Bee-ing the best
JACKSON TOWNSHIP — Luke Chambers is just as busy as his bees.
Chambers has 35 hives that last year produced 120 gallons of excess honey.
He sells the surplus mainly from his house at 183 Kaufman Road and at farmers markets, such as the ones in Mars, Harmony/Zelienople, Cranberry and the Butler City Farmers Market.
“I try to get it bottled and sold as quickly as possible for a fresh product,” he said.
“I'm a hobbyist, so I am not qualified to sell to stores,” Chambers said.
He sells more than honey. His hives produce honeybee pollen, beeswax, comb honey, lotions and lip balms.
Chambers' wife, Jennie, makes lotions and lip balms out of honey-infused beeswax.
His honey won the blue ribbon at the 2020 Pennsylvania Farm Show.
His honey was judged superior in terms of clarity and taste.
“It's a very light honey made from the blossoms from black locust trees,” he said.
“Beeswax is a byproduct,” Chambers said. “I sell it by the pound and use it to make candles and lotions.
“The pollen, bees feed it to their larvae. People like it,” he said.
Health benefits
People like the perceived health benefits of bee pollen and raw honey.
“Honey is filled with carbohydrates and protein,” he said.
Raw honey aids in blood sugar regulation, has probiotic properties that aid in digestion, promotes healthy skin and heals burns and wounds, Chambers said.
Chambers extracts his honey by removing the frames, wooden constructions the bees cover with wax and honey, from the hive.
He scrapes off the wax caps from the hexagonal chambers containing the honey.
Once uncapped, Chambers places the frames in a hand-cranked honey extractor that spins the frames and removes the honey by centrifugal force.Chambers said he's learned honey's taste can be determined by factors other than the flowers used to make the honey.“The smell of cigarette smoke can get into the honey,” Chambers said. “Someone bottling honey near a clothes washer, the honey can get a soap smell.”Each of his hives can contain up to a maximum of 60,000 bees, with 30,000 to 40,000 as an average population producing honey during a season, which lasts from May to October. Usually the first honey extraction is during the third week of May.He gets 90 pounds of excess honey from each hive each year. He usually harvests honey from his hives three times a season.“It all depends on how you manage the hive. Someone starting out is not going to get those numbers,” he said.But his bees are busy gathering pollen from the few flowers blooming: crocuses, snowdrops and skunk cabbage.But even in the spring, there's plenty of work to be done.No vacationHe spends so much time scraping out the dead bees from the hives and checking the hives for disease, moisture and mold that he never takes a vacation.Chambers said he is passing his hard-won knowledge on to other beginning beekeepers in Evans City.Chambers himself, when he was getting started in beekeeping, had a mentor in Jim Hoffman.Hoffman is a member of the Beaver Valley Area Beekeepers Association.Chambers became friends with Hoffman when Chambers joined the group. Hoffman has been a member since the 1970s.“They taught me all I know,” Hoffman said of his fellow association members. “I've mentored a lot of other beekeepers. I've been retired for 22 years. I got serious about helping more people. I had lots of time.”Hoffman worked at Pullman Standard and retired from Butler Petroleum.
When Hoffman joined, there were 20 members in the association. Now there are between 70 and 80 members. Beekeeping is much more prevalent these days, according to Hoffman.Chambers is one of his most successful proteges, Hoffman said.“He does everything I tell him to,” Hoffman said.Chambers started beekeeping in the spring of 2015. It is an occupation that allows him to pursue his love of the outdoors.Chambers graduated from Slippery Rock University in 2000 with a degree in park and resource management.Be outdoorsAfter spending six years as a back country ranger at the Rocky Mountain National Park, Chambers returned to Butler County and found that keeping hives appealed to his inclination to be outdoors.He said beekeeping on his scale is a full-time commitment.“I make enough to skate by, but money is not a determining factor,” he said.He supplements his honey income by working as a handyman and landscaper.Chambers started his hives with purchased Italian bees, but in the years since has supplemented his bee population by transplanting feral bee colonies to his hives.“I collected them from bee trees and an abandoned house,” he said. “It creates genetic diversity.“Bees need a shelter. They can't build out in the open; they are called cavity nesters. I've done four bee trees and one out of an abandoned house,” Chambers said.There's room for new colonies in his hives because every year, bees swarm with the old queen, with up to 60% of the colony population leaving the hive to establish a new colony.In addition, he has to take security around his hives seriously. Natural predators such as raccoons and skunks have a taste for honey. His hives are constructed with a 45-degree ramp at the entrance to prevent predators from indulging their sweet tooth.He's even rigged a solar-powered electrical fence around his hives to discourage bears from dropping in for a snack.A bigger danger for his bees, Chambers said, is the use of pesticides, loss of habitat and a tiny pest called the parasitic varroa mite that feeds on honey bees.The mites breed inside the hive and increase faster than the bee population.Chambers' own danger is the bee stings he endures working with his hives, even when wearing the traditional beekeeper's suit.“You get better at it, but sometimes the bees crawl up your clothes,” Chambers said. “It doesn't bother me that much. Most of the time I get stung on my hands because I don't wear gloves.”
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