Here, on Gary and Ann Norzes’ 80-acre farm just outside Fish Creek,
I am fully suited from head to toe, on a beautiful July morning, receiving
an insightful education on one of the world’s most ancient practices
for gathering honey.
“Honey is a food that is forgotten,” Gary Norz says simply
with a twinkle in his eye, although I can clearly see that here, it is
not. For Gary and Ann, keeping bees has been a hobby for more than 40
years. A hobby, that is, which requires passion, work, and an appreciation
for nature’s innate rhythm.
“The reward of the honey at the end is nice,” Ann explains,
“but seeing such a tiny happy insect humming in the spring and enjoying
the flowers, and watching the stages of their life unfold is the real
pleasure for me.”
The stages of beekeeping begin, as most nature does, with a mother. The
queen bee. All manmade beehives are organized in a box-like tower and
layered with different stages, which change and grow as the population
of the hive does. At the base is the brood box, or lower story, of the
hive and, incidentally, where the queen holds her court.
When a beekeeper begins a hive, he or she can send away for “package”
bees. The package is made up of the three types of bees in a hive: one
young queen, young worker bees, and a few drones. They arrive in a boxed,
screen cage with the queen in her smaller, screened-in quarters surrounded
by the others. In C.P. Dadant’s book, First Lessons in Beekeeping,
it is explained that “the queen is the only perfect female in the
colony and is the true mother of it. Her only duty is to lay the eggs
for the propagation of the species.” After about five or six days
of life, the queen emerges from the hive and is fertilized by a male drone
bee while in flight. Once she is fertilized she returns to the brood box
and remains for the entirety of her life producing more and more bees.
With the majority of their hard work done, the drones attend only to the
queen, and do not participate in the making of honey. The all-female worker
bees begin pollinating, making beeswax, and eventually honey.
“We have come to call our worker bees, ‘my girls,’”
Jave Hughes says with a sweet giggle. Hughes, a first season beekeeper,
became interested in the process when she came across beekeeping while
studying Medieval British history in college. It popped up again while
reading Sue Monk Kidd’s widely popular novel, The Secret Life of
Bees. “I found myself more interested in the process of keeping
bees than I was in the story,” she said, and after 12 years of organic
gardening and becoming well acquainted with growing and creating one’s
own food, she decided she was ready to try her hand at beekeeping.
The process becomes easier once the lower brood boxes become filled with
bees. They then begin to create wax and honey. The next layers, called
honey supers, are added. The supers are cubes comprised of a series of
frames that sit in the box vertically. These frames support the area that
will be the foundation for the bees to create wax honeycombs. The bees
will journey out from the hive to find nectar and pollen and deposit the
honey into the honeycomb and cool it with their wings. Once the honey
has been deposited into the small cell, the bees “cap” that
spot off, preserving a perfect honey pod. All of the frames can be pulled
out for inspection of progress and eventually for honey extraction without
disturbing the bees.
Max Martin, another local bee-keeping hobbyist, became interested as a
child after watching his uncle who kept approximately 150 hives. “It’s
fun to see a hive take off. You start with only a couple hundred bees,
and in the end, there’s 10,000 to 15,000 bees and hundreds of pounds
of honey. The explosion of it all is really amazing,” he says. In
the fall, to celebrate, Martin has a harvesting party that is attended
by at least 100 people interested in the honey.
When asked about the greatest challenges of beekeeping, Martin explained
that it was keeping them free of mites and parasites, and chuckles as
he says, “also enjoying a sting every once in a while.”
Bees in their natural state are extremely docile, so docile in fact that
Jave Hughes has never needed to use a smoker, a device used to calm the
bees. They have little desire to sting unless threatened. Once a honeybee
stings a human, they lose their stinger and the muscles in their lower
abdomen to the sting site. In its ultimate act of aggression and defense,
the sting, in turn, kills the bee. It is no wonder though, after handling
hives and moving around heavy frames and supers, that a bee may feel concerned
and threatened, and sting the intruder.
