PRINTOn the Job: Art Gelder
Beekeeper
Michael Stonacek
Beekeeper Art Gelder checks honeycombs for developing honey. Walk-About Acres’ honey is a blend of nectars from several wildflowers in mid-Missouri and is sold at Hy-Vee and I.B. Nuts & Fruit Too.
April 3, 2008 | 12:00 a.m. CST
Art Gelder spends most of his time on Walk-About Acres, where he dabbles in farming, botany and zoology. As a long-time beekeeper and member of the Missouri State Beekeeper’s Association, Gelder takes pride in his profession. He invited Vox to visit his buzzing sanctuary to learn a little more about the sweetest job ever.
Vox: What do you most enjoy as a beekeeper?
Art Gelder: If you go out to the bee yard, and you sit and watch the bees bringing in pollen, you can see they have pollen packed on their legs in colors of browns and yellows and oranges and reds. And you can just sit there, right in front of the hive, and watch them fly in and out. It’s very calming and very relaxing to watch the interaction of bees.
Vox: How long have you been a beekeeper, and how did you get started in this business?
AG: I have been beekeeping a little over 15 years. A friend of mine at the Boone Regional Hospital — I am also a registered nurse — and I got to talking one day. We were talking about bees, and we thought it’d be kind of fun to do that.
Vox: Are there any horror stories about bee stings from your career as a beekeeper?
AG: I was trying to get my work done with the hives, and it was getting ready to rain. I had one hive left and (it was) open. It started raining and, you know, you wouldn’t like it if the roof was off your house, and they didn’t like it either. They just came boiling out of there. They were mad. I closed up, and they were just all over me. I got home, and my wife counted up about 50 stings on my back.
Vox: How is the queen bee established?
AG: Say, for instance, the queen dies. The worker bees will go around and find day-old eggs that the old queen had just laid. Those eggs will hatch. They will have day-old larvae in them. They will pick out 8, 10, 12 of them and feed the larvae a special food that only the queen bee gets — royal jelly. That royal jelly is what produces a queen. The difference between the queen and the working bees is that the queen has functioning reproductive organs to lay eggs to produce new bees. And since there are between 8 and 12 larvae fed the royal jelly, the first queen to hatch will go around and kill the other queens or else they will fight to the death.
