A honey of a business: Neil Flynn of Katama Apiary
By CK Wolfson - August 23, 2007
A boyish and energetic beekeeper, Neil Flynn of Katama Apiary guides his visitors around the yard, past the honey room attached to the main house, a corral and the disapproving stare of his pet emu, past waddling Cayuga ducks that appear from nowhere, and the geese who are more than ready to defend their nests.
With the frame removed, hundreds of worker, nurse, and guard bees are exposed. Photos by Susan Safford
Once inside the garage that serves as his carpentry workshop, he slides into a protective jacket with a veiled hood (which he ignores), and begins putting strips of torn denim into a smoker - a covered metal canister with a spout used to direct smoke from the burning material over the hive in order to calm the bees.
Smoker in hand, Flynn strides toward the hives that sit on a low platform. He keeps 100 hives scattered around other Island farms with better proximity to flowers, cranberries, and other sources of nectar than he can offer at his home. Success depends on locating the apiary so bees have a good nectar source throughout the year.
The hives are sectioned wooden boxes filled with separate, removable frames that hold a sheet with a wax foundation on which the honeycombs are built. The upper boxes, or supers, contain honey; the lower box, or brood chamber, contains the queen and most of the bees.
The smoker resting nearby, Neil Flynn prepares to lift the lid of a hive.
Moving carefully, Flynn - with bare hands - removes the lid of one of the hives. He uses a hive tool to free the lid from the glue-like propolis (made from tree sap), with which bees seal the hives. Waving the smoker over the top of the open hive, he gingerly begins lifting one of the 10 frames that stand vertically inside. As he pulls up the frame it reveals a mass of worker, nurse, and guard bees milling over the grid of precise hexagonal cells.
"The most surprising thing is how gentle they are," Flynn says with a tone that reflects his utter appreciation. "I mean, sometimes you're scooping them out with your hand - as many as 1,000 of them."
In a relaxed manner, he explains that parasites, mites who've invaded from Southeast Asia, are killing the hives. Close to 70 percent of the bees on the East Coast have disappeared, prompting speculations about various causes, such as cell phones, pesticides, viral infections, habitat loss, pesticide use, imported disease, and genetically modified plants, but there are no conclusive answers. "There are no feral honey bees anymore; they're all managed. It's a constant battle to control the parasites," he says. "You've got to medicate the hives in the fall without affecting the bees."
Each hive produces as much as 170 pounds of honey, and contains about 50,000 bees, a colony composed of a single queen, workers (infertile females), drones (males), and a brood (eggs, larvae, and pupae).
Working as a carpenter during the day (he built the West Tisbury house he shares with Jacquie Balaschak, who participates with him in the apiary), Flynn's summer days are often 15 hours long. In the Northern Hemisphere, beekeepers usually harvest honey from July until September.
The rest of the year is spent keeping the hives free of pests and disease, and ensuring that the bee colony has room to expand. But whether he's answering questions about the details of caring for the hives, or the properties of the honey, or the habits of bees ("Bees will travel as much as seven miles to find flowers"), he sounds pleased to have been asked. He is a regular speaker on apiculture at Island schools and libraries.
His confidence comes from more than instinct and experience. A student of agronomy, Flynn graduated from Stockbridge School of Agriculture at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst. He is a walking encyclopedia of information: types of queen bees, habits, responses, cause and effect, and biology. Walk with him and you will learn that the queen will lay as many as 1,500 eggs a day; a hive will yield about 170 pounds of honey; different regions result in different flavors of honey, depending on the floral source.
Flynn says, "I love growing things, and honey is a specialty product. It's given me a lot of focus in the direction of agriculture that's very fulfilling."
Katama Honey is available at Cronig's, the Farmers' Market at the Grange in West Tisbury, and at many of the Island's farm stands.
