If your flowers and homegrown fruits and vegetables look a-pollen, then it’s time for Plan Bee.

Joel Swink (photo, right) got started beekeeping 12 years ago when he was looking for a way to help pollinate his apple trees. He had friends who were doing it and he figured, “Well, I reckon I could do that, too.”

And so it began, beginning with just one hive.

Now he’s a firm bee-liever. “When it comes to improvement of crops and crop
yields, bees (and beekeeping) are the greatest boon to mankind we have ever
had” Swink told The Mountain Times.

Bees will travel up to three miles to find a good source of pollen – the sweeter
the better. It is then communicated to the hive where the good pollen is, and
away the gatherer bees go. In Oregon, some of the favored (and sweetest)
blossoms are mint, squash, peas and thistles.

But it’s all a lot more complicated than that, Swink explained.
“There’s a division of labor with bees. And as they mature, they take on

different tasks,” Swink said.

Young bees stay in the hive with jobs like janitorial duties, wax production,
and even mortician. Eventually, the bees are ready to become ventilators,
where they flap their wings at the entrance of the hive to circulate the air.

The ventilator bee role is critical not just because it makes the bee strong and
ready to fly. Temperature within the hive is also very important. “Honeybees
create their own environment, you see. Honeybees are warm-blooded,” Swink
said.

Honeybees are not native to North America, so they’re always either German
or Italian honeybees that make up a hive. But don’t worry, these foreign bees
have been buzzing around the U.S. since around the 17th century, so already
they’ve expertly found themselves a home in our ecosystem (as well as lost
their accent, no doubt).

“Bees are so invaluable to the world that we will never run out of them,”
Swink said. “Bees and the world will always find a way to keep bees around.”

And the process of gathering the honey is sticky business. It involves hot
knives to remove the wax, large spinning devices older than the hills that
surround it, and lots of empty buckets to gather it in.

All this doesn’t mention the wits required to dive hands-first into a swarming
bee hive to extract the frames covered in honey (up to one quart per frame,
and up to three gallons per box).

Swink sells honey to his friends through Mt. Hood Honey, his fully-licensed
honey business.