B2—Lancaster Farming, Saturday, March 5,1983
Though she owns no bees, she loves promoting honey
BY SALLY BAIR
Staff Correspondent
Barbara Graybill Beiler is sweet
on honey, and likes to buzz about
its good qualities and the value of
honeybees.
She’s having lots of opportunity
to do just that as president of the
Lancaster County Honey
Producers where she is making
history as the first woman
president since the organization
was begun in the early 1900's.
What is a little unusual is that
Barbara currently owns no bees of
her own. As a former Penn
sylvania Honey Queen, she has
maintained her interest in the
industry which she learned about
from her father, Edward, who has
several hives. Last year he served
as the group’s treasurer.
Barbara explains, “My Dad had
bees and I helped him with his. 1
am interested in bees, so 1 just
continued my membership in the
Honey Producers. Now I have my
husband interested.” In fact, she
has her husband Dale so in
terested, that they are presently
looking for a swarm to purchase to
have in place before spring.
She and Dale live in the borough
of Manheim but plan to locate their
hive on Dale’s parents’ four acres.
While she may not have her own
bees, Barbara is very
knowledgeable about the honey
industry. She says the Honey
Producers currently have about 60
members, and is open to anyone
interested in bees. In fact, it is
often referred to as the Lancaster
County Beekeepers.
The organization welcomes new
members, and Barbara says it is a
good way to get to know more
about bees before deciding to go
into beekeeping. While there are
many helpful books written on
beekeeping, she points out, “Bees
never do what books say they’ll do.
You have to know a little before
you begin or you won’t do well.”
The meetings which are held
from March through October offer
an informal time to talk over ,
problems with experienced <
members. Barbara says raising i
bees to produce honey varies from
place to place. “I think Lancaster 1
County is a fairly good place to 1
homestead
Honey has many virtues and versatility is one of them.
Many recipes can be adapted to use honey, and Barbara
Graybiil Beiler looks to this honey cookbook for new ideas.
raise bees. Most of the beekeepers
here are only hobbyists, and they
have from one to 25 hives. None is
doing it as a living, ” Barbara
relates.
There is a good market for
honey, and Barbara says that most
people who produce honey could
sell more than, they produce. “My
father could sell six times the
amount he has,” she says. One
reason honey from hobbyists is so
popular for honey lovers is that is
is usually not heated to as high a
temperature as commercial honey
and therefore has more body,”
Barbara explains.
When questioned about the
differences among the kinds of
honey like buckwheat, alfalfa,
orange blossoms and wildflower,
she says there are distinct flavor
differences and the label comes
from the greatest concentration of
flowers within a two-mile radius
from the hive. That is the distance
a bee will wander from the hive.
“The lighter honeys are sweeter,”
she explains, “ and are similar to
corn syrup or King syrup. The
darker honeys are more like
blackstrap molasses. Most people
around here say their honey is
wildflower in the spring. The honey
will be very light. In the fall it will
be medium in color. ”
When she traveled as Honey
Queen, Barbara noticed some
regional preferences as far as
color and taste are concerned.
“Here alfalfa and orange blossom
are very popular. They all wanted
buckwheat in northern Penn
sylvania.
Barbara says honey is good for
you because it has vitamins and
minerals in it and it is not as
refined as sugar. Since it is
sweeter than sugar, less honey can.
be used as a sweetening agent.
She adds, “Honey is easy to
store. Just keep it at room tem
perature in a dry place and it will
keep a long time.” The only thing
that occasionally happens is that it
will crystallize, and then it simply
needs to be warmed to allow the
crystals to melt, and then it can be
used again.
Of course lots of people think
honey is a delicious product, but
there are many who dislike the
wtfis
honeybee, the one responsible for
that goey rich. Barbara explains
that honeybees are beneficial in
ways other than producing honey.
They are extremely important to
the farms and orchards of Lan
caster County and as Barbara
says, “They pollinate everything
from fruit trees to cucumbers.”
