Luke Bunting climbed into a white, sting-proof jumpsuit. He pulled on a hat with a veil like a screened-in porch.
Beekeeper Christina Seldomridge displays a frame full of honeybees.
Christina Seldomridge talks honeybees.
Luke Bunting traps a queen bee.
Christina Seldomridge
prepares to daub the queen bee with
paint.
The queen is marked with a small, red dot.
Honeybees teemed in the hives around him.
Probing gingerly with a small plastic trapping device, the Conestoga man quickly snared a queen bee.
Christina Seldomridge dabbed the queen with a tiny dot of white paint, the better to spot her among the multitudes.
Bunting, a new convert to beekeeping, was thrilled by the chore. He said he has grown to admire the energy and intricacy of bee civilization.
"They really set an example of how the world could work," said Bunting, who has become an advocate of bee husbandry.
He and other amateur beekeepers are reporting a surge of new attention in their hobby.
"There has been a real push here lately," said Dan Chambers, president of the Lancaster County Honey Producers.
The group of about three dozen active members has a revitalized recruiting mission and a Web site Bunting recently redesigned.
Jim Bobb, head of the Pennsylvania State Beekeepers Association, said beginners' classes this spring were so full that people were being turned away.
"Everyone has had record numbers of new beekeepers," Bobb said.
Bee boosters tie the phenomenon to bumped-up interest in self-sufficiency and sustainable agriculture, and to concern about the mysterious colony collapse disorder (CCD) that began ravaging U.S. bee populations two years ago.
"I think people are becoming aware of the plight of bees," Bobb said.
They're learning, too, about the pleasures of honey production.
Bunting said he habitually heads out back to watch his bees after work. "It's just the most Zen kind of experience."
Plan beeThe first white settlers introduced honeybees to North America, so the insects could pollinate peach, apple, and pear trees, as well as many other plants.
More recently, people have inadvertently imported beetles, mites and viruses that have decimated wild bees and plagued commercial hives.
CCD, an erratic, poorly understood phenomenon in which large numbers of bees simply disappear from their hives, hit the United States hard in 2006.
The scourge seems to have largely skipped southeastern Pennsylvania this past winter.
Still, according to the National Honey Board, the number of commercial beekeepers producing 6,000 pounds of honey annually fell from 2,784 in 2003 to 1,820 last year.
On the positive side: honey hobbyists.
Anecdotally, said Troy Fore, executive director of the American Beekeeping Federation in Jesup, Ga., their ranks in many places are swelling.
The federation unofficially considers people with fewer than 25 hives hobbyists, Fore said.
Although a small number of commercial producers own most of the hives in Pennsylvania, Bobb estimated that 90 to 95 percent of the state's 2,000 beekeepers are hobbyists.
He said he thinks it's a healthy protective measure to spread out small-time bee-growing operations.
Bunting said his interest in a self-sufficient lifestyle led him to buy a historic farm in Conestoga and stock it with chickens.
"I kind of want some eggs, some meat," he said. Because he's also a "big sugar addict," he added, he went out this spring and purchased a couple of hives and a mail-order queen.
Bunting expects each hive to deliver many gallons of honey a year, though he's still struggling to bring one of the colonies up to speed.
He said his wife plans to make beeswax candles.
Meanwhile, he's hoping that the Honey Producers' revamped Web presence at
www.lancastercountyhoneyproducers.org will harvest new members.
The group's goal is to spread the good word of honeybees:
That they are beneficial — and vegetarian. (They aren't wasps or yellow jackets, which Bobb said are carnivorous. "Unfortunately [people] lump them all together" and try to kill them.)
That they are adaptable to many settings.
"The nice thing about beekeeping is you don't really need much space," Bobb said. Bees can travel to collect nectar so "you're kind of borrowing the flowers" from two or three miles around.
Local regulations governing beekeeping vary widely. Bobb said some municipalities regard bees as livestock and allow you to keep them as long as you sell one jar of honey a year.
These days, the stacked wooden boxes and honey-collecting "supers" once seen mainly on farms are popping up even on apartment rooftops in New York City.
Seldomridge maintains an apiary behind her suburban home in Manheim Township, where last week's queen capturing operation took place.
On a brisk, sunny morning, she walked among the white-painted boxes, collecting not a sting.
"A honeybee doesn't want to sting you because it knows it's going to die" if it does, she said.
On the other hand, cautioned Chambers, who raises Russian bees on a patch of tree-fringed farmland in Pequea Township, you have to learn how to gauge the insects' mood and avoid riling them.
And you have to roll with the vagaries of weather and season, added Chambers. "It's like farming. It can be very discouraging. It can be very rewarding, too."
Bunting said he has learned some of the ropes by sitting on the couch reading the popular "Beekeeping for Dummies."
Bobb has a few tips for people willing to invest $300 or $400 to launch a couple of hives and buy fundamental equipment, such as a veil and smoker.
Plant summer blooming plants. Start off with new equipment. Keep the hive entrance facing away from neighbors. Provide enough water. Actively defend against pests.
Seldomridge, for example, who avoids chemical insecticides, places screens at the bottom of her hives. Mites fall through but can't climb back up.
Still, Bobb said, it's hard to pick up the beekeeping art through books or a "five-minute conversation."
He recommends foremost joining a mentoring organization.
That's what Bunting did.
He soon found himself "wearing these crazy-looking bee suits" and charging around the county collecting swarms with Seldomridge.
The swarms are displaced bees that leave the hive in the spring to hunt for new homes.
Bunting learned that it's important to gather the clustered bees before they buzz off and set up house in somebody's wall.
He found out that he could walk right up to thousands of bees with little fear of getting stung.
"It's a lot less scary than I thought," he said. "For the most part, they're pretty gentle."
Jon Rutter is a staff writer for the Sunday News. His e-mail address is jrutter@lnpnews.com.
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