Hi, I'm Olivia, and today I'm here with Tonja Moyer.

Hi, Tonja.

Can you tell us where we are and what you do?

We're right here at the headquarters of Blac Queen Bee, where we make honey.

That is unbee-lievable.

And I am an apiarist.

What does an apiarist do?

Apiaries is basically a beekeeper.

We tend to the bees that are on our property and we provide raw, local honey.

So our bees, for the most part, take care of themselves.

My job is to check on the health of the bees.

The health of the queen bee.

Make sure all as well, so that I can make sure that I generate enough honey at the end of the day.

What kind of tools do you use?

So these are our handy dand basic tools for every beekeeper.

This first tool is called our smoker.

Okay.

And so this is basically a campfire in a container.

So we build a little fire inside of this, and we use this tool to, puff a couple of puffs of smoke inside of our hive before we pop the top.

The smoke helps to calm the bees, before we enter in and kind of keep them docile before we go inside of that.

This is our hive tool.

And so this is just like a mini crowbar, but it has a little special hook on the bottom of it.

This hook helps us because everything inside that hive is sticky.

We say honey is a sticky business.

And this last one is just a brush.

We use this to help us brush the bees off of us.

Are beekeepers scared of bees?

And have you ever gotten stung?

That's a good question.

So I have been stung about three times.

I've been a beekeepe for about eight, nine years now.

I can't believe you'v only gotten stung three times.

Yes, I will say I was scared the first time.

So we just tell people, just take a deep breath.

Don't swat at the bees.

You'll be perfectly fine.

We try to keep enough space or room for them so they don't become agitated.

And the suit that you'll put on will be lighter colors.

The lighter colors help to keep bees calm.

Oh thats so cool.

If you wear darker colors, or you have strong scents on, then they might get a little more like, “what's going on” .

You'll get an opportunity to pu on one of these suits as well, and I know you'll do fine.

Im not nervous at all.

All right.

I think I'm ready to go see the bees.

All right, let's get started.

Theres one right there.

Hives stay sealed.

And they stay tough because th bees like to line it with wax.

It helps keeps it insulated and helps make sure there's no wind.

Nothing' hurting the kids or the larvae.

And we're going to pop open this part of the hive.

Now I'm going to crack this open.

We're just going to give them a gentle little puff.

So this i where we collect our honey from.

So as you can see there are tons of little individual pieces.

Yeah.

These little hexagons Each one of these are going to be filled up with honey.

So this is actually what it looks like before the bees get to it.

All this on top of it, this is wax.

Which is where we get our sweet, sweet honey.

Yeah.

There we go.

This i going to be our queen separator.

We never want to really disturb our queen bee when we're getting honey or we're harvesting honey out of these.

So we separate those things from the two.

Belo this is where all the bees live and where the larva is raised.

You can see right in there.

Oh my.

That's where most of the hive is going to be at.

So you can see remnants of honey right there.

They're feeding the the babies right now.

And that wooden piece right there, that's where our queen usually is.

Can you tell me why bees are so important?

Bees are so important to human beings in our ecosystem.

Because our bees are responsible for one out of every three bites that we take.

Oh, wow.

So, if we were to lose our bee or our pollinator population, we would lose crops such as apples, almonds blueberries, chocolate, coffee.

No one wants to lose chocolate or coffee, right?

And so part of the thing tha we do when people come for tours is we educate people o how to partner with pollinators.

So how can we help to save the bees?

One thing that people can do is to plant flowers.

Okay.

Plant a garden.

There are certain, flowers that bees love.

lavender and sunflowers, I mean, they they love these things.

And so another thing is to reduce the amount of pesticides people, spray in their gardens.

And so we tell peopl to just let the dandelions grow.

What advice do you have for kids who are intereste in going into this career path?

Ooh, it's never too late to start.

You need a suit.

You need some bees, right?

I mean, if you have that, then, it's pretty easy to start.

Yeah And I think anybody can do this.

Yeah.

You just gotta not be afraid of the bees.

Yes.

I had an unbee-lievable time learnin about the bees with Tonja Moyer.

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