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This week on 218 Life We're diving headfirst into the world of beekeeping.

Whether you're curious about local honey production or looking for inspiration to start your own backyard hive, we're serving up the sweet stories and tips from a dedicated group of women from Beltrami County, Minnesota.

Production funding of 218 Life is made possible in part by First National Bank Bemidji, continuing their second century of service to the community.

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Hug Hydronics committed to making in floor heating simple providing in floor heating solutions for both commercial and residential.

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Closed captioning of 218 Life is provided in part by Renaissance Hearing Center, committed to enhancing your hearing, allowing you to enjoy life's most important moments.

Tuk tuk, tuk tuk, tuk tuk.

I'm Barbara Magnuson.

I'm 72 years old, and I live on the very same farm that I grew up on.

My sister and brother in law own the main farm, and I have the six acres, which is just perfect for my bees and my chickens and all my hobbies.

I worked, for Bemidji Regional Interdistrict Council originally as an interpreter for the deaf, and I also worked at Lake Bemidji State Park.

I retired in 2015, and I've been busy ever since.

I have a friend, Cindy, who says you need to learn three new things every year.

And we would sit down in December, where other people were making New Year's resolutions, We were picking our three things, and we did wonderful things.

A hot Air Balloon Ride, we explored a cave.

I learned how to weld.

Just fun stuff.

One year I could only think of two things which I thought was perfectly acceptable to do two.

And she says, no, no, you're getting Bees.

And I said, no, I'm not.

I don't like bees, they sting you.

That was in December.

In May, we got our first set of Bees.

She got a hive and I got a hive, and we set them out in the back corner of the farm and proceeded to learn.

We have a stand, of course.

And this is the bottom board.

These two boxes are called the deeps or the brood chamber.

And that's where the queen is locked down.

And her court, the ones that go with her.

Since she is laying about a thousand eggs a day, that’s a really busy place.

And then, like I said, I think it's 20 days.

They will all hatch.

So it's just an ongoing 1000 eggs a day hatching kind of thing.

Up here was the queen excluder, where it's a barrier that the queen can't get through, but the other bees can.

Some some beekeepers don't like that they won't use it.

They say it stops the flow of honey.

I really want to stop the queen from going up there.

Because I don't like eggs in my honey.

These are called supers or shallows.

There's an inner cover which people have asked.

What do you use that for?

Because bees glue together everything with such brilliance that I need that inner cover to pop off, because it's impossible to get your hive tool up here underneath the telescoping cover.

I use burlap for smoke, which works really, really well.

I only have two hives, so it doesn't take very long.

Burlap works just long enough.

I’ll give them a little puff of smoke.

And that will just start calming them.

If they smell smoke They can’t smell the alarm pheremones that signals to them that someone’s breaking and entering.

And I tell everyone, if you go into the hive, you're going to set it back about ten days.

So you only go in if you need to and know why you're going in.

What's your purpose?

What are you looking for?

That way, you can smoothly move to what you're looking for, get in and get out and shorten the time that you’re disrupting them.

What we're going to look at today is the honey supers to see if they're bringing in honey.

And then I'm going to go down into the brood chamber to show you brood.

And then I'll tell you what the bees are doing in there.

This is only for honey.

This is what I will harvest in the fall.

I always start over on the edge.

Because they glue everything together.

Now let's see what they're doing.

This one is just cleaning them.

Same story here.

They're just cleaning up at this point.

Now, what I do is I move one frame over to fill that so I don't bring them out, make them chilled or anything.

but halfway across I already realize there's no honey in here.

There's just that little bit of nectar.

So I'm going to put this away.

And then I'm going to pop this off and look at the second box.

This is all capped, honey.

Now there’s about half of each frame is capped.

And they always cap from the top part and go down.

This is all brood.

That is the babies.

You see, they have food for them around the outside.

Like I said, when the bees first, the worker bees first hatch out.

Their first job is to clean out the cell that they grew up in.

Then they clean the area around.

Another job that they will have in the hive is to take care of the queen.

They bring her food, they groom her.

They take away her waste.

Anything for the queen.

