BEEhind the Scenes

Mixing Sheep & BeesA few weeks ago I got a call from my friend Jonas, a fellow farmer, kindred spirit and mentor, asking about a few bags of raw wool. How fortuitous that the shearer was scheduled that week to relieve the sheep of their winter coats. I told him by the following week I’d have plenty to spare as only the main body of a fleece is kept for spinning into yarn, the rest from the rear, belly, legs, neck and head being “skirted” and tossed aside. It seems there is as much in the discard pile as there is for processing. Curiosity got the better of me and I asked Jonas his plans for the wool I swept from the barn floor and stuffed into empty feed sacks.It turned out he was over at Spiral Path Farm doing some experimental bee keeping. For the next hour Jonas went in depth about a new type of hive. Despite being in his 70’s, Jonas is always willing to give something new a try. I knew I’d be seeing the folks of Spiral Path at market before I’d get by Jonas’s place so I offered to toss a few sacks of wool on their market truck.Curious as to how the wool would be used, I gave Will Brownback, Lucas’s brother, a call. Frustrated by traditional hives and beekeeping, he began experimenting with horizontal hives after reading an article in Acres USA by Dr. Leo Sharashkin who teaches natural beekeeping.Although Dishing the Dirt has touched upon bees in the past, I still haven’t taken the plunge myself into beekeeping after listening to so many other lament the loss of their hives due to Colony Collapse—a very real issue facing commercial and hobby beekeepers today.Likewise, Will had his share of misfortune with traditional hives. “We would pay professionals to bring in hives and it just wasn’t working out,” he said before telling me that their Certified Organic farm now relies primarily on natural pollinators—mainly bumblebees—to pollinate their vegetable crops.Last year Will built both horizontal hives and a swarm trap to keep his family in honey from the farm. Also called Layens hives, instead of vertically stacked frames (Langstroth hives), the frames hang within a deep box. “The depth of the box is meant to mimic how wild bees inhabit logs and trees,” Will explained. But where does the wool come in?Turns out the box in which the frames are hung are built with a inner and out box with a void in between. The wool is stuffed into this void as insulation helping to keep the bees warm during the winter much like the thick trunk of a void in a tree.But the shape of the beehive isn’t the only difference in natural beekeeping. Will relies on the local genetics and wild swarms captured using a swarm trap to populate his hives. Unlike commercial operations where swarming is not considered a good thing and queens are purchased, Will was pleased when both his hives swarmed this year and he captured the new swarms for additional hives he built. “I went from zero to four hives in less than a year.”Natural beekeeping at Spiral Path Farm involves tough love, although Will admitted to “babying along” the first swarm he caught late last summer by feeding it lots of honey. “It shouldn’t have survived, but they did.” In keeping with organic practices, Will does not feed sugar water (sugar beets are a GMO crop), nor does he use any chemicals or drugs to control parasites and diseases that plague most beehives, both in commercial and hobby beekeeping.“If they can’t make it on their own, too bad. I’m back to square one,” is Will’s attitude toward his bees.Even Jonas was impressed with the no-fuss philosophy of horizontal hives. After listening to both speak excitedly about the horizontal hives, I am now more inspired to get in my workshop to build a hive and maybe even use my beekeeper’s suit for more than just a Halloween costume.