The Good Life – July-August 2017

are thriving. Thirty days later, they return and check the
hives to make sure the queen is laying properly.
Come May, they’re back in Casselton transferring the welltraveled
bees from the semis to their trucks before moving
them to various locations on area farms.
June to September:
After the bees are settled into their new locations, a short lull
usually occurs before the clover and alfalfa begin pollinating.
Since June is often a wet month, they feed the bees, check on
them regularly, and work on necessary, miscellaneous tasks.
By the middle to the end of June, they place supers, the
portion of the bee home boxes in which the honey production
occurs, on top of the hives in anticipation of the honey crop.
Zzzzzz
Honey bees
never sleep!
In mid-July, they take honey off and start extracting. This
extraction process will continue until the first part of
September.
September to January:
Morlock feeds the honeybees and begins to get them ready
for winter. After that, they truck some of the bees back to
Texas, but the majority of the bees get sent to Idaho to
spend the winter in potato sheds. The weaker bees are sent
to California to gather their strength and get nursed back
to health in the warmer climate before pollination in the
almond orchards begins again the middle of January.
The Secret Life of Bees
Is this a one-man job?
While Morlock does the beekeeping, Juli does the
bookkeeping. They also hire help for taking care of the bees.
All the honey is bottled up and distributed through SueBee
Honey.
How long do bees live?
During the winter months, worker bees (all female) can live
up to three months when they’re just surviving and hanging
out. But come spring, they only care about their job and
actually work themselves to death by wearing their wings
out. Bees never sleep. Let this be a lesson to all workaholics.
What do bees eat and how do they develop?
The Morlocks feed their honeybees corn syrup or liquid
sugar, but when bees are developing, they’re first fed royal
jelly, a high-protein food made in the head of a worker bee.
All the bees get fed that initially, but when the larvae get
to a certain age, they move on to beebread, which is made
14 / THE GOOD LIFE / urbantoadmedia.com
Honey bees
keep the inside of their hives
at 93° F