They clean the cells so she can lay her a thousand eggs a day.

They're the ones that go in and clean.

Taking any garbage out of the hive.

If a bee dies, if a a bug gets in the hive.

Take it out.

There's no bugs in the hive.

Besides, the bees.

Some bees make the wax capping to go over the top.

Again, coming out to the front of the hive, there will occasionally be the guard bees.

They're watching for trouble.

If they see anything that alarms them, they will release the pheromones.

Other bees will join them.

They will drive away whatever.

So we get the hive bees.

Sometimes when it's really, really warm out.

The hive needs to be cooled down.

The bees will cluster the outside and fan bringing the temperature in the hive down.

The bees need to collect water for the hive.

The hive uses a tremendous amount of water.

We keep.

I keep three different places where they can get water.

And they do.

There's always a bee there gathering water.

They take it back to the hive.

Once they get through all these processes, then they become a field bee.

And that means they come out.

They'll be in my flower garden.

They will be in the lawn where there's clover.

They will be down in the ditch banks where there's, bird’s-foot trefoil.

So that's basically what they do.

In the summertime The bees will only live about 40 some days.

They will make about two tablespoons of honey.

They will die.

They're already replaced because the queen is laying her thousand eggs a day.

This time of year, you should expect 20 to 40,000 bees in that hive at any given time.

I want so badly to get them through the winter.

And that's possibly the most difficult thing in northern Minnesota to get your bees through the winter.

And every spring when I open up that hive, I feel so sad.

If they're not there.

What's good about Minnesota is we have a lot of habitat, a lot of crops for them to pollinate and bring in honey.

This time of year, you can.

There's flowers all over.

You just have to look.

whatever's blooming they’re in.

These are real flowering crab apples.

And in the spring, I can sit here And hear them hum.

There's so many bees out there.

My best memory of becoming a beekeeper.

The first year we had bees, my mentor said Mann Lake is having a beekeepers picnic.

Go, get to know folks.

I said, okay, we'll go.

So I'm sitting at the picnic table.

The fellow across from me has a Sue Bee Honey shirt on and I said, do you work for Sue Bee Honey?

And he said no, they let me buy the shirt though.

and I said, so you're a beekeeper?

Yes, he's a beekeeper.

And I said, how many hives do you have?

And the answer was something like a thousand.

And I’m going, oh, Lord, I know he's going ask me how many bees I have.

So I waited and sure enough, he did.

He said, how many hives do you have?

One.

And I've been at it for like two months.

And instead of kind of giving me a snort or a funny look, he said.

So are you having a good summer?

And I thought, that's crazy.

Here's someone with a thousand bees talking to me, like I actually know something about it.

And belong.

I've always felt like I belong in this group.

I've had a few gals who started beekeeping who thought I knew enough and I would encourage them all the way through.

You'll figure it out.

I maintain they get on in spite of us, not because of us.

They will very happily live in a hollow log if you let them.

we all have stories to tell about disasters, learning experiences.

The first two years we did extraction, I had a crank extractor machine, and that involved a tremendous amount of sweat and effort.

And I knew I didn't want to do that forever.

So I purchased a small motorized one, and they're expensive.

They were back then, but I knew it was worth it.

The other girls, who weren't sure if they were going to stay in beekeeping and some didn't, but we would all meet in my garage and take turns using the extractor, and that's how we started this loose group.

My name is Sharon.

And, actually, I met Barb through the horse world.

We were on trail rides together.

And I knew she did, honey.

So I asked Barb if she'd be my mentor.

And she's very gracious and said yes.

So what I'm doing is I'm trying to get the the wax off.

So this is a hot knife, and I'm just kind of going up, careful not to burn myself.

And, just getting the wax off so I can put it in the spinner, and It can flow easier.

And then in order for it to fit in the the machine, I'm trying to make sure that I have the wax off the sides as well.

You know, being new to the area I basically just got on Facebook and found Barb.

and y’know, I like I said, I don’t know much about it.

It’s worked out.

How?

I have no idea how.

A friend of mine used to do bees and he goes did you do this, this, and this and that was last year when I got all that honey.

