We share Nektosha with several active beehives. We never dreamed of having our own bees until we got introduced to beekeeping through a Saturday morning course we attended at the home of Jess Ray, former mayor of Mettawa. Jess and his wife Marcia had been avid beekeepers for some time and they were trying to get other residents of Mettawa to consider beekeeping as a way to help fight the colony collapse disorder (CCD), a nationwide sharp decline in honey bee colonies. (The loss estimate for the 12-month period between April 1, 2012 and March 30, 2013, for example, was 45.2%.) Scientists believe that bees are dying from a variety of factors but the two most prominent causes cited are habitat loss and pesticides.
We started with four beehives in the spring of 2009. The first four bee packages including four queens arrived from California in April. Jess and Mark Leider, another local beekeeper, helped us with the preparation of the beehives and showed us how to transfer the bees and the queens from the bee packages to their respective homes. There is lots we had to learn quickly to tend to “the girls”, as Marcia lovingly calls the bees, but thanks to Jess and Mark we got off to a good start.
Today we manage many more beehives under the careful supervision and diligent help from Liviu and Lily Ilciuc, experienced beekeepers from Romania. They visit our girls regularly during the year to let us know what needs to be done – from feeding a little extra honey during winter months to combating disease, pest and parasites, they know it all. Thanks to their care and experience, we only lost one hive during the unusually harsh 2013/2014 winter season.
Nektosha is ideal for our bees. The ever-changing landscape of seasonal wildflowers such as purple prairie clover, goldenrod and prairie sunflowers fill the meadows on our property and provide ample nectar and pollen for our bees in addition to our flowering apple trees in the spring.
Most rewarding is the honey harvest when we get to taste what the bees have collected. Extracting the honey from the combs is hard work but is shared with good friends. We started modestly with 50 pounds of honey in 2009, and moved up to 140 pounds in 2010, 130 pounds in 2011, and 120 pounds in 2012. Our record year was 2013, when Liviu and Lily helped us collect 700 pounds of honey to the delight of our honey-loving friends.
Watch our slide-show for more pictures on beekeeping. And if you are interested in organic honey from Mettawa, just let us know.