BOWDOINHAM – Honeybees dotting white, long-sleeved shirts and net-covered hats. Ever see a stuffed teddy bear dressed up with bees? Really does look that way. Bees humming. Owners watching “the ladies,” as they refer to their bees – concerned that they have enough to eat and will do well.

My daughter and I were recently invited to a field day for beekeepers, held at the Bowdoinham home of master beekeeper Rick Cooper. This, says local beekeeper Robyn Holman, is a rite of passage for new beekeepers.

Beekeeping is a fun activity to enjoy with your whole family, and a good way to get to know the normal rhythms of the seasons, courtesy of the bees.

During the field day, new beekeepers receive their new bees and learn how to put them into hives. This process, called installing a hive, occurs just once a year in early spring. says Holman. This is when it gets warm enough, about 50 degrees, for the bees to start flying out of the hive.

I was a little nervous, but mostly excited.

We were thankful the rain had finally stopped long enough for the apiarists to have a satisfactory field day. We donned headgear, known as veils, and long gloves with elastic at the cuffs to ease over any jacket. The veil is much easier to see through than I had expected.

Old hands tend to wear white, long-sleeved shirts so they can see the bees easily because they don’t want to lose any, or unintentionally carry them into their cars. A word of warning – the shirts do get spotty with more than just bees.

The package bees come in a wooden container with wire mesh sides. It includes roughly 18,000 bees and a queen, and weighs about 3 pounds, according to Cooper. The queen is in a separate little wooden box called the queen cage. She is released into the hive first because the other bees will follow her.

But while installing one of the hives, beekeepers noticed the plug had somehow come off a queen cage, and the queen was assumed to be among the other bees. Folks tried to find the queen, which is considerably larger than worker bees. She was not found. Since the bees eased into the hive, it was assumed they were following their queen.

Typically, a package is inverted over a large wooden box called the deep hive body and dumped out into a heap. A big thump gets out any still in the package. The bees ease their way into their new home. Beekeepers use a smoker to create a little smoke that calms the bees and add a syrup made of sugar and water to keep them fed until they make their own honey.

Using the lid to the hive, beekeepers gently gather the bees from the edges to the center and guide them into the hive. That way, the lid can be applied without hurting or squishing the bees.

Once they settle into the hive, bees divvy up duties in an age-old mysterious system. According to Holman, some of these duties include nursery care, cleaning the hive, collecting pollen, making honey, making honeycomb, making propolis (an amber-colored resin produced by the bees and used to seal in the hive for winter) and caring for the queen. The latter responsibility includes knowing when the hive needs a new queen, knowing when to throw out the drones (before winter) and when to change jobs. A bee can change jobs, depending on the needs of the hive.

A hive body is deep and fits 10 frames of foundation wax with wires for support so the frame does not sag in the heat. The frames look like a picture frame, with thin wires strung between the tops and bottoms, and a thin layer of foundation wax coated over the inside. The bees will draw this out and add beeswax to the foundation wax. The honeycomb is then filled with eggs and honey. As the comb gets filled, the bees make holes in the wax from frame to frame. When the first deep hive box fills, another can be added between the deep hive box and the lild, depending on the time of season and the number of bees in the colony.

Bees can roam freely between the inside frames and boxes of the hive. Keep in mind that early honey is harvested around July and later honey by Labor Day, the typical cut-off date for harvesting – to give the bees ample time to store enough honey to get the hive through the coming winter.

I had a chance to hold one of the frames, without honey. They are heavier than they look. When filled with wax or honeycomb and honey, they are quite heavy, Holman says.

Beekeepers check the hive at intervals to see if it is time to add the next deep hive box, if there is enough food for the bees, to inspect for mites, and to make sure there are eggs filling up the frames – a sign of a healthy working hive.

Each spring, Cooper holds classes on becoming a beekeeper. He can be contacted at Bees-N-Me at (207) 666-5643. For a complete list of suppliers or more information on beekeeping, contact the Maine State Beekeepers Association at www.mainebeekeepers.org. The site includes the newsletter The Bee Line.

Prices for bees are increasing due to a die-off of bees in other parts of the country. According to advertisements in The Bee Line, recent prices for package bees were $65-70.

Holman describes beekeeping as “one of those old hobbies that you can never learn it all. There is always more to learn.”

“You develop a certain … affection,” she adds. “It’s not the same as having pets. After all, they are insects and they could hurt you. I don’t want to say bee-love but you do get attached and call them ‘your ladies.’ You watch and care about how they are doing.”

Holman tells me that early honey is very light and does not crystallize. Harvesting the honey is easy, because the honey does not need boiling or further preparation, just a whirl in a centrifuge – just not too fast. Then simply pour the honey into containers. There are no specific requirements for containers. In fact, they don’t even have to be sterilized because honey eliminates bacteria and does not get moldy. Honey can be stored indefinitely.

Visit a hive. Think about joining the ranks of beekeepers in Maine. Or, just enjoy having honey to add a little golden sweetness to your life. My favorite uses for honey are baking baklava and stirring it into tea.

Edith Churchill is a freelance writer living in Auburn who frequently takes day trips with her family.

Be informed

Installing/ installation – putting a group of bees with a queen (or adding a new queen) to a hive. Translation: dumping the pile of bees on top of the hive in a heap.

Nuclear hive – a queen and four frames of bees, also called a starter hive.

Propolis – a resin glue that the bees produce to seal in the hive for the winter. It is very difficult to break this seal.

Veil – the net/hat headpiece worn as protective gear. Note: Most longtime beekeepers don’t wear the full gear at the installation, opting to wear it only when they expect the bees to be upset.

What you need:

Beehive kit – to build a hive made of a wooden box filled with trays of wire-reinforced foundation wax. These trays are called frames, 10 of which fit into the deep hive body.

Super – a shallow box like the hive body but shorter, to collect the honey

Hive tool – a metal scraper/lifter. The scraper side looks like a large putty knife, the lifter side looks like a wide crowbar. Use this tool to open your hive, to scrape off honey, lift and move frames.

Smoker – to make the bees sleepy

Protective gear – gloves, veil and white long-sleeved shirt

Bees – package kit of bees, with queen

Centrifuge – to rent or borrow, to use when it is time to harvest the honey

Jars/containers – to put your honey in