The Sourwood Flow - Part I
This is BeeCo Apiaries fourth consecutive year of taking bees up to the mountains for the Sourwood Honey flow.
Loading up the hives early in the morning before departing for North Carolina.
4:30AM. June 12, 2020. — My alarm clock goes off and I quickly get dressed and make some coffee. We’ve got a big day ahead of us. It’s moving day for approximately 1.3 million of the BeeCo Apiary bees. I’m sure I’ll need the caffeine at some point.
BeeCo Apiaries is a small, boutique apiary located in Hancock County, Georgia that produces and sells queens, 5 frames nucleus hives, and honey. As for most hobbyist and professional beekeepers in spring, the past few weeks have been non stop here at the apiary. My mom, Mary Lacksen, and I have been managing about one hundred hives. Managing is a rather vague term so I’ll give you some examples of what that can mean.
As a beekeeper, you need to be inspecting your hives frequently (our goal is no less than once every ten days) to monitor the queen, strength of the hive, and stay ahead of any disease, swarming, or other conditions that could negatively impact your colony. Depending on what we find when we open up a hive, the solution could be to feed it, split it into two hives if it’s about to swarm, replace the queen if the hive is queen-less or the current queen isn’t doing an adequate job, or even in rare cases, cull the hive to prevent disease and contamination from spreading to other hives in the apiary. There isn’t always a clear cut answer, and each beekeeper tends to develop practices that work best for their specific needs and climate.
Mary walking through the apiary as the morning light catches the dew.
In the world of apiculture, it is said that beekeeping is 50% science and 50% art. As Bob Binnie, founder and owner of Blue Ridge Honey in Lakemont, Georgia has referenced in his wonderful YouTube videos, art is defined in the Merriam Webster dictionary as “skill acquired by experience, study, or observation.” One of the silver linings of COVID-19 for me personally has been time and space in my schedule to work alongside my mother who started her beekeeping journey thirteen years ago. She will be the first to tell you that she is still learning, and as a beekeeper that’s a given. However, her thirteen years of experience has given her tremendous knowledge and intuition that she generously shares with me and so many other new and experienced beekeepers.
For the last month or so, we’ve been keeping a watchful eye on hives that seemed particularly strong and were producing a lot of local honey at the apiary in Sparta. Our nectar flow, mostly privet and wildflower, occurs earlier in the season then the sourwood nectar flow in the Blue Ridge Mountains. For that reason, we were able to harvest our local honey here on June 8. We didn’t have much honey as in previous years (last year we pulled 600 pounds of wildflower honey), but we’re still pleased to pull the 400 pounds that we did. The reason for a smaller honey harvest is two-fold. First, it seems to have been a weaker year for many beekeepers in the regions. We did have a great deal of rain which impacts honey production and possibly the cooler temperatures had something to do with it as well. Secondly, BeeCo Apiaries sold a record number of nucleus hives this year, so our colonies were constantly being split and reconfigured. This does not allow for consistent honey production, but that wasn’t our goal. Nonetheless, we still wanted to take some of our stronger hives up to the Blue Ridge Mountains to see how they would do with the sourwood flow. This is BeeCo Apiaries fourth year of taking bees up for the sourwood flow.
The drive from my home in Milledgeville to Bruce Morgan’s apiary southeast of Sparta is about a forty minute drive. The world is waking up as I pull down the dirt road and turn into his property at 6:00AM. Two of our friends, Rafael and Andre, have come to help us load the hives on the custom trailer outfitted specifically for moving bee hives. Bruce bought it almost fifteen years ago down in Statesboro, Georgia from Bobby Colson, club president of both the Ogeechee Area Beekeepers and the Altamaha Beekeepers Association. The trailer was previously used as a pollination trailer in the watermelon fields of Florida. It’s configured to hold twenty six hives securely and permanently so the hives never have to be moved from the trailer during their time pollinating, in our case, producing honey.
This custom trailer was originally used as a pollination trailer in the watermelon fields of Florida. The design allows for safe transportation of 26 hives.
A piece of plywood serves as the staging area before setting the hive down into the metal brackets on the trailer.
We use a hive carrier tool to help lift the hives up onto the trailer. You need two people to use, but it makes moving and lifting hives so much easier.
We carefully load up nine of Bruce’s hives and winch them down with ratchet straps. Like Mary, he carefully closes the entrances up earlier in the morning with foam window piping insulation to ensure the bees are in the hive prior to moving. After we load his hives, we drive to BeeCo Apiaries and load up the designated hives in the pecan orchard apiary. The summer sun is beaming through the orchard casting a magnificent morning light across the grass and apiary. We took it as a good omen for the bees and the journey ahead.
Mary, Rafael, Bruce, and Andre pause for a quick photo after loading the trailer with the honey bee hives.
Mary and her bees departing BeeCo Apiaries for the Blue Ridge Mountains for the Sourwood honey flow.
7:00AM — We’ve finished loading all the hives and securing them on the trailer. We thank Bruce, Rafael, and Andre for their hard work early this morning before we hit the road and then head north towards the Blue Ridge Mountains. You can definitely feel the weight and pull of the trailer as we navigate the back country roads to Greensboro where we’ll pick up one more hive from a local beekeeper whose hive will fill the final spot on the 26 hive trailer. Once we’ve added her hive, we drive straight through without any stops to our final destination outside Franklin, North Carolina.
It’s important that we move the bees early in the morning in the summer to avoid having them on the road during the heat of day.
Beth, a member of the Lake Country Beekeepers Association, and Mary get the final beehive loaded onto the trailer in Greensboro, Georgia.
11:00AM — We meet Gary, the landowner who has generously allowed us to keep the hives on his property. We turn onto a rough gravel road and he drives ahead of us stopping to open the gate into his pasture. We take the trailer and back it into the back corner of the lot where the bees will stay for the next six weeks or so. They’ll have some friendly pasture companies during their stay. We brought all of the equipment to set up an electric fence, but thankfully we were able to tie into his already hot perimeter fence around the pasture saving us the headache of having to set up our battery and solar panel system. Within thirty minutes everything is unhitched, fenced in, and ready to go. Mom and I do a final pass through pulling the gray, foam plugs from the hive entrances.
Backing in the trailer at the final destination in the Blue Ridge Mountains.
Curious cows inspect the truck while Mary unloads the electric fencing.
Mary staking down the electric fence around the trailer. The fencing is primarily to keep any black bears from disturbing the hives.
12:30PM — The bees are eager to get out after being plugged for six plus hours. Thankfully, the journey was seamless and the weather ideal. No rain and cooler temperatures so we didn’t have to worry about them overheating on the drive - a valid concern when doing anything in Georgia this time of year. Mom and I step back and take a few minutes to admire their scenic view and friendly pasture mates - the curious cows who are smelling and licking mom’s truck. The fence is hot and hopefully will deter any curious cow or more specifically, black bears. Our job is done — for now. We’ll be back in three to four weeks to check on their progress. Specifically, we’ll be looking for signs of white wax indicating fresh, capped sourwood honey. We’ll keep you posted when we do!
-Mary & Katherine
Katherine and Mary in front of the bees who will work hard the next few weeks during the Sourwood honey flow.