A Honey of
a Hobby

Beekeeper Mae Jean Rosser ’45 says that her beekeeping hobby is "just one of those things that happened. I wanted to own honeybees to pollinate my flowers."

Rosser became interested in beekeeping when a family friend offered her some beehives. "Eventually, my friend was stung and needed to get rid of the bees," Rosser explains. "About 19 or 20 years ago, during a New Year’s weekend, my son, my friend and I went to this family friend’s house and roped several hives to be brought to my property." Rosser clarifies that

luckily, the bees were still hibernating, making the transport easy.

According to Rosser, caring for honeybees usually begins when the warm weather starts. During the winter season, honeybees will hibernate in rectangular boxes called hive bodies. She leaves her bees enough honey for them to feed. The food, she says, is in the shape of a ball, known as a cluster.
The hive body, a deep wooden box with ten frames, weighs between 70– 80 pounds. "The only time anyone would need to lift this box is when checking on the queen bee," Rosser says. She also explains that it is common for bee owners to cover their hive bodies with a protective covering, called a batting, during the winter, but that it is not a necessary task.

A super, a more shallow box with smaller frames, has a smaller wax foundation where the bees store excess honey.

"When the bees are active, they store nectar in the hive," Rosser explains. The nectar then goes into their bodies, mixing with an enzyme to produce honey. Through the honeybees’ sucking tube, they put nectar into a cell. It takes about two days for the bees to fill one frame. "If there is no wind or rain, the bees can fill four or five boxes," Rosser says.

Honeybees are an industrious species and are an excellent source for pollination, she says. "The honeybees’ hind legs are hairy and therefore collect pollen from flowers."

But even though Rosser loves her honeybees, she says she’s never without protective clothing when handling them. "I wear a helmet with a veil to obviously protect my face, and I also wear coveralls." Rosser always wears gloves, but she warns that they are not completely sting-proof. In fact, Rosser says a bee once stung her right through her gloves. "Honeybees will die after stinging a person because their jagged stinger, attached to their abdomen is ripped from their bodies, staying lodged within the victim’s skin." Rosser explains that normally a worker bee will sting as a defensive mechanism to protect the colony. The colony mostly focuses on the queen honeybee, in

charge of producing the eggs. Rosser says, "When the queen is under two weeks old, she will mate with 5-15 drone bees." During the queen’s three-year life span, she will produce hundreds of thousands of offspring without ever having to mate again.

Compared to the rather long life span of the queen bee, Rosser says the drone honeybees die after mating with the queen. "Also, the worker honeybee only lives for about six weeks."

"Honeybees are endangered due to internal and external mites that are killing the species," Rosser says.

"The varroa mites are relatively large and are visible to the eye," Rosser says. The tracheal mites live inside the bee’s tracheal or breathing tubes. Both species of mites cause disfigurement and deformation to the bees’ legs and wings.

Rosser is affiliated with the Chester County Bees Association and has attended several bee workshops at Delaware Valley College, as well as weekend workshops in West Virginia. "Penn State also has an active department of honey bees," Rosser says. She has taken a few short honey bee courses at Penn State within its department of entomology.

Besides attending honeybee classes, Rosser also teaches eight to ten classes each year about honeybees at local schools in her area. "I bring in a lot of visual aids with me into the classroom which helps the children better understand the information about honeybees," Rosser says.

Rosser also produces all natural honey, with no preservatives, and makes candles of various shapes from beeswax. She says she is looking forward to the warmer weather so that she may begin to actively care for her honeybees once again.

– Jennifer M. Hawriluk ’01