Fred Putnam of Busy Bee Honey is a busy bee indeed

BY STEVEN JUPITER

BRANDON—For some folks, a bee sting can cause a serious allergic reaction or even result in death.  For most of us, though, it’s just a painful reminder that we’re someplace the bee would rather we were not.  And so the buzzing of a bee in the vicinity, like the rattle of a rattlesnake, makes many people either freeze in fear or run in panic.  Beekeepers in action, then, are a fascinating display of sangfroid in a situation that would send most of us shrieking over hill and dale.

Fred Putnam of Brandon’s Busy Bee Honey, however, goes about his business—managing colonies and collecting honey—as if walking among tens of thousands of bees were not the terrifying prospect it would be for the rest of us.  When he invited me to come learn how bees are kept and honey is gathered, I immediately told him of my childhood trauma of being stung multiple times by bees that lived beneath my bedroom window.  But Putnam’s calm demeanor, his declaration that his bees were especially docile at that moment, and his reassurance that we’d be suited up all persuaded me to give it a try and perhaps even overcome my bee-related PTSD.

Plus, he corrected me: I was likely stung by wasps or hornets, not honeybees.  

And he would absolutely know the difference. Putnam has been working with bees since 2014, after a 37-year career with the Forest Service.  A farm kid from New Hampshire, he’d planned on buying land with maple trees and sugaring, as his family had done.  But when it proved difficult to find suitable land, his brother-in-law suggested beekeeping.  He took some classes, bought some colonies, and had a successful first year.  He was hooked.

So, on a warm, overcast day, we rode out to Sudbury to visit some of Putnam’s bees in a beautiful meadow tucked away on a farm.

“The farmer asked me to put some bees here,” said Putnam.  “The bees pollinate the crops.  And it’s a nice, protected location for the bees.”

There were 12 stacks of red and blue boxes at this site, all secured with metal straps and surrounded by an electric fence to deter bears. 

“Nylon straps don’t work,” said Putnam. “Bears can tear right through them.”  He even had to raise the height of the fencing when it became apparent to him that a bear could jump over it.  Humans aren’t the only creatures with a fondness for honey.

When it comes to natural sweeteners, maple syrup gets all the glory in Vermont.  It’s literally the official state flavor.  But honey is at least as delicious and as hard to produce.  And as with maple syrup, so much of a season’s yield depends on factors humans cannot control.  

Bees need nectar to produce honey and the amount of available nectar varies with temperature and rainfall.  

“When we had that frost in May, it killed off most of the sources that the bees normally feed on,” said Putnam.  “They had to find other sources of nectar.  They travel up to three miles to find food, so I can’t say for sure what they were eating, but the honey they made was darker than usual and had a deeper flavor.”  Having tasted that batch, which Putnam named “Late Summer Amber Wildflower,” I can attest that this is true.  The honey had a rich flavor, like the darkest maple syrup.

When resources are scarce, bees get protective of their honey, which serves as their main source of carbohydrates (pollen is the main source of their protein).  When conditions have been favorable and they have plenty of honey, they generally just go about their business.

“They’re really docile right now.  This is the calmest I’ve seen them in a while,” said Putnam.  He handed me a beekeeper’s jacket with a full hood, which I gladly donned, along with a pair of latex gloves.  Even with these precautions, I was hesitant at first to approach the hives.

“Walk behind them,” advised Putnam.  “All the activity is in the front of a hive, so if you’re behind them, you won’t seem like a threat.”  

While bees collected at the entrances to the hives, there were very few flying around.  

“Bees use the sun as a guide when they fly, so on an overcast day like today, you’re not going to see a lot of them flying out to forage,” Putnam explained.

As we learned as kids, bees do indeed dance for their colonies to communicate about food sources.  The movements of the dance relate the location and distance of the food to the position of the sun and the intensity of the dance indicates the desirability of the source.  So, a really nice clump of buckwheat (a favorite food, according to Putnam), might elicit a frenzied dance, like a little kid getting animated when explaining to his friends where there was ice cream to be had.

At one point, a single guard bee decided it wanted a closer look at me and began buzzing around my head.  Although fully covered, I tensed up—old triggers die hard.  But the bee apparently deemed me uninteresting and flew off.  As time wore on, I became less and less nervous and allowed myself to get closer to the hives for a better look, especially when Putnam began to open them up to conduct the business of the day: determining whether the colonies had good relationships with their queens.

