‘Stung’ by the Bee Bug

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The beginning of Michael Brouillette’s fascination with bees started five years ago when he noticed a bee sitting on a pile of firewood. He grabbed pancake syrup and squirted it on the log for the bee. Quickly, other bees joined the meal. Intrigued, Michael kept adding more syrup as bee numbers soared.

By the time his wife Kristy saw what was happening, bees were buzzing all over their porch. At that moment, she decided Michael needed beehives and bought him two, which officially started his beekeeping hobby.

Today, Michael tends 25 beehives on his acreage near Chico, Texas. The honey along with beeswax candles, soaps, and scented wax melts that Kristy makes are sold from their farm and at local craft and food events.

“I’m not in this market to retire off it,” Michael explains, who still has a full-time job. “The honey helps pay for the chicken feed because we also sell fresh eggs from chickens and ducks. As long as everything is self-sustaining, I’m good with it.”

Learning from mistakes
Michael’s start in beekeeping was a little rough, though. He ordered bees through the mail and moved them into his first hives. For a short time, things went well. But then the bees left.

“I started digging around and discovered that if conditions are not right in the hives, bees will leave,” he relates. “I didn’t know that.”

His next step was finding advice from local beekeepers, including a master beekeeper who lives nearby. He began figuring out why bees leave. He ordered more bees and started over again with a little more success. But bees kept leaving.

“It was trial by fire, but I learned a lot,” he admits. “For example, if there’s stress inside the hive, it could be mites, which embed on the thorax of the bee. It causes stress and everybody wants to leave.

“I learned there are treatments you can put in the hive to kill the mites and not hurt the bees at all.”

By the third year, Michael had worked up to six hives.

“Then we bought this 9-acre property and moved the bees out here. Things are a lot easier now with the hives because of the open spaces.”

Snowballing hobby
Armed with more land, advice, and now experience, Michael’s hobby took off. His bees thrived and he was able to add new hives the past few years.

“Each hive contains 3,500 to 5,000 bees and can be split by taking half from a hive with a queen and making a new hive,” he explains. “One hive grows into two and then four and it keeps snowballing.”

He also added more bees when neighbors called to remove a bee swarm on their property.

“Most swarms have a queen with them,” Michael says. “When a queen gets ready to leave a hive, she lays an egg and then flies off with half the bees. The bees that stay will seal the egg so it hatches into another queen and the hive continues.”

The fleeing queen and her bees find a tree where they make a big ball and hang on a branch like a grapefruit.

“Then scout bees leave the swarm to look for a suitable location for a new home,” he says. “This is when beekeepers can catch a swarm and put them in a box, tend to them, and the hive will grow.”

Keeping it a hobby
Now in his sixth year of beekeeping, Michael plans to add just 9 or 10 more hives.

“I’m thinking 40 hives will be a good number to devote to when I retire,” he says. “And I don’t want to ‘over-fish the water’ so to speak and have 100 hives producing only 50 hives of honey.”

Also, the hives are located on his property so he can easily drive his New Holland WORKMASTER™ tractor to all the hives.

“I’m on that tractor every day, whether tending bees or not,” he says.

Michael uses several different attachments for the bee jobs. A front-end loader and a pallet are used to transport bee equipment and bee boxes to the hives. A fork attachment for the tractor can gently lift and move hives when needed. He also uses the tractor for other jobs like mowing, building a pond, and tilling a garden.

Bee secrets to honey making
In the few years he’s been in the bee business, Michael has learned much about beekeeping and honey. And he remains in awe of a bee’s innate ability to tend a hive and make honey.

Honey making in Texas starts in April and runs into July when the main nectar flow occurs.

“The bees pull the nectar out of the plants and collect the pollen at the same time,” he said. “They pass the nectar to another bee, which passes it to another, all while another bee cleans pollen off. The passing nectar between bees is what generates honey.”

One large hive can contain 10 wood frames for the bees to fill with pollen and honey. The main brood with the queen will be in the middle frames with honey and pollen stored in frames next to those for bee food. Further away from the brood, the frames are all honey.

Michael pulls his first frames of honey from the hives around June. After slicing a thin layer off both sides of the honeycomb, the frames are put into a spinner that gently slings off the honey so it will flow into a bucket with a strainer. The frame with the honeycomb is returned to the hive.

A large hive will produce 100 lbs. of honey and a medium size about 40 lbs. However beekeepers are careful to keep plenty of honey in the hives for bees to eat throughout the winter.

Michael makes sure there are lots of wildflowers for the bees to seek pollen and nectar. He plants 8-20 lbs. of Texas natural wildflower seed on his property every year.

Beekeeping advice
“Not up until my fourth year did I ever think of myself as a beekeeper,” Michael relates. But the title feels more comfortable now. And he has some tips he learned from experience to share with budding beekeepers.

Wear a bee suit. “Anytime I go around my bees, I put on my suit because my bees still sting me,” he says. “I’ve been stung more times than I care to count, and I swell up.”
Limit disruptions to the hives. “As long as things are going well, I try not to disturb the hives too much, maybe every 2 to 3 weeks. During the winter, you don’t open them again until March. But you do have to put large sugar bricks in the hives to help them through the winter.
Keep hives out of shady areas. “Shaded areas cause more mite and wax moth problems,” he relates. “Every beekeeper has these problems. Full sun all year has helped my hives. If you open the hive and it smells like fermenting banana, it’s a wax moth problem. Bees will leave. You can clean out the hive using hot water and start with new bees.”
Find a local bee club. Before jumping into the bee honey business, Michael recommends learning all you can about beekeeping by sitting in on local bee club meetings and talking to experienced beekeepers. You can also connect with other beekeepers online.