SWEET HARVEST
District attorney must stay busy to keep up with his bees
Cass County’s district attorney Randall Lee has gotten busy with bees lately.
He’s a beekeeper now. Ten hives.
“That’s about as big as I want to grow,” Lee said. “I really love it, but one can get too big and busy with bees.”
Lee said he became fascinated with bees and wanted to learn about them as much as having the honey.
“My wife Cheryl was complaining about beeswax being too expensive one day, so I got to thinking about it and found myself wondering how the bees make their honey. I asked myself, why not find out about bees and beekeeping?”
That was three years ago. Lee bought into everything about bees. First, he had to buy a single hive from a local keeper, David Kennedy. Then, came the bee suits, smokers, the hive tool or pry bar, extractor frame grip, spacing tools, comb carrier … everything a man needs to work with the bees and share their honey.
Now he has so much honey he has to go to farmers markets to move some, as he recently did in Atlanta
“My recent spring harvest has produced about 30 gallons of honey, which has to be processed and jarred. That can begin to fill up storerooms.”
Lee said that after getting established, it is usually an every-other weekend job to go out and check the hives, see how they are doing and see if the queen is producing.
My recent spring harvest has produced about
30 gallons of honey, which has to be processed and jarred. That can begin to fill up
storerooms.”
—Randall Lee, Cass County district attorney and
beekeeper
Then, about twice a year— spring and fall—he harvests the 10 hives, which will take him several hours of work.
Dividing of the hives and starting of a new one is also a time consumer. It takes patience and care because this is when bees get their maddest. The bees have to be rounded up and settled down, so to speak.
“And they aren’t too good about finding their new hive or the old one if it’s moved a few feet away. Bees aren’t the brightest,” Lee said.
The fun part is watching what they are doing, he said. To get their nectar bees go in a circle of about two miles in diameter from the hive when the flowers are in bloom. Some keepers will wait until the end of season or when winter sets in to take all the honey. They then feed the
bees during the winter.
“I choose to harvest twice in their year, at the end of fall and spring. But I take only a portion and leave the bees enough honey to get through the winter,” Lee said.
Honey has different tastes and colors because of the area in which the bees harvest, he notes.
“Some people prefer honey made in certain areas for its taste. I’m not that much of a gourmet. But honey is made everywhere and certainly lasts. I understand some honey has been found in the Egyptian pyramids. I wonder if some poor academic graduate assistant had to open and taste that honey or not.”
Lee said he also understands some honey can be semi-poisonous or psychedelic in effect because of the flowers its gathered in.
The lure of beekeeping doesn’t strike everyone, Lee agrees, but it is relaxing and educational. A different world, he said.
He has a funny saying whenever he’s asked about his beekeeping.
“Keeping bees is so much nicer than dealing with attorneys all the time,” said the district attorney, himself an attorney.
This reporter laughed and asked if that line could be used in the story.
“Sure, why not? I say it to them all the time,” he said.
Some people prefer honey made in certain
areas for its taste. I’m not that much of a
gourmet.”
—Randall Lee