Local beekeepers Glenn and Monica Kveton led a workshop at the William R. Sinkin Eco Centro Thursday to educate the community on honeybee biology and the importance of beekeeping.
Eco Centro Events Coordinator Jordyn Biesenbach said the workshop served the community’s interest in beekeeping and educated people on the vital role bees play in environmental health.
“We wanted to bring in experts to teach about the awesome, fascinating lives of honeybees,” Biesenbach said.
The Kvetons are a husband-and-wife duo who have eight years of experience as beekeepers.
“We enjoy talking about bees and educating,” Glenn told the Sundial. “Anytime we get this kind of opportunity, we do it.”
Glenn and Monica are currently working to become master beekeepers, a certification from the Texas A&M Agrilife Extension Service, which requires a minimum of five years of training, exams and in-hive tests to ensure candidates possess the necessary skills.
Honeybee hives are intricate ecosystems built around a queen, drones and worker bees, each with their own responsibilities.
“The queen bee can live three to five years, but the rest of them live six to eight weeks,” Glenn said. “After a couple of years, she’s not as productive, but she’ll lay about 2,000 eggs every day during the spring.”
Glenn said there can be 30,000 to 50,000 bees in one hive, and the queen’s pheromones keep the hive happy.
“She’ll mate with anywhere from 10 to 20 drones, then come back to hatch, and she won’t mate again,” Glenn said. “That’s why when she gets older, she gets less productive.”
Worker bees live for six to eight weeks and constitute most of the hive. They collect pollen, keep the hive clean, and feed the queen, drones and larvae.
Drones are males whose primary responsibility is to mate with the queen. While most drones die after mating, the ones who survive do not provide much to the hive, which causes worker bees to kick them out in the fall as resources become scarce.
“They don’t have a stinger, so they can’t defend the hive. They’re just going to become raccoon or skunk food,” Monica said.
Glenn and Monica typically harvest 20 to 30 pounds of honey from the hives they tend, but a lack of rain has caused them to feed the bees honey as they cannot produce enough to last through winter
“The drought last year was so bad after we harvested, there wasn’t anything to forage,” Monica said. “So by winter, even though we had left them enough food, they had eaten through it already … This year, if we’re still going to continue with this drought, we’re not going to harvest very much honey.”
Glenn and Monica are mentors with Hives for Heroes, a non-profit focused on providing connection and purpose for service members, veterans and first responders through beekeeping, conservation and community.
For more information and upcoming events at Eco Centro, visit the center’s event calendar.
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