And I said, I didn’t do any of that.

So you can see, this really has no honey in it.

So that spun well.

49.8 It's just a very friendly, warm feeling.

Raw honey will harden eventually.

Very seldom do you find unprocessed honey that doesn't harden.

The stuff in the grocery store won't harden.

They have sent it through a sieve to take any crystals out of it, and they've heated it.

And I think that takes the heart and soul right out of it.

I just like raw honey with no heating, no filtering.

We strain out the, bits of wax and stuff, but we don't get too serious about heating it up and running it through a fine sieve.

Honey, beeswax, and propolis are the three things you get from the hive.

Propolis is the glue.

They make to glue everything together.

It's supposed to be antibacterial and antifungal.

It's also a lot of work to gather, because it it's hard.

You have to scrape.

And it pops off, and then you gotta find it, sweep it in.

I'm not the one to talk to about propolis.

You've, of course, the Honey, we all know.

The beeswax I bring in, and I melt that down.

I use it for, lip balm, face cream.

Other people use it for candles, encaustic painting.

Carpenters use it.

It does multiple.

Anything.

Furniture Polish.

The other thing, that you need a special equipment is to harvest the pollen itself that the bees are bringing in.

To get a pollen trap you somehow set that so that the bee has to go through that first then they lose their pollen.

So that's the four products out of the hive that I'm aware of.

It's very important to supply myself.

One of the reason they're here is so I can have honey for my family.

My siblings live all in the area.

Nieces and nephews are all in the area, and it just makes me feel really, really good.

If I can say, oh here’s, I have a jar of honey.

It's a great gift.

Bees wax, I use small amounts of it, but yes, That's important.

I keep a vegetable garden and would supply family, eggs from the chickens.

Goes to the family.

So yes, homesteading and being.

It's good for the soul.

It's good for the soul.

Julie and I belong to the same church.

The same confirmation class.

And, she's probably one of the nicest people on the planet.

And her daughter approached me knowing I kept bees.

And she got started in them, And took off on her own and did a wonderful job and decided somewhere on her second year that her mom and dad needed hives, too.

You asked me what makes you think you can be a beekeeper?

You told me I could be anything.

Yeah.

It's your fault.

All my fault evidently.

She started first and she said, well, if I recall right.

Will you help me once in a while?

So I started going out there with her.

Every time she would come and check the bees and then you had the opportunity to get to buy some used equipment.

Yeah.

So all of a sudden, she's got enough for two more hives.

And we're beekeepers.

And here’s Mama.

And Papa.

First year I had a bear take me out.

And that was early.

Was it even July?

No.

It was they were 2 or 3 weeks in.

So, it only twisted a couple of frames.

So it didn't do too much damage.

But it did manage to kill the hive off.

That one was a wash.

And then two years after that we had the Hornets.

I got robbed.

They actually went in killed off quite a few bees and then actually took my honey.

The thing about having the bees is and we and Barb talk about this all the time.

You never know everything about them because every year there is something new and I had no clue that wasps would literally steal all the honey and kill all the bees.

No clue that this could be done.

Well, I was going out to the hive last week, and there was one bobbing and weaving, and then I saw it go down next to the hive.

It was being attacked by ants.

That's the issue for this year, is ants.

And here I am over there trying to pick ants off of this little bee that's being attacked.

Didn’t successfully win that battle.

But yeah, you do become attached to them.

You want to see them doing well and the ones that aren't doing well, you're going, why?

What did we do wrong?

How do we fix this?

And sometimes it's not something we can fix.

We don't know how.

Then.

Then we start talking to.

our, as you called it, community.

I'm messaging Barb.

Barb?

What are we doing here?

We do collect the wax, and then I have a solar melting panel that's just out in the yard.

And Barb has one that Actually, she was the one who showed me hers.

And then I had to have one.

So that cleans the wax so that you can make candles out of it.

Or I add it to my soaps, along with some of the honey goes into that.

I make my own mead.

We strained the apples yesterday, ran them through a strainer and took out all of the seeds.

The pulp.

And you just have the fruit left.

