Career Mirror -- by Mark Sproxton

Walking closer to the light colored, near identical boxes, the air buzzes with traffic speeding this way, that way, coming and going from every imaginable direction. For a newcomer, the scene appears nothing short of chaos. But for beekeeper Joe Andreae, the sight brings a big grin. "That's them hard at work," he says.

These bees are hard at work doing what they do best.

With 300 hives in production, the former city transit worker now spends his time traveling from hive to hive, monitoring honey production, and deciding when it's time to "take off" the honey. Now near the end of summer, almost daily he checks all the hives, driving to the Cremona area which is full of flowers and legumes the bees like to visit. "It's an excellent area for honey," he said. "They (bees) make honey from nectar, so the quality of the honey depends on the floral source. If you have a good source, it makes good honey."

A hobby beekeeper, Andreae sells his honey privately, or in bulk to honey packers from across Canada who he meets at provincial, national and international bee conferences. Last year he produced 40,000 pounds of honey from his home-built honey barn. If he was looking to make honey production a full-time venture, he would need between 700 and 800 hives. But regardless of how many hives a beekeeper has, there's always a potential danger, being stung. It's an event Andreae avoids at all costs. "I use bee suits," said the owner of Pure Alberta Honey and Beeswax. "Every time a bee stings, it's a dead bee." That lowers potential production and puts him at risk to react to the poison the bees inject.

So, when it's time to "take off" the honey -- done at least twice a summer at each hive -- you'll always find Andreae covered up. Protected inside a bee suit, he arrives at a hive loaded with ripe honey. He puts a smoking device near the hive to keep the bees calm, then uses a special smelly acid board to drive the bees away while he loads the hive boxes onto his truck and replaces them with new ones. At several pounds each, there's no room for weaklings out here.

Joe Andreae demonstrates running a frame through the production equipment.

Back at the honey barn, the 28-year veteran of bee keeping unloads the truck using a dolly, and wheels the hive boxes near the production equipment. He loads the frames, the sections inside the boxes where the honey's deposited, onto the semi-automated production-line equipment where processing begins. The honey is cut loose from its beeswax cover, heated, and then filtered several times before being ready for consumption. The beeswax is also collected and sold in town for holistic medicine purposes.

Here's another place where the farmer aspect of beekeeping comes into play. To keep the equipment running, or to make alteration to enhance production, Andreae puts on his handyman hat and makes the required adjustments. Once emptied, the boxes and frames are taken back to the storage room for cleaning and repairs.

The routine is one Andreae enjoys, but knows the flow could be interrupted at any time. Operating from spring to fall, sometimes Mother Nature has a decided influence. Bee diseases, harmful bugs, even bad weather can influence production from year to year. "You're a bit of a farmer, and a bit of a scientist," the Swiss-born beekeeper explained. "You have to know what's going on. At home, usually the dumbest got to be a farmer and the smartest a priest. Not now. You have to have an education to be a successful farmer."

The honey in the barrel is almost ready to eat.

That education comes in many forms, particularly through experience. Joining the Alberta Beekeepers Association, reading beekeeping magazines, and attending international conferences prove extremely informative, said Andreae, who also completed a master beekeeper course at Simon Fraser University. "You learn from other beekeepers, but the more you know about bees, the more you know you don't know anything. A bee colony is extremely complex." Those who raise leafcutter bees, the bees that pollinate alfalfa, have their own specific issues, for example.

Once the busy summer season comes to and end, and all food sources disappear, Andreae bunches the hives together and wraps them with a specially insulated blanket for the winter. Some will be left outside, others will be taken inside. Despite improvements in technology, each year 10 to 15 per cent of the bees will die. That means Andreae has to order more queen bees from Hawaii to help cover the losses. He buys queens from Hawaii because the state is an island, and is free from diseases that harm and kill bees. Hours are also spent repairing boxes and frames, and doing other maintenance work the summer's hectic schedule won't allow.

"It can be very hard work," Andreae said. "There's lots of heavy lifting when extracting. But it's very fascinating."