Pag# 2-Growar and llarkatar, Lancaster Fanning, Saturday, December 8, 2000
Beekeepers’ First Experience
(Continued from Pago 1)
family that using honey to
bake, with slight modifica
tions, is healthier and more
appealing than ordinary
table sugar.
Tim grew up on a small
farm in Landisville where his
parents, Jim and Anne, cared
for about 15 ewes, mostly for
a lamb crop.
When Tim was about eight
years old he found some old
hives in the barn, and “it
caught my curiosity,” he
said.
“It was only later that I
would learn that those hives
belonged to my great
grandfather Martin,” Tim
said.
In 1990. on a three-month
home-repair mission trip to
Kentucky with the Mennon
ite Central Committee, Tim
had the opportunity to ob
serve a beekeeper attending
his hives.
“He took the time to dis
cuss the different compo
nents of a hive,” Tim said.
“I’ll never forget peering in
at the queen as the beekeeper
pointed it out to me. I found
it all extremely fascinating. It
was then that I began reading
up on the subject.”
He married Kelly in 1991,
purchased the house near
Manheim in 1993, and in the
spring the following year,
purchased his first package.
The package was a colony
of about 12,000 bees and one
queen from Georgia. The
cost? About $4B.
Bees, on ground, make their way into a new hive.
This is the photo of Tim’s great-grandfather, Martin Miller, in a photo dated
about 1915.
“He bought it just so he
could watch and look at the
bees flying around,” said
Kelly, with a laugh.
Tim purchased two more
hives and captured a swarm,
which he placed in a fourth
hive in 1995. In the late
summer that year, varroa
mites killed all the hives. To
add to the disappointment,
he noted, the little bit of
honey the Millers did manage
(Turn to Pago 3)
A swarm of bees takes
over a construction site
marker at the new Rt. 30
interchange in Lancas
ter.
A swarm takes up resi
dence on a fence post
near the farm.
Some hives are kept at the home of Kelly and Tim Miller.
The Millers sell their honey and wax products direct market, mostly by word of
mouth. They managed a booth at the Elizabethtown Fair in August with help
from Pennsylvania Honey Queen Renee Biatt.
Tim holds up a frame of bees, larvae, and “capped”
brood ready to hatch.