The hornet might be the beloved Edina school mascot, but another insect, honeybees, are more endearing to some residents. Edina hobbyist beekeepers—David Chin and the Bodeau family (father Geoffrey and sons Johnny and Jamie)—maintain beehives while their insect herds help pollinate flowering plants, yielding honey as their sweet return.
Bee Benefits
We commonly consider honey to be the prime beekeeper motivation. In many respects, however, it is a serendipitous afterthought. “Bees visit flowers to gather nectar, and in turn they surreptitiously pass along pollen,” says beekeeper David Chin, who mans hives with his good friend Jeff Dankey (owner of local honey purveyor Minnetonka Gold). “Flowering fruits and vegetables depend on this cross pollination; about sixty percent of this part of our diet hinges on bee pollination.”
“Native pollinators, like bumble bees, butterflies, hummingbirds and bats do their share, but they don’t compete with the European honey bee,” says Chin, who not only keeps bees but also studies their effect on the environment. “At summer’s peak, there are over 50,000 in a hive.”
The symbiotic bee-plant interplay is ecologically critical and economically integral for agriculture. Bees also help maintain a suburb’s “rich floral environment” according to Chin. “In investigating the public policy side of beekeeping in urban municipalities, my studies have helped me understand the importance of bees to a community.”
A modest, yet expanding, hobby endeavor with 130 hives, Minnetonka Gold pollinates the west metro area, including communities like Eden Prairie and Minnetonka, working with local farmers and growers to help sustain suburban agriculture outposts. Commercial bee operations typically contract with various farmers, trucking hives from site to site as crops bloom, creating a moveable feast for the bees. Minnetonka Gold does not “travel” their bees, which creates a more stable, familiar environment for better honey flow.
For instance, at Minnetonka Orchards in Minnetrista, Dankey and Chin’s bees boost the orchard’s apple output, with the resulting organic honey sold in local co-ops and farmer’s markets. With 12 acres of apple trees, each acre needs a hive. “We would essentially have no apple crop without the bees,” says orchard owner Lowell Schaper. “They do the critical and heavy lifting of pollinating apple blossoms.” Schaper depends on Chin and Dankey’s bees to turn flower into fruit.
In our climate, the pollination season runs April through September, with the first honey ready as early as May. By summer, the hives are checked every week or so, with honey extracted from June to August. Starting in September, honey is left in the hive for nutritional purposes through the bees’ inactive period—November through March. “The hive might only have 10,000 bees in winter and they’re fairly dormant,” says Chin. Beekeepers are obviously busiest in the summer, but off-season tasks include “repairing hives and otherwise fixing equipment.”
Given the alchemic transformation of nectar into honey, it is fitting that the honey extraction is almost ritualistic. The beekeeper’s protective suit and veil are like vestments, and the smoke they use to calm the bees (after all, the beekeeper is invading their hive house) are reminiscent of religious ceremony. To remove honey-laden frames from the hive, the beekeepers slide a warm knife under the comb’s beeswax. The frame is then spun in an extractor to remove the liquid honey.
Bees in the Neighborhood
Both Chin and Dankey are active in the Minnesota Hobby Beekeepers Association, which promotes the art and benefits of beekeeping. This organization’s efforts are not isolated. In the skyline shadow, the Chicago Honey Co-op similarly foments and fosters city beekeeping. Meanwhile, urban beekeepers in New York City (which lifted a beekeeping prohibition in 2010), Paris and other dense cities keep bees on rooftops, vacant lots and backyards.
The emphasis on sustainable agriculture and increased awareness of bees’ importance has created demand for local honey. Minneapolis permits bees, licensing beekeepers and requiring training.
Bees can cause a nuisance if not properly tended, so beekeepers are compelled to exercise care and caution to respect neighbors. For instance, “Bees need water, which the beekeeper should provide, so that the bees don’t invade a neighbor’s bird bath or swimming pool,” says Chin.
“Plants flower at various times, which the beekeeper must know. You must be tuned into the plant cycles,” Chin continues. “If the nectar flow is low, the hive must be given sugar water or another food source.” The association helps beekeepers, especially of the novice and urban variety, learn the craft in order to promote beekeeping and goodwill. They also advise beekeepers to give your neighbors honey at the end of the year. “This does wonders,” says Chin.
While popular in many urban and suburban cities, beekeeping is not currently allowed within Edina city limits, due to a current ordinance from 1992 that prohibits beekeeping, and also precludes “livestock, venomous snakes and carnivorous mammals, excluding dogs, cats and ferrets.”
“Our city ordinance is straight forward,” says Chin, “but it does not address overall community needs. Edina could benefit from bees. I would like a more sympathetic bee attitude and hope the issue is revisited at some time.”
Animal Control Officer Tim Hunter notes that the bee ban “predates his time with the City,” and thus couldn’t explain the reasons for the 1992 bee ban. City Clerk Debra Mangen reports that with a letter directed to the City Council, ordinances can be “considered on their agenda.”
Bee Family Lessons
But until Edina evaluates bee benefits, beekeeping families like the Bodeaus must pursue their passion outside of town. Geoffrey, whose family keeps bees at Taylor’s Falls, notes, “I would love to keep bees in Edina, and they help the floral environment. Domesticated honey bees are not yellow jackets or wasps.”
“When I grew up,” Geoffrey continues, “my brother and I had five hives at our Golden Valley home along Basset Creek for 13 years. It was a lot of fun and we always got more honey than we could use. We exhibited at the State Fair and sold at the Farmer’s Market.”
“Now my boys carry on the tradition,” says Geoffrey. Sons Johnny, an Edina High junior, and Jamie, a Valley View 8th grader, are hooked on the hobby and the resulting honey. Last year they started out with two hives, and this year expanded the apiary by two hives. The St. Croix River Valley terroir of wild flowers, says Johnny, yields ”a beautiful, sweet, light honey. If the hives were in buckwheat fields, we would get something darker. The flower nectar impacts the honey color and taste.”
“Last year we only did honey, this year we plan to add honey in the comb,” says Johnny. “We give honey to family and friends, and might sell some this year. As each hive can produce 100 pounds of honey, we have enough. Bees are hoarders. If you remove honey, they add more. Worker bees only live about three weeks, and each produces only 1/8 teaspoon of honey in their life, so you can image the number of bees in each hive. The whole subject is fascinating.”
So fascinating, in fact, that Johnny plans for a senior year project on his hobby, which is fitting given that beekeeping bridges multiple disciplines. For instance, he sees physics in the “centrifugal, spin forces extracting honey from the hive components.” The whole bee/plant dance teaches biology and “in winter the bees cluster for warmth and survival. Bee husbandry positively impacts the economy and agriculture, heightened by the Colony Collapse Disorder which we are all reading about.”
It is worth noting that in this hobby shared by father and sons, bees are essentially matriarchal. “The queen bee is laying eggs all summer,” notes Johnny. “The worker bees are all female, and each hive has relatively few male drones.”
Chin says that the drones do “get to live large—fed and groomed by the worker bees.” Visiting flowering plants and pollinating, gathering nectar and making honey, the workers, the “girls” as he calls them, are clearly the busy bees.
Whether for education, hobby, agriculture or ecological benefit, the busy bees of these metro-area hives offer endless benefits to the Edina keepers that tend to them.
@
For more information about beekeeping in Minnesota, visit the Minnesota Hobby Beekeeper’s Association website.