And this is mashed choke cherries.

Next, we're going to melt the honey down just in water.

Nothing fancy.

Boil it until it melts, and then we're adding all of our fruit.

Getting it into our carboy, which is the fun part, getting it through the small funnel.

And add yeast.

Pretty simple.

Air is your enemy.

You don't want a lot of oxygen in there.

And you want to make sure that you've got a good tight seal so you don't end up with any mold.

It locks air out of the bottle because this little, The valve in here holds water in it.

And as gases rise, it will push the gases up through here.

The gas will go up through the water, but it won't let air in.

Now we'll just let it sit for 4 to 6 weeks.

It'll really be bubbling that whole time.

The only time that it’ll probably explode would be tonight.

It's always the touchy one.

Maybe in the next 2 or 3 days it could explode.

If it is working really well.

And then we will siphon that pulls out into the next carboy, which is a little bit smaller, and then you wouldn't end up with all of the sediment on the bottom.

Yeah, you can see it sitting all down there already.

So that'll help make it clear.

Then we'll let it sit for another 3 or 4 months and then bottle it.

Seal those bottles up and then enjoy in another four months or so.

There's a pride in being able to do it yourself.

I made this, you know, or I tried to make it and it didn't work.

So next time I'll do it this way.

Yeah.

You learn.

It'll be better next time.

This has been heating for about almost six hours.

And all it is is honey and peppers.

With seeds.

Yeah, with the seeds and their hot peppers.

We put two Scotch bonnets.

And how many jalapenos?

Maybe six.

Yeah.

Chopped up real thin.

Make sure there's not a lot of moisture in them.

That way it stabilizes the honey, you don't want a lot of water.

I've had some people use those too.

The peppers?

Candied peppers.

Throw them on pizza.

It adds some heat but.

Oh.

She made a little candle yesterday.

That was just a mold online.

And another one in a jar.

And all you really needed was the wick, jar, melting it I just used a crock pot double boil system.

Honey butter.

Keep it simple.

We made butter last night, just from whipping cream.

And then today, I just mixed a half a cup of Some of the honey into it.

And so now we'll have honey butter for the fresh bread that just came out of the oven.

As far as cooking together, we don't do it anymore, so I love it.

I love, you didn't know last night when you were here helping I was secretly testing to see if you could figure out where things were still in the kitchen.

Yeah.

I was wondering the one time you stood back, I'm like, she's not going to say anything.

So we mostly do it for holidays now for cooking.

Yeah.

We get families together and families change all the time.

But it's good to have some traditions.

I love having everybody in the kitchen with us.

It's chaos, but it's so great.

This kitchen is not big enough.

when you get ten people all helping.

Or eating, sampling.

Well, while we're cooking, you have to sample it, It's very important.

I have a reason to come over and visit you.

I was going to mention that.

It's something that we can do together.

Yeah.

We have a goal.

Otherwise, it’s too easy to get too busy and not see each other.

I like the honey.

I like the beeswax.

I love the social event of of extraction day here on the farm.

Because my friends who don't have an extractor bring their boxes here, and we take turns.

Each person does their own hives.

That's just a wonderful social event.

If you bump into a fellow beekeeper in the store, the first question will be how are the girls?

And then you talk for a very long time.

Just a community of help.

I mean, if you have something you haven't experienced before, you can just call somebody.

Go on a Facebook site, talk to people.

They're all so willing to give you their experiences because we've all, every year, every hive is so different.

There's always something that we haven't experienced before.

There's a lot of favorite parts, but, the friendship I think is the best part.

Production funding of 218 Life is made possible in part by First National Bank Bemidji, continuing their second century of service to the community.

Member FDIC.

Hug Hydronics committed to making in floor heating simple, providing in floor heating solutions for both commercial and residential.

More info at HugHydronics.com.

Closed captioning of 218.

Life is provided in part by Renaissance Hearing Center, committed to enhancing your hearing, allowing you to enjoy life's most important moments.

Production costs for this program have bee made possible by the Minnesota Arts, and Cultural Heritage fund and the members of Lakeland PBS.