Bees in the Back Yard Could Keep You in Clover

It might seem, at best, like an ill-advised formula for success, but Dick Carroll has been keeping his business running for 3 years by counting on the fact that there are enough people out there whose idea of fun is to hang around with 70,000 potentially aggressive creatures.

That is about the number of bees in the average-size back-yard hive, Carroll said. And yes, there are enough people who enjoy handling them to keep his Anaheim shop, Dick’s Bee Supply, stocked with all the esoterica particular to the beekeeper. It also helps, Carroll said, that his shop is the only game in town in Orange County when one gets a yen to set up housekeeping for workers and drones.

It isn’t for everyone, Carroll said. But, he added, those who do end up donning the pith helmet and protective veil wind up with at least two unique byproducts: a nearly perfectly ordered insect society in their back yards and enough honey to glaze a few dozen hams.

Setting up a basic apiary, Carroll said, costs between $175 and $200. For that outlay, the novice can get a three-box hive, a protective jump suit, veil and pith helmet, gloves and bees.

The modern beehive is constructed of wood and consists of stacks of boxes; inside are hanging panels fitted with wax honeycombs. Attracted by the wax or by honey placed in the hives as bait, bees enter the hive through a thin slit in the bottom of the lower box, rally around the queen and begin to produce honey.

It helps to live near blooming plants and water, Carroll said, because bees need both to thrive and produce. But if bees are scarce in the neighborhood--say, in wintertime--Carroll will sell you 3 pounds of bees, complete with queen, for $30.

“It’s a chancy thing when you first set up a hive,” Carroll said. “It’s not certain you’ll get a swarm to come to it.”

If, however, a swarm of bees takes a liking to the hive, soon the three boxes will be filled with about as many bees as there are spectators at the Super Bowl.

Once you are ready to plunder the honey produced by your insect tenants, they can be temporarily driven out of the hive with smoke or foul-smelling chemicals, allowing you to remove the honey-laden panels and place them in a centrifuge extractor, which throws the honey out of the combs.

There are 10 frames in each box, Carroll said, and each box can yield as much as 55 pounds of honey. Also, he said, after the honey is extracted “the bees will reuse the wax in the frames. They’re very efficient.”

Now, about being stung: Carroll, a retired engineer for a glass container company, said that he has felt the barbs “a few times” but that honey bees generally are not aggressive unless disturbed.

“You can get an aggressive hive that will go after you when you try to work it,” he said, “but you can fix that by replacing the aggressive queen with a non-aggressive queen.”

Novice beekeepers, he said, should wear full protective clothing--jump suit, helmet, veil and gloves “because they might panic and start waving their arms around, and if you start swatting at bees, they’ll get mad and sting you.”

Experienced beekeepers who are used to handling bees gently often work without a jump suit and sometimes without gloves, Carroll said.

Carroll said he is willing to pay the price of an occasional sting.

“It’s a real example of nature,” he said. “I really enjoy seeing what the bees are capable of doing in their own society.”

DICK’S BEE SUPPLY AT A GLANCE

Where: 2020 Howell Ave., Unit G, Anaheim.

Hours: 9:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. Tuesday through Friday, 9 a.m. to noon Saturday. Closed Sunday and Monday.

Items in stock: Hive frames, beeswax panels, honey extractors, protective clothing, apiary hardware, books, bees.

Information: (714) 634-3668.