PLAINVIEW – Prairies’ Edge Organic Farm near Plainview hosted a Bee-Friending event last week. The Northeast Nebraska Resource Conservation and Development Council helped put on the event in which roughly 17 people attended. The event was held to help people gain information about beekeeping and to spark interest in people who’d been thinking of starting the endeavor. Dennis Wacker is the owner of Prairies’ Edge Organic Farm where he hosts bees owned by Hank Scott. Scott is an experienced beekeeper from Norfolk and was the leader of the Bee-Friending workshop.
“We advertised it as a Bee-Friending party meaning that we were trying to show people how to be a friend to the bees and explain the procedures of beekeeping so we had Hank Scott (who) is a beekeeper from Norfolk share his information, his experience, and how to handle bees and what it all involved to anyone that was interested in apiary work, or beekeeping,” said Wacker.
It is a difficult process in today’s world to keep bees alive.
“It’s a challenging work to keep the bees alive in todays environment,” explained Wacker. “(There is) a lot of natural enemies and modern farming techniques with the sprays that are causing close to 40% mortality of the average bee colony over winter, they die off, so it’s a high- risk thing right now to produce honey.”
Wacker has hosted Hank Scott’s bees for the last three years. Owning an organic farm provides a relatively safer environment with no chemical sprays or fungicides that are used in most conventional farming operations. This year Hank has 12 different colonies on Wacker’s farm.
“When you see a bee-persons’ colonies they are in these white stacked boxes so each stack is a colony, a queen and her court as they say,” provided Wacker.
Hank Scott is starting a Bee-Club to reach out to fellow beekeepers.
“Last winter already he was asking me if I wanted to come and join with them,” said Wacker. “They meet once a month or whatever to share their experiences and their information with fellow beekeepers.”
If interested in joining a Bee-Club contact Hank at 402-371-8544.