Each colony has a queen, whose job is to lay eggs and keep the colony viable.  Each egg develops into either a male drone or a female worker.  The females tend to the eggs, forage for nectar and pollen, and produce wax and honey.  In short, the females do all the things we tend to associate with honeybees.  The males exist solely to mate with the queens (though not necessarily with the queens of their own colonies).  Only eggs that are fertilized develop into females.  Unfertilized eggs become males.  Since more females than males are necessary for the success of a colony, queens need to mate often to keep up the supply of fertilized eggs.

But sometimes a queen needs to be replaced, either because she has died or because her colony is dissatisfied with her egg production.  A queen who doesn’t produce enough eggs will be killed and “superseded” by a new queen, which can be made from any fertilized egg if the larva is fed a consistent diet of “royal jelly” by the worker bees.  A new queen can also be introduced into the colony by the beekeeper, who then needs to track whether she has been accepted by the colony.  A queen that is not accepted will be killed.

This all sounds quite harsh, but the bees accept their fates for the survival of the colony, each of which should be seen as a “superorganism,” according to Putnam.  The individual bees that make up the colony live solely to ensure the survival of the colony as a whole.

Putnam tipped each hive forward slightly to feel how heavy it was.  A heavy hive is a good sign, as it’s likely to contain a good amount of honey.  I tipped some of the hives as well and felt the difference.  

When Putnam opened the hives to check on the activity within, he used a smoke gun to disperse the bees so he could pull out the wooden frames and check whether there were eggs and honey, both signs of a properly functioning colony.  

Each frame was covered with the iconic hexagonal cells.  Some cells were topped with wax to seal off the honey for later use.  Some cells had clearly visible white specks at the bottom: eggs.  This colony clearly had a functioning queen.  

Honey is made from evaporated nectar, a process hastened by worker bees fanning the nectar with their wings in the hive.  The goal is to concentrate the sugars in the nectar, in much the same was that boiling concentrates the sugars in maple sap.

Putnam used a device called a refractometer to test the moisture content of the honey.  Ideal moisture content is below 18.5%. When honey contains a higher percentage of water than that, it becomes a fertile ground for yeasts and other microorganisms that can cause honey to spoil.  A moisture content below 18.5% ensures that the honey will “self-preserve,” as Putnam put it.  

“Honey is hydrophilic,” Putnam said, “which means it attracts moisture from the air.  Always keep your honey covered.”

The honey in the combs that Putnam pulled had a moisture content of 18.1%, on the higher end but still acceptable.  It was ready to be harvested, so he set the frame inside a box to be extracted at home.  Unlike maple sap, honey doesn’t need to be processed.  In fact, Putnam doesn’t heat or filter the honey he sells.  

It was hard not to be impressed by the singular purpose of these bee colonies, which have to adapt to constantly shifting conditions with the seasons.  A bee colony’s population peaks in summer and dwindles in fall, shrinking from around 60,000 to 8,000, as the colony prepares for the winter, during which time it will live off of honey stores. As winter nears, bees die off and are not replaced.  The remaining bees huddle together and shiver to keep the temperature of the hive warm enough for their survival.

It was also hard not to be impressed by Putnam’s knowledge and composure.

“Beekeepers like to talk about bees,” he joked.

But it’s a tough job.  Theft of honey by bears, failure of a colony to “requeen,” increased use of pesticides, infestation by Varroa mites—a constant source of concern for any beekeeper—all of it can devastate a colony.  

In fact, one of Putnam’s colonies at this site appeared to have lost its queen and failed to produce a new one.  So, Putnam slipped a new queen into the hive in a little cage sealed with sugar paste.  The bees in the colony will sense the new queen’s pheromones and eat through the paste to get to her.  When she’s finally released from the cage, the colony will decide whether to accept her, in which case she will mate and produce eggs, or to kill her, in which case the colony will remain queenless and potentially collapse.

Despite having been stung hundreds of times—“It still hurts like h—,” he said—Putnam remains committed to these little critters.  You can sense the respect he has for them and the pride he takes in the quality of his honey, which he sells at local markets and online, with customers as far away as Hawaii (“Hawaiian honey isn’t good,” Putnam laughed).    

It’s not a job for the faint of heart but for Fred Putnam it remains a passion.  And while I’m proud of myself for remaining calm in the presence of so many stingers, I’ll just enjoy the honey and leave the bees to the experts like Fred Putnam.

Visit Busy Bee Honey online at busybeehoneyvermont.com.