Beekeeper shares his passion for pollinators, local honey
He’s been doing it for two decades, but beekeeping was not Mike Rusnak’s first passion. In fact, beekeeping was a byproduct of what he really loved doing — hunting for wild mushrooms. But Rusnak bought a piece of property in Iroquois County that started a chain reaction.
“I thought to myself: If I plant apple trees and the apple trees die, maybe I might be able to get some morels that come up,” said Rusnak, 63, of Glenwood. “Then I thought: If I’m going to have the apple trees, I ought to get some honey bees to pollinate them. The next year, I bought a couple beehives, got started in beekeeping. It wasn’t until 2-3 years later that I planted an apple orchard, and the deer ate all of my apple trees, but by then I was already hooked on beekeeping.”
Two hives turned into five hives, then 10 and 20. At one point, Rusnak had as many as 100 hives but realized he could not work full-time and manage all of those, too, so he scaled back to roughly 25. But the passion remains.
“It’s just a peaceful endeavor,”
Rusnak said. “The first time you taste honey out of your own hive is a ‘wow’ moment. You just get hooked on it.”
Today, he maintains an observation hive at the Plum Creek Nature Center in Crete Township, as well as others away from public spaces on the grounds. Honey from Rusnak’s hives is sold there, as well as the Homewood Izaak Walton Preserve, where he also maintains hives. Lake Katherine in Palos Heights sells the honey, too, though there are no hives there.
That honey changes over the course of the year, from slightly lighter clover honey in the summer that tends to be the sweetest to darker fall wildflower honey often higher in antioxidants, Rusnak said. But honey from any hive has unique properties.
“Two hives sitting right next to each other will have completely different tasting honey,” Rusnak said.
But honey is not the real moneymaker when it comes to beekeeping, according to Rusnak. Out in California, bees are essential to
“In your third year of beekeeping, you realize you don’t know a damn thing about beekeeping and neither does anybody else . ... It’s an entire lifetime, and still to this day I don’t know a damn thing about beekeeping.” — Mike Rusnak
almond farms. The insects are brought in the day flowers bloom — so they do not find another crop they like more first — and taken out the day the flowers are out of bloom, because farmers need to spray the trees to control other bugs. It is a “big matter of timing,” Rusnak said. That means the beehives need wheels between February and March.
“Today’s professional beekeeper is a truck driver,” Rusnak said. “He makes his money on pollination.”
Rusnak said there is a learning curve to beekeeping. The first year, one learns “everything they need to know” — or 65-70% of the job, Rusnak said. The second year, they add another 20%, tell everyone everything they know and are by all accounts an expert. Or at least that’s the perception, Rusnak said.
“In your third year of beekeeping, you realize you don’t know a damn thing about beekeeping and neither does anybody else,” said Rusnak, adding one never stops learning. “It’s an entire lifetime, and still to this day I don’t know a damn thing about beekeeping.”
Compared to most, Rusnak still has a wealth of knowledge when it comes to bees. He can tell folks how the insects dance to communicate, draw out perfect hexagram honeycombs, and know exactly where to put nectar, pollen and more in “total and complete darkness” in natural hives.
Rusnak does so at Meet a Beekeeper events hosted by the Forest Preserve District of Will County next to the observation hive inside of Crete Township’s Plum Creek Nature Center. Among the things that always light up people’s eyes in those talks — things Rusnak insists most people inherently “know” but don’t realize — is the fact that there is a hole through which the bees can fly out of the hive, Rusnak said. They have to visit flowers to make the honey. And they come back because the hive is their home, Rusnak explained.
“They thought the bees were trapped in there,” he said.
People also often mistake pesky yellow jackets during the warm months for honeybees.
“You probably never really spotted a honeybee unless you’re out in the garden,” Rusnak said. “You’ve never been stung by one, because they could care less about you. It’s the yellow jackets, the wasps and the hornets that are coming after you. A honeybee stings you one time. Basically, they’re going to sting you around their hive if you’re disturbing it and there’s a bit of a dearth going on. But a yellow jacket will sting you like a sewing machine.”
As a beekeeper, Rusnak is not the average person. He occasionally winds up dealing with the business end of a bee.
“I’ve been stung thousands of times,” he said. “It doesn’t even affect me anymore.”
Some research has been done into using bee venom and stings to treat some ailments. And Rusnak thinks the stings do him some good. These days, he does not wear heavy leather gloves, just latex.
“Boy, it hurts that day, but the next week my hands feel fantastic,” Rusnak said. “The arthritis is gone.”
As winter nears, Rusnak also has seasonal lessons to teach about bees. The insects do not fly at night, in cold or in rain, and there are no flowers or much sun in the winter. So they subsist on extra honey through a process called overwintering.
“They’re not leaving the hive,” he said. “They’re living off the spoils of summer.”
For beekeepers, that means winter is relatively quiet. Keepers have to leave roughly 90 pounds of honey to give the bees a chance of survival through the winter. The insects cluster at the bottom of the hive, slowly eating the honey as they move toward the top.
Rusnak checks his hives by popping the lid to see where the bees are. If they are getting too close to the top or the hive starts to feel light, keepers can buy candy boards to help feed them. But even then, there is no guarantee of survival for the bees.
“The biggest problem in beekeeping today is the Varroa mite,” Rusnak said.
The mites, or destructors as they are sometimes known in the industry, feast on the fat of bees. Beekeepers can treat hives with hard chemicals or organic substances with various levels of efficacy, though overuse of certain medications has led to resistance and weakening effectiveness, Rusnak said. Others have provided some hope.
“The medications aren’t made to totally eradicate it; they’re made to put a buffer in there so the bees will survive,” Rusnak said. “Things are slowly getting a little bit better.”
Rusnak said non-beekeeping folks can still help the health of the population in simple ways.
“Plant pollinator-friendly gardens,” he said. “That’s probably one of the biggest things. And not spraying when the flowers are in bloom to kill all the other bugs and problems that are on your plants.”
Those interested in becoming beekeepers should sign up for a class and read reputable journals through sources such as university extension services, Rusnak said. Oncea-month clubs are also great, too, he added. And he recommends getting clear inner covers for beehives, which allow people to look into the hives easily. One-day symposiums are also available to help beekeepers get started, but those can sometimes be overwhelming, he said.
People interested in learning more about Rusnak and beekeeping can meet him from 12:30-2:30 p.m. Sunday at Plum Creek Nature Center, 27064 S. Dutton Road. The event is free. Just bee-ware.
“You get me talking about bees and I won’t shut up,” Rusnak said with a laugh.