Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations

Beginning Beekeeping with Tara Stang

Have you caught the beekeeping bug? If so, Tara Stang can help!

Tara will lead a class for beginning beekeepers at this year’s Back to Basicsconference in Pine River. She is an employee of Mann Lake Ltd, which has been selling bee supplies since 1983. Mann Lake has grown to be a leading supplier of beekeeping equipment in the US.

Tara explains that there are many reasons people keep bees—in spite of the sting. “It’s a fun hobby. It’s a great thing to do outside; kind of brings you back to your little bit of mini-farming. So you have your beehive…you can have them near the house, within 100’ of the house, and they really don’t bother you that much. In the fall they get a little bit more aggressive of their hives, but otherwise I can walk out to my beehives, within just a couple feet of them, and they don’t bother me. It’s more of when you’re opening the hive and examining things that the bees are going to come out and swarm you. So in that aspect they’re not that scary. But the things you can get out of beekeeping are the experience, the joy of it, and you also can get honey. Who doesn’t love honey?

“A lot of people also do this for the wax; the cappings of it. You can make homemade soap, I make homemade wax burners, and you can put them in skin products like soaps and lotions, lip balms…you can really use that product.”

Tara says it’s ok to keep bees in most towns. “The big thing in cities is rooftop bees. Like on a big apartment building they’re actually putting them up-top the roof so they can fly off, go venture to the flowers, but they’re not bugging anyone and no one’s near them. But yes, you can keep them in town. Each town has their own requirements. You either have to have your neighbor’s permission, or you just have to have so many feet from another person, or a fence around them.”

Tara recommends some basic equipment to get started. “One would be your colony, which would be your wooden boxes with your wood frames or plastic frames and then you have foundation. And on that foundation is what the bees will draw off of and put their honey in; their eggs in. They’ll need that just to live in.

“Things for yourself…you might need a beekeeping suit, a jacket maybe, gloves; something to protect your face and your hands is the minimum you’ll want to do. A smoker to use on the bees, a feeder for the spring and fall, and different small hand tools that you’ll need to work in the hive.”

Tara explained what to expect in the first year of beekeeping, including feeding sugar water in the spring so the hive has food to get going, treating the hive for varroa mites, protecting against bears, extracting the honey, storing honey, and getting the hive ready for a Minnesota winter.

She reports that beekeeping as a hobby seems to be growing. “The local schools are helping. We get calls from schools and libraries wanting us to go talk to them, and it’s great! We get to go teach the kids that are interested in it, so they hear about it, and some of their parents have thought ‘I always thought that would be something fun to do.’ The kids and the whole family get into it—it becomes a family activity. The schools and just having the parts and availability of beekeeping is making it easier for people. So it seems to be at a rise.”

Tara Stang’s Intro to Beekeeping session starts at 1:00 and is part of Back to Basics, which takes place on Saturday, February 2nd this year in Pine River. There are 45 workshops at Back to Basics this year, and attendees need toregister for specific workshops in advance. Find out more at Happy Dancing Turtle dot org.

The entire interview with Tara Stang is below. It’s full of good information for the beginning bee hobbyist.

Maggie is a rural public radio guru; someone who can get you through both minor jams and near catastrophes and still come out ahead of the game. She pens our grants, reports to the Board of Directors and helps guide our station into the dawn of a new era. Maggie is a locavore to the max (as evidenced on Wednesday mornings), brings in months’ worth of kale each fall, has heat on in her office 12 months a year, and drinks coffee out of a plastic 1987 KAXE mug every day. Doting parents and grandparents, she and her husband Dennis live in the asphalt jungle of East Nary.