She feels the biggest problem is
that people don’t know the dif
ference between honeybees and
yellow jackets, and feel a dislike
toward all bees. ‘.‘What we’d like to
do in the beekeepers association is
to preserve a yellow jacket, a wasp
and a bumble bee along with a
honeybee, and show people the
difference. We like to be very
helpful in displays,” Barbara
states.
The organization’s main purpose
is ’’educational and promotional,”
according to Barbara, each year
they have an exhibit at Landis
Valley Harvest Days and at Farm-
City Week at Park City. Wherever
they go, they like to take along an
observation hive, showing the
inside operation of an actual hive.
“It is a wooden frame with glass. I
like to have that. People can ac
tually see the bees”.
Lancaster County’s group an
nually prepares an exhibit for the
Farm Show and has taken first
place two years in a row. They
traditionally place in the top three
spots. In preparing the Farm Show
exhibit they study pictures of past
displays and try to gain ideas from
each. “We have something to
represent beeswax, fruit to
represent pollination and cookies
or bread along with honey
products,” Barbara says. They
also exhibit products from about
eight of the county’s beekeepers.
With spring coming, beekeepers
will be ending their dormancy
along with their bees. When
temperatures consistently reach
the 50s and 60s the entrance
reducer which cut down the size of
the opening to protect to dormant
hive over the winter will be
removed to allow the bees some
freedom. It is then that the
beekeepers find out how their hives
came through the winter.
Barbara says, “Bees keep a very
clean hive. The waste products
from their bodies are only
deposited outside the hives.”
She speculates that this has been
a relatively good winter for bees,
saying that an ideal situation for
winter months is for it to stay
really cold for three weeks, then
Substitute honey for a distinctive taste
For unusually flavorful cakes,
glazed vegetables and meats, try
cooking with honey.
You can substitute honey for
sugar in any baking recipe, but you
may have to make some ad
justments to attain a standard
product.
In recipes that use a great deal of
sugar such as fruit breads dr
cookies, you can replace up to half
the sugar with honey without
having to change the proporations
of other ingredients, she says.
If you want to replace all the
sugar in such a recipe, reduce the
amount of liquid ingredients by
one-fourth cup for each cup of
honey used. Also, reduce the
baking temperature by 25 degrees
F, and add one-fourth teaspoon of
baking soda per cup honey. Baking
soda will neutralize the acidity of
the honey and increase the volume
As the honey producers’ first president, Barbara Beiler will
be leading the group’s promotional and educational efforts
throughout the year. Here she makes plans for the first of the
group’s meetings which begin in March and conclude in
October.
warm up so the bees can move to
another frame for honey. Bees are
active only when the weather is
warm, and if it stays cold for an
extended period of time the bees
will not move and could starve,
even if there is honey very close to
them. She says that bees remain in
a cluster inside the hive,
surrounding the queen bee. The
outside bees slowly move to the
inside to get warm, and the inside
bees slowly move to the outside of
the cluster. The process continues
throughout the winter.
Having your bees successfully
winter over is not an easy matter.
“You have to know how much
honey to leave in the hive. In some
places they need 40 pounds, but we
usually leave about 60 pounds in
of the finished product. If your
recipe already calls for baking
soda, there’s no need to add more.
A recipe made with honey may
the hive for the winter.” Barbara
relates. ,
She adds that some beekeepec&i
feed sugar water to their bees irkf
the spring. “While they can’t make
honey from that, it nourishes their
bodies to get them ready. The
‘honey flow’ starts when flowers
are blooming,” Barbara says. “It
gets them going quicker when they
have their bodies nourished.”
Weather- is an important factor
in producing honey, and Barbara
says last year was a good one
because it didn’t ram when the
flowers were in full bloom. If it
rains or is too dry, the honey
production will be low.
A good, strong hive, according to
Barbara, can have from 40,000
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brown differently than one made
with sugar. This is because of the
color of the honey and the way it
reacts to heat.
S 3