2016, according the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Loss of colonies have been attributed to the Varroa mite, a small, external parasite that attacks honeybees, and other factors including pesticides, stress and malnutrition. The efforts of Pennsylvania’s commercial and small-scale beekeepers are vital, Arlia says, as bee colonies continue to collapse worldwide.
“It seems like people are becoming more and more interested in the plight of the honeybee,” says Arlia, who has been involved in beekeeping for nearly 50 years. “We have had big losses statewide. People think honeybees are making a comeback, but that’s not the case. It’s a serious problem. The Varroa mite is a tenacious parasite, and it brings with it other diseases that are affecting the honeybee.”
Honeybees are the primary U.S. pollinators and a play a critical role in successful fruit and vegetable production. “It’s estimated that one out of every three bites of food is directly attributed to honeybee pollination,” Fine says.
Roughly 80 percent of fruits and vegetables – strawberries, apples, blueberries, beans, squash, cucumbers and almonds – are pollinated by honeybees.
Honeybees live in colonies of as many as 60,000 bees. Colonies have one queen bee and as many as 4,000 male drones. But the majority of bees in a colony are female worker bees, responsible for collecting nectar and pollen from flowering trees and plants – and they’re very good at what they do, Fine says.
“It’s estimated that each worker makes about one-twelfth of a teaspoon of honey. It shows you how industrious they are,” says Fine, noting he extracts about 45 to 60 pounds of honey from a good colony.
Usually, the main honey flows in Pennsylvania start in May. Hives can also produce honey in the summer and fall. Once the weather turns colder, bees stop flying and cluster in their hives.
Fine says buying honey locally enables consumers to know what’s in the bottle. “I’d recommend knowing your beekeeper. You can come up to me and ask, ‘Do you medicate your bees? How do you make it?'” Fine says. “You get to know exactly what we do.”
Backyard beekeepers don’t need a lot of space, but there are start-up costs involved. A full beekeeping setup, including clothing, the cost of the hives, a nucleus (a portion of the hive containing a queen and enough other bees to get started) and a smoker can cost about $1,000.
“I’d liken it to a farming or a gardening venture. It can get pretty intense. It can be pretty exciting, in the same way that when you’re planting a garden and you start seeing the vegetables,” says Sara Bedillion, who, with her husband, Mark, owns Bedillion Honey Farm in Mt. Pleasant Township. “It’s kind of zen-like. I find it very therapeutic to go into the bee yard.”
For the Bedillions, beekeeping has turned into a full-time business and a family affair. The couple and their four children, who range in age from 6 to 20, handle the entire honeybee operation, from harvesting, extracting, bottling and marketing their honey. Their oldest son, Samuel, joined the expanding operation full-time this year.
The family produces about 32,000 pounds of honey annually from hives on their 30-acre farm and more than a dozen other locations. Mark Bedillion is aiming to operate 400 to 500 production colonies by the fall.
Their honey products are available in stores and restaurants throughout Southwestern Pennsylvania, and their internet business draws customers worldwide. The Bedillions’ business has increased so much that the couple closed the popular produce market they operated next to their home to concentrate exclusively on their bees.
So far this year, Bedillion Honey Farm has sold nearly 400 nucs (nucleus colonies), and Mark Bedillion offers workshops on beekeeping.
The couple started beekeeping nearly 15 years ago, after Sara attended a mother-daughter banquet with her mom, and one of the women at the event handed out honey she had made.
Sara purchased a hive from the woman, and the Bedillions’ beekeeping adventure was launched.
“I like being plugged right into the environment. We have a desire to live off the land, and it feels good that we’ve found our niche,” says Sara Bedillion. “I like seeing the bees doing well and healthy. I feel like we have an obligation to the bees to make their lives as good as possible. We’re all in this together.”
Local apiarists encourage anyone interested in becoming a beekeeper to do their homework and give it a shot.
“It’s a great little hobby. I’d recommend it to anybody,” Fine says. “Honestly, there’s no sweeter taste in the world than the first time you take a taste of your own honey. Once you do that, you’re going to want to keep raising bees.”
For information about the Washington County Beekeepers’ Association, contact Perry Arlia, president, at 724-986-9848, or email p.arlia@att.net.