Paul Shannon, our apiarist, has a twenty-year career in beekeeping, and what started out as a hobby became his passion. That passion encouraged him to start his own company, Strictly Beesness, and he’s been working with bees ever since.
Although golf course communities use fertilizers and sprays, they have course managers who are concerned about the natural wildlife in their areas. Most developments like Verandah have large open spaces and safe environments that make perfect places for beekeeping.
Verandah presently has 12 working bee hives which Mr. Shannon maintains for us and bee hives in over twenty other communities in the area. He visits each community’s hives every 10-14 days to ascertain if the bees are happy, safe and producing honey. There are 20,000-40,000 bees in each hive with one queen bee, 300-600 drones and the rest worker bees. The drones mate with the queen, who produces 2,000 eggs every 20 seconds! It’s a cruel world for the drones, because after mating eight to ten times, they either die or are kicked out of the hive. Meanwhile, the queen keeps mating with the other drones, and the workers, all females, continue to gather pollen from flowers and clover, make wax in the honeycombs, housekeep the hives, and tend to the queen. The queen fertilizes the eggs of the bees who will be the workers, but the eggs of the drones will not be fertilized. The drones have no stingers and just mate and die.
Honey is harvested four to five times per year, and since bees love hot weather, the honey flows more abundantly in the spring and summer. Depending on the season, worker bees gather pollen from the flowers blooming at those times. Honey is always being produced, but the honey has very different, subtle flavors due to the different flowers from season to season. Even though most bees prefer warm temperatures, surprisingly, the largest percentage of honey comes from North and South Dakota due to the abundance of clover growing in their wide expanses of land.
Paul has been stung many times but has never experienced a swarm. He says that a swarm mostly happens in the movies!
Wearing his bee suit, of course, Paul knows when to smoke the bees from a smoker which calms them when he takes care of their hives. Honeycombs are rarely removed from the drawers in the boxes, since removal of too many reduces the production of honey by 30%. That explains why you don’t often see honeycomb being served in breakfast buffets.
Bees don’t really sleep at night, but are more calm and relaxed. Since they can’t see at night, no pollination occurs.
To say someone is as busy as a bee means that those folks are very busy indeed! Also, it is said that bears like honey and it follows that bears are one of the worst enemies of beehives.
Paul owns Shannon Farms on Buckingham Road, where he has 20 bee yards with 100 boxes in each yard. However, he assures us that Verandah honey is bottled only from Verandah bees. You can see our beehives if you walk to the end of the “Electric Highway” toward Buckingham Road and look to the right. Don’t get too close without wearing your bee suit!
