The Rhinelander Daily News - Online news and information for the Rhinelander, Wisconsin region

As a beekeeper Chris Hansen takes care of colonies of bees and harvests their honey for distribution, an art that has been cultivated by humans for over 5,000 years. While Hansen only started keeping bees in 1998, he has had honey on his mind ever since a beekeeper visited his 2nd grade classroom.

Born in Wausau, Hansen grew up in northern Illinois near Elgin, where both his father and grandfather raised bees. He didn’t grow up around the business, though, because his sister’s severe allergy to bees shut down the family operation, but not before the bee boxes and harvesting equipment made a lasting impression on his young mind. When a beekeeper visited his classroom, Hansen said, he began dreaming about raising bees for a living.

These days, Hansen runs Hansen’s Honey as a side show, but his operation is extensive.

Hansen’s bees start earning their keep even before they start making honey. Each year in April, he contracts with local farmers to pollinate their apple orchards. From the apple orchards he moves the bees to strawberry fields before eventually winding up at the Thunder Lake Cranberry Marsh in Three Lakes. Fruit honey is sought after, but Hansen said that early in the year, the bees use most of their energy for pollinating.

“We get honey out of each of those crops but early in the year they use all the nectar for energy,” he said.

Winter can be a challenge for Hansen’s bees and the early spring can be incredibly difficult. Last year Hansen lost 88 colonies of bees to starvation because of the combined effect of the late spring and the difficulty of accessing his bee boxes. He had to purchase new hives at $55 a piece. Hansen orders his bees from northern California and they come shipped in boxes with the queen bees is a separate cube.

Hansen sets the queen bee in the center of one of his bee boxes and seals her in a cell with a marshmallow.

“You want the queen bee to get loose but not right away. They’ll kill her if they’re not used to her but once they get used to her pheromones they’ll eat their way through the marshmallow and set her loose,” he said.

After six weeks in the hive, the bees are laying around 1,500 eggs per day. This year at least, Hansen didn’t have to worry about bears, as he has in the past. As an agricultural business, Hansen’s honey boxes qualify for protection from wildlife in most of the counties he maintains colonies. The counties reimburse Hansen for the electric fencing that protects his boxes from marauders. Without the fences, bears are just another threat at a vulnerable time.

“It’s just chaos when a bear comes,” he said. “Everything is scattered piece by piece. It looks like a tornado hit. They actually bury some of the frames so they can come back later. I don’t notice honey damage as much as brood damage. They’re hungry early in the year for the protein in the larvae.”

But electric fencing has solved Hansen’s bear problem. After he takes his bees on their pollination tour, Hansen sets them up in fields in exchange for giving the farmers a share of honey at the end of the season. Hansen has between 30,000 to 60,000 bees in each of his colonies and he is currently maintaining over 60 colonies. Bees can live up to two years in a healthy hive, but Hansen’s honey-producers only last a few months, because of their high work rate.

“They work themselves to death for the greater good of the colony,” Hansen said. “It blows my mind. It’s just amazing to see how they work together as a family. No one tells them what to do, but they all know their job and they do it.”

Hansen is clearly in the bee business for the love of it. He said watching the hives change over the course of the season is part of the beauty of bee keeping. Each round of blossoms brings new aromas, flavors, and colors to his boxes.

“When dandelion comes in everything turns bright yellow,” he said.

Hansen allows his bees to work the cycle of blossoms in the fields all summer long. The bees, once they are well-fed and the colony is in order, begin storing honey. Come September, Hansen picks up his bee boxes and starts harvesting. Harvesting honey is a relatively simple process, but it is time-consuming.

Hansen first blows the bees out of their boxes with a four horse-power gas-powered blower. Then he carries the boxes into his garage where he uses a hive tool to separate the frames, which the bees have coated in wax. Honey bees will cap each cell in the hive once it has reached the right level of saturation. Hansen removes the frames once all of the cells are filled and capped and a machine cuts away the seals from both sides of the frame. The frames, their honey now exposed, are placed vertically into a centrifuge, which spins the honey out. The honey is then filtered through a sieve into buckets and then bottled.

A strong hive will produce 60 or 70 pounds of honey, and Hansen can collect up to 8,000 pounds in a good year. But recently his bees have struggled to meet that level of production. Late, wet springs, dry summers, and colony collapse disorder have contributed to low yields and have made making ends meet a difficult prospect.

Hansen said he lost almost a third of his bees to colony collapse last year and then the winter killed his survivors off. He spent over $5,000 buying new colonies in the spring. Ask Hansen’s wife Jodie if beekeeping pays the bills.

“No,” said Jodie. “It’s holding its own but it doesn’t pay for the time he puts into it.”

But Hansen isn’t in the bee business for the money, at least not yet.

“I haven’t figure out why I do it yet, but I love doing it,” he said “It’s a peaceful environment. It’s just nice to be outside around the bees.”

Indeed, when you are outside amidst Hansen’s bee boxes, watching the colony at work, the hypnotic hum of their buzzing wings has a soporific effect that seems to slow the way you move and breathe in the same way scuba diving does. But don’t let the sense of tranquility fool you, beekeeping can be painful too.

“I get stung quite a bit,” said Hansen “Pollinating is the worst time of year. The field bees are aggressive during that stage of the year. When you get stung you want to get the stinger out as soon as you can.”

Hansen works full-time driving a propane truck for Draeger’s Propane out of Antigo. He is also the president of the Oneida County Beekeepers Association. He lives with his wife Jodie, daughters Rebekah and Faith, and son David.

Chris and Jodie Hansen will be selling their cranberry honey at the Eagle River Cranberry Festival on October 4th and 5th, and their regular clover honey is available at the Hodag Farmer’s Market on Saturdays and at Bessey’s Meat Market daily.

To learn more about the health benefits of honey, visit http://www.benefits-of-honey.com/index.html.

To learn more about colony collapse disorder in bees, visit http://www.honeybeequiet.com/.

Tell us what you think...

Comments »

The comments above are from readers. In no way do they represent the views of the Rhinelander Daily News.