Under a blazing summer sun, accountant and self-taught beekeeper Orna Clum pulls frames of bees out of a white rectangular hive in Scott Township.
Each hive houses tens of thousands of bees. The Clum Family Farm hosts upwards of 80,000 bees across 19 hives. Clum started beekeeping around 12 or 13 years ago after joining a local club to overcome her fear of bees.
But Clum doesn’t call herself a beekeeper or thinks the bees need us to save them.
“We're not beekeepers. We're bee-havers because we can't tell them to stay. They're not our friends. We can't give them emotions. So, all I can do is provide them a place where hopefully they're going to make lots of honey,” she said.
Clum mentioned how people often say the human species would die off without bees to pollinate crops.
“I don't know. Maybe we'd die off if the bees died. But I think the bees adapt to what nature gives them, and I have complete faith in them as a species that they will be able to adapt,” said Clum.
Bees face several obstacles to their continued survival. Illnesses like viruses that come from parasitic mites and man-made problems like the widespread use of pesticides can decimate colonies across the world.
Inside the bee hive: the queen’s organized world
Clum said she started the year with 11 hives, but that number grew as she collected swarms using a nuc box. Beekeepers fill nuc boxes, which are small boxes with a slit for bees to fly through the top, with something like lemongrass to attract bees inside.
Man-made hives like Clum’s are made up of several bee boxes stacked up on top of each other. Each holds around 10 frames, but some manufacturers started selling ones that hold eight frames as women started getting into beekeeping. Bee boxes weigh as much as 40 lbs and contain everything the bees need to survive, Clum said.
