Frederick County beekeepers mentor each other

Jun. 11—Dave Maloney got his first beehive in the spring several years ago, and a second one a few months later.

By December, the bees were dead.

"I wasn't educated," Maloney said.

But that was more than a decade ago.

Now, Maloney has several healthy hives at his Frederick home. He is in charge of member relations for the Frederick County Beekeeping Association, which has about 270 members. Maloney teaches the beekeeping class he wish he took when he started.

In his backyard on Wednesday, Maloney carefully removed the cover on one of his hives. Its base was painted blue with a name in black, "Mr. B."

The surrounding garden flourished with flowers and greenery, such as mountain mint. It smells like you'd expect, and is favored by pollinators.

To handle his bees, Maloney wore a hat with netting — called a veil — over his face. His arms and hands were bare. He said there are times he suits up with more protection, but his bees are pretty calm this time of year.

With a few puffs of pine needle-fueled smoke, the bees were as docile as kittens.

Maloney moved slowly as he drew out a frame that glistened with nectar.

"Hello, ladies," he said.

All of his bees are named Lucy. He said it's easier to give them the same name.

Most bees in a colony are female worker bees, according to Maloney. The males, or drones, exist for breeding and not much else.

"They sit around, they read the newspaper, they watch football games, but they don't clean house, don't take care of the babies," Maloney said.

By fall, the female bees start to kick the boys out of the hive. The girls need to survive the winter and don't want the boys eating their honey, according to Maloney.

Right now is a good time of year to be a beekeeper, he said. The nectar is flowing, babies are being made and bees are happy.

In a few weeks, Maloney will be able to harvest. Last year, he got 1,000 pounds of honey.

The knowledge he's gained in 12 years of beekeeping became apparent in a short conversation. He knows the exact moisture content at which his bees cap the honey — 18.6%. He spoke at length about the dangers facing bees: pesticides, colony collapse disorder, loss of habitat and nutritional sources, and varroa mites.

Maloney is confident in his bee identification skills — so much that he reached out with bare hands to pluck a drone bee, which has no stinger, from a group of dozens gathered around the mouth of a hive.

Then he put the bee in his mouth.

Maloney held his lips shut for a brief moment, then spat the bee out. It flew away.

Maloney grinned at his trick, while the reporter's mouth hung agape.

Pranks aside, Maloney is serious about bee education. He's like a walking bee encyclopedia.

He mentors roughly a dozen people. Some of his past mentees are now mentoring others.

Outside The Frederick News-Post office in Ballenger Creek on Friday, Mathew Burns and Autumn Bozzo suited up to enter an apiary on campus. They were joined by veteran beekeeper David Muns.

Muns said Maloney has been a mentor to him, and now Muns assists people such as Burns and Bozzo.

Burns is a first-year beekeeper, while Bozzo is about a year ahead of him.

Burns met Bozzo at the Great Frederick Fair last year, drawn to the bee observation hive she staffed. She introduced him to the Frederick County Beekeeping Association and invited him to see her hives on the News-Post campus.

"I literally had probably thousands of bees on my jacket and I just had a ball," Burns recalled. "I was hooked at that point."

Burns elected to take three days of beekeeping classes through the association, which are offered on Saturdays in January.

"The thing I love about the Frederick County Beekeeping Association is you ... send an email out and you'll get, you know, 10, 15 answers from people," Burns said.

To get started, Burns bought two complete hive setups that cost about $1,000. But it does not have to be that expensive.

"Basically, I bought the works," he said. "You can do it for much cheaper starting out."

Burns got two nucleus colonies with a couple thousand bees, which he said range from $175 to $225 apiece. His apiary has grown to four hives since he adopted a hive from another keeper who decided the hobby was not for them.

He finds beekeeping relaxing and therapeutic.

"I just think it's fascinating that these creatures that we usually are afraid of, without them, a third of what we consume would not exist," Burns said.

Pollinators (often honeybees) "are responsible for one in every three bites of food we take, and increase our nation's crop values each year by more than $15 billion," the U.S. Department of Agriculture's website reads.

It's not uncommon to start beekeeping and fail, according to Muns and Maloney.

"Take time to learn," Muns advised. "Read everything you can."

And of course, the association encourages people to join.

"We provide mentoring, even if it can only be by phone," Maloney said. "There's never a need for a beekeeper to go without the answer, and if we don't know, we'll find somebody who does."

That's what Burns appreciates about his fellow beekeepers.

"It's a great community," he said. "They want to help each other."

Follow Mary Grace Keller on Twitter: @MaryGraceKeller