Ann Norz also recalls getting stung five or so times, but she quickly
cites, “Most of the times that I was stung, it was my fault. I had
not been attentive or careful enough in that particular moment.”
Another occupational hazard, though much less common, for the Norzes was
a black bear. Gary recalls readily the morning many years ago that a black
bear crept to their hives and destroyed them to get the honey. According
to Gary, any interested parties can visit that very black bear at the
Nature Center in Peninsula State Park where his honey-nabbing paws remain
permanently stuffed.
Max Martin thoroughly enjoys his hobby, despite the occasional sting,
as he gets up every Saturday to check on his bees and their progress.
I asked him early in our conversation why he decided to try beekeeping.
“I love honey,” was his simple and self-explanatory response.
A frame can be harvested once the supers are filled and all the wax honeycombs
are filled and capped. An important piece of equipment, the bee escape,
is used as a one-way exit for the bees so that once they leave the super
they cannot return to that area, making it safe to take out. The next
step is to scrape the beeswax off with a hot knife to uncap the honey.
Many beekeepers, including Gary and Ann Norz, use beeswax at home to make
candles. The honey is scraped into a large machine, called an extractor,
which spins, causing the honey to drip to the bottom. One full super from
a hive can yield up to approximately 100 pounds of honey and sometimes
more.
However, around the rest of our country honey harvesting has not been
as successful. There is much buzz and concern about the sudden drop and
seeming epidemic that is affecting honeybees and their hives. While it
is unknown what exactly has caused this widespread decline in bee populations,
many scientists have theories that involve mites, parasites, and some
have far more mysterious and ominous suggestions and theories as to what
may be causing the disruption
In Door County, all beekeepers that I spoke with had happy, healthy apiaries,
or bee colonies, and reported no sign of any danger or fear for their
populations – save one. Local organic farmers, Russ and Linda Cockburn,
have attempted hives two years in a row and have run into snags both times.
Their organic farm seems a natural place to start a hive as it is surrounded
by organic crops, beautiful wild flowers, and forest. Linda believes one
possibility regarding their colony may be the interference of local radio
towers, another theory some scientists hold. “Bees do a dance when
they emerge from the hive to communicate to other bees where they should
go for the best nectar and pollen,” Gary Norz explains. This amazing
“dance” leads bees up to five miles from their hive. Radio
towers, and even large-scale GPS units, can interfere with their journey
home, many biologists assert, causing the failure of a hive.
But for most in Door County, these theories and speculations seem far,
far away. There is only the happy humming of the bees and the glistening
jars of gold lined up at the local farmers markets. Most local beekeepers
use their harvested honey for personal use or give it away to friends
and families.
I happen to be one of those lucky people. As I sat in my car that July
morning with homemade beeswax candles in one hand, and a jar of Norz Apiary
golden honey in the other, I found myself a bit side swiped by all the
information I had acquired in those short hours.
Consider for a moment, again, Ray Bradbury’s notion of bee’s
feet. Honey then, is a living thing. A thing made of the wildflowers,
the wind, the nectar of flowers, and the drumming of wings. Nature’s
oldest and most beautiful sweetener is alive and well here in Door County.
Alive, golden, and certainly not forgotten.
When asked about their personal favorite Door County road rides, the experts’
answers reflect their locations more than anything else. Hagman enjoys
the ride north from Sturgeon Bay on County Highway B, the climb up Bay
Shore Heights, then across the peninsula on Whitefish Bay Road to Glidden
Drive. Merkel cites the climb up Skyline Road in Peninsula State Park
to Sven’s Bluff as the road he most likes to ride.
No matter where you decide to ride in Door County, make sure you do it
safely. Always wear a properly-fitted helmet and appropriate clothing.
Make sure your bike’s engine (you!) is adequately fueled and hydrated
before you start. Bring a 16-ounce bottle of water with you for every
hour you plan to ride, obey posted traffic signals and, most of all, enjoy
the roads of Door County on bicycle.
