A TASTE OF HONEY: Bee business is buzzing

Local man harvests from 75 hives

It was over 90 degrees already at 10 a.m. Monday and Jesse Radford was dressed in a sweat shirt with a white suit over it covering his whole body. On his head, he wore a protective face shield and complete head covering to harvest honey from his hives on Homestead Road.

An interviewer was kept at a safe distance, about half a football field while Radford put a couple of squirts of smoke under a bee hive, cracking the lid briefly then setting the lid down gently.

"You smoke them when you first get up to them. You use a little smoke, that lets them know you're knocking on their door," Radford said. "They're thinking danger. They're getting their bellies full (of honey) which calms them down.

"Humans need to be a little aware of what they're doing," Radford said. That is especially true when harvesting their honey, he said. "That's when they're going to be aggressive because you're going in disturbing their house."

While some people would be hysterical over the sight of one bee, Radford calmly harvests honey from up to 75 hives in his backyard, each of which may contain 50,000 bees. But eager customers of his Homestead Honey at farmers' markets appreciate the end product -- they've been buying more than 120 pounds of honey per week, he said.

"The bee is the most worthwhile animal in the world. Without them we don't eat. A lot of people say, well I just eat steak," Radford said. "The grain that the cow eats, if you want a good corn-fed stock, where do you think the corn comes from? The corn has to be pollinated.

"About 80 percent of what we eat is due to the bees," he said.

Radford said he moved to Pahrump 10 years ago, then about six years ago, local beekeeper Pete Kennel, approaching 70-years-old, tired of wearing the beekeeper suit in the heat and wanted to retire. He was selling his equipment.

"We couldn't find any local honey and the stuff in the grocery store didn't have the flavor, didn't have the consistency," Radford said. "I talked to Pete. He said, 'You really want to do honey with long hair and a beard?' "

Radford studied for days on the Internet anything he could learn about beekeeping. He started with two hives he bought from a beekeeper in Vacaville, Calif. It has since grown to 75 hives.

"I got a crop my first year. I was very fortunate. Most people starting out it's your second year before you can get any honey out," Radford said. "I got enough boxes, I can go to 300 hives."

Radford likes to rotate brood chambers every 10 to 14 days, so the queen bee can lay 2,500 to 3,000 eggs every day. Otherwise the queen bee won't lay eggs in honey, he said. Baby bees start working almost immediately, Radford said.

"A bee, this time of year, will only live about six weeks. From the time they're born they go to work feeding the queen. They're called house bees. They have their housemaking chores. They meet the field bee bringing in the pollen," Radford said.

The desert climate means the honey contains only 16 to 18 percent water, unlike bees in the Midwest that may have 22 to 23 percent water content, he said.

"I don't have to worry about fermentation. Mead is one of the oldest drinks known. Vikings drank mead. It's made from honey," Radford said. "Desert honey is very dry. The moisture content is a lot less than other parts of the country."

The honey consists of pollen from the different plants in the area like alfalfa, tamarisk and various flowers, he said.

"My honey is a blend. It's a natural blend of whatever the bees bring in," Radford said. After removal from the hives, the racks of honey are put into an uncapper, which removes the wax. The racks are then put into a circular vat called an extractor which spins the trays using centrifugal force removing the honey.

Radford said he also performs a service answering calls about nuisance swarms.

"We've had a lot of swarm calls here in the past couple of weeks. Years ago, I was a paid fireman and I remember answering fire calls," Radford said. "Some of the calls I get, the people are so angry. I try to calm them down first of all. People are so scared because of the news media."

Radford defended charging $50 to answer calls about nuisance bee swarms because he has to segregate the bees for a day to be sure there's no diseases like American foul chalk and sac brood or any tracheal mites that could infect his swarm.

"A lot of beekeepers will use antibiotics throughout the year. I don't. I take the chance of losing my entire swarm," Radford said. "My honey that I have is chemical free. I could probably get organically certified if I wanted to go through with it."

He added, "Farmers let me know if they're spraying anything so I can lock my bees up and they won't get anything."

There was a publicized case in Pahrump last summer of a swarm of bees attacking a horse. Radford said that was due to plain stupidity. He explained it was due to a combination of errors. A horse owner put his horses right next to some bee hives which hadn't been maintained. A horse trainer moved in who sprayed the horses with citronella, causing the bees to become agitated and chase the horse down the road. The horse eventually ran into a fence and died. The bees were not Africanized, he said.

