Hanlon Hill Honey Farm
(Page 2 of 4)
November/December 1977
By the Mother Earth News editors
And then ... and then we turned to honeybees. After talking to county agents, beekeepers, and the pros at Penn State University, we began to think that maybe beekeeping was just the line of work we were looking for. Honey farming, it seemed, made a fine one-family business ... no need to exploit the labor of others. The capital requirement was within our means. Also, the price of honey had recently tripled in response to consumers' growing reluctance to buy refined sugar. Then too, I'd always had a good attitude toward stinging insects. (Once-when I was eight-I reached into a birdhouse and pulled out what I thought was a bird's nest, but which-in fact-was a wasp's nest! Amazingly, I emerged from the incident unstung ... even though I had been surrounded by a thousand angry wasps!) So, bees it would be.
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Next, we had to decide on a location for our honey farm. Our main requirements were that the area we moved to had to have [1] a mild summer climate (it gets hot inside a bee suit, I reasoned), [2] friendly folks, and [3] low land prices. Since we'd always been partial to Pennsylvania, we looked for-and found-our homestead in the hardscrabble land of the Keystone State's northernmost border area.
During our last winter in Washington we devoured everything we could find on bees and beekeeping. Then, before moving, we ordered our package bees (which are shipped up from the South each spring) and beehive equipment. And—finally—we sold our suburban mansion, loaded up a rental truck, and U-hauled our way north to our "dream farm".
Little did we know then how long it would take that "dream" to materialize. Our bee equipment, for instance, didn't arrive as soon as it should have (although our package bees-we learned-were on the way). The local beekeeper through which we'd ordered our equipment told us-much to our disappointment-that we'd just have to "make do" . . . try to protect our new bees from still-frigid weather, for instance, with sheets of linoleum, when what the hives really needed were sturdy outer covers.
When our bees finally arrived, we had to hive them in all-new, freshsmelling pine boxes which-because they were all-new and fresh-smelling-drove many of the bees right out past the ill-fitting linoleum covers and into the woods. (Bees prefer old, waxy boxes that smell of a million previous bee inhabitants.) With each departing swarm, we saw $20 fly away before our very eyes!
Meanwhile, we had arranged to have a friendly neighboring farmer plow our garden plot, a 50' X 100' piece of ground. (Imagine: Here we were, a couple of ex-suburbanites accustomed to setting out a few tomato, eggplant, and pepper plants each spring, ready to take on 5,000 square feet of vegetable patch!) When the time came, we entrusted our seeds to the freshly tilled soil ... and then, 10 days later, watched in horror as the entire plot erupted in weeds. We had to ask our neighbors what the various seedlings looked like, so we could distinguish them from the weeds!
