Rhode Island woman is the bee’s knees Beekeeper sells honey, promotes importance of honeybee preservation
COVENTRY –– According to the Honeybee Conservancy, honeybees in the United States have been dying off at unprecedented rates over the last decade. A report issued by the National Agricultural Statistics Service (NASS) and the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) at the beginning of August showed that U.S. honey production in 2017 was down 9 percent from 2016. In 2017 the country had roughly 2.67 million colonies producing honey, which was down 4 percent from 2016.
That’s why local beekeeper Deadra Bonenfant, 54, decided to create her own backyard bee-yard outside her Coventry home – to save
the pollinators.
The idea of starting a bee farm came to the lifelong Coventry resident about four years ago, when she was working on her garden.
“I’ve always loved gardening, but I wasn’t growing any vegetables,” she said. “So I googled it and saw that it could be a lack of pollination. Then I saw information about bee colony collapse, and that the bees needed help. I did a lot of reading that winter and I ordered my hive and the bees in the spring.”
Now, Bonenfant is a member of the Rhode Island Beekeepers Association and has two hives in her backyard that produced a whopping 50 pounds of honey between April and July of this year. Although she doesn’t necessarily consider it a business, Bonenfant now sells jarred honey, lip balm and candles under the name Dee’z Beez to family, friends and neighbors from a small stand at the end of her driveway.
“I started with just one hive and it was a great learning experience,” she said.
Just last yea, she added her second hive. As a general rule of thumb, novice beekeepers should not expect to be able to harvest any honey from their hives in the first year. The first year is all about establishing the hive and letting the bees create their comb. Bee colonies consist of one queen bee and about 10,000 other bees with different tasks that keep the colony alive and in production. There are worker bees who go out and forage for pollen to bring back to the hive, the drone bees, or males, who exist only to fertilize the queen, and nurse bees who generally stay in the hive to feed and groom the queen, who can lay up to 2,000 eggs per day. About 98 percent of colonies are made up of female bees. The queen, however, is the most important member of the colony, and without her the bees have nobody to work for.
“She’s a busy lady,” said Bonenfant. “The drones are useless. They get thrown out in the fall. It’s just an extra body to feed.”
Every bee in the colony has a job, she explained, and all play an important role in its survival. A honeybee’s job is to work for its queen, according to Bonenfant, so in general honey bees are considered non-aggressive creatures. They’re also in a different family than insects like wasps, hornets and yellow jackets, all of which are aggressive.
“People confuse honeybees for yellow jackets,” she said. “Those are wasps and they can sting you multiple times. A honeybee is not aggressive, but they will try to protect their home. For the most part a honeybee is only going to sting you if they have to. If you saw one on a flower they wouldn’t harm you – they’re out working. They sting you and they die.”
At certain times throughout the year honeybees can become more aggressive than usual, though, like toward the end of the summer season when there’s a dearth — when there aren’t many flowers to pollinate because the vegetation is between summer and fall flowers.
“They can get a little aggressive this time of year because there’s nothing to forage for and they want to protect what they do have.”
In general, she said, if it has a fuzzy sweater it’s a pollinator. Don’t bother them and they won’t bother you.
Bonenfant said that oftentimes homeowners will call exterminators to remove a swarm of bees from their property, but if they’re honeybees you can contact a local beekeeper instead who would be happy to take the swarm off your hands.
“People love to get free bees because they’re not cheap,” she explained. “If you can capture a swarm, they’re looking for a home and they’re stopped to rest. That’s the most docile you’ll ever find a cluster of bees. They don’t have a hive to protect and if they lose their queen they can always replace her.”
In the winter the honeybees live off of their nectar, which they make by mixing the pollen they’ve collected with water. The honey in their hive is their food for the winter, and they will stay in the hive huddling around the queen to keep her warm during the winter months.
Bonenfant checks on her colonies once every 10 to 14 days. When it’s time to harvest the honey by removing the individual frames in the super, or container, and using an extractor to remove the honey from the comb. The honey is then strained several times to remove any excess wax. Then it must settle for several days to allow any air bubbles to pop. The honey can then be stored in jars for pretty much as long as you’d like. If properly stored and preserved, honey should never go bad, according to Bonenfant.
“So if the apocalypse comes you’ve got something very nutritious,” she said.
Locally sourced honey is also good for people with allergies. The pollen in the raw honey helps the body build up a tolerance when ingested in small amounts.
“Local honey is great for people with allergies,” said Bonenfant. “It’s got that little bit of pollen in it and can provide some relief by taking maybe a tablespoon a day. A lot of my customers are my friends and colleagues who have allergies. I have one lady who just bought 5 pounds of honey. It’s nice to sell something that helps people.”
Bonenfant says she plans to continue beekeeping as long as she can. It’s something she can do when she retires to keep herself busy.
“As long as I can get out there I’ll be doing it,” she said. “It’s an ongoing process.”
There are a number of ways for non-beekeepers to help preserve the honeybee population. Bonenfant’s first recommendation is to stop using pesticides and herbicides in our gardens.
“We need them,” she said. “If you don’t think about it, you don’t know about it. Know who you’re spraying and what you’re spraying for.”
You can also encourage honeybees by planting pollinator-friendly plants around your property to provide different food sources. Honeybees love dandelions and clovers, but they also like asters, lavender, thyme, mint, rosemary, honey suckle, poppies, sunflowers, marigolds, blackberries, raspberries and a number of others. When in doubt, choose native plants to your area. Bees also like water, so having bird baths in your yard can also help encourage more pollination. Adding a few twigs gives the bees a place to stand while drinking. You can also help by purchasing locally sourced honey which keeps local beekeepers in business.