Radford described entering the hive that attacked the horse first thing in the morning and "They were just as gentle as anything." However Radford added there are some he calls "hot hives."

"I've been in some that were just so aggressive, they were hitting my helmet, it felt like someone was throwing rocks at me," he said.

Radford disputes state agriculture department reports that there are a high percentage of more aggressive, Africanized bees in Southern Nevada. Radford said together with a partner, he's caught 200 bee swarms in a year and "not a single swarm turned up Africanized."

Radford said the University of Montana determined that honey bees of Africanized origin have honeycombs 1 5/16ths of an inch wide, regular honey bees have honeycombs 1 13/16ths wide. The Africanized bees, otherwise called killer bees, were accidentally imported into the U.S. in Bakersfield, Calif., in 1986 on oil well drilling equipment from Venezuela, he said.

"The African queen can't get in my hives. That's one of the reasons I got a pollen trap in mine," Radford said. "I'll keep them confined. They'll start drawing out their cone and I can tell the next day whether they're Africanized or not because I don't want any mean bees around me."

The best time to harvest honey is from 10 a.m. until about 1 p.m., after the bees had been working since daylight. By smoking the hives, the bees sense danger, gorge themselves on honey and get lethargic, like humans after a Thanksgiving dinner, he said.

Radford said he had one unfortunate incident last year, when he was moving a hive, went to check for pollen without wearing the protective suit and accidentally bumped it. He was stung 57 times.

Luckily, the honey bees he raises, Apis mellifera, only sting once, unlike wasps, hornets and yellow jackets that can sting multiple times.

"It's like a single shot rifle compared to a Gatling gun," Radford said. But he recalled first starting the business being much more lackadaisical about the danger of stings. "I'd go in a hive with a T-shirt and shorts on. A farmer may stand with a fire horse fighting a fire, but if he goes into the burning house he's got to have proper attire on.

"Normally there's one queen to a hive. There are some systems you can use two queens. I think it's too much work then you have to be too careful to look for both," Radford said.

"I try to keep a minimum of 50,000 bees in my hives," he said, noting there is a formula for counting them. "You're better off having one box and 50,000 bees than having two boxes with 30,000 bees."

"The caste system is the queen and there are worker bees. They're all female. The queen will lay a few drones from time to time. The drones are male, their only purpose in life is to breed a new queen," Radford said. While the worker bees only live six weeks, the queen may live six years, he said, until a new queen is raised and kills the aging queen bee.

Radford said he doesn't feed his bees sugar like some beekeepers. All the customers eat is natural honey, but he said that taste can vary.

"I'll pull honey in a couple weeks and it has a completely different floral taste. It's whatever is in bloom at the time," Radford said.

Radford said the state average production is 37 pounds of honey per hive. "I had one hive here I got 300 pounds out of it and I didn't do anything different to that one than the other six I had with it," he said.

Radford said he started out with Italian bees, but now has a Russian variety that is more resistent to mites.

Radford sells the honey at the Trent Park farmers market in Las Vegas on Wednesday, the Henderson farmer's market on Thursdays, the Centennial farmer's market Friday, the Silver State swap meet the third weekend of the month at Sam Boyd Stadium and the Pahrump farmers market the first Saturday of the month at Petrack Park. The honey is also sold at Case's Country Corner, Southside Nursery, Cactus Depot and Stony Mountain Swap Meet on Mesquite and Leslie Road. In addition to honey, he sells bee by-products like pollen, a natural antibiotic called propolis and royal jelly. Radford said he's the only certified producer of honey products in the region.

A tablespoon of honey and true apple cider can help arthritis, while bee pollen is good for energy, he said. Propolis is good for allergies and sells for $200 per pound, he said.

Some residents have asked for a hive of bees in their yard for the pollination, Radford said, but there have been few takers. "This is the thing: you've got to sign a liability clause, eliminating me from liability," he said.

A study conducted in the Netherlands Antilles showed bee pollination can double the size of fruits and vegetables, Radford said.

"There's four in a million people that are allergic to bee stings. There's a lot of people in Pahrump that are allergic to bees," Radford said. "It's usual for you to get swollen up when you get stung. It's not normal for you to have difficulty breathing."

So what is the proper course of action to take when confronted by a bee? Radford gave a few pointers: stand still and hold your breath, bees will feel threatened by the exhaling of carbon dioxide. Swatting them is the worst thing to do, as one news reporter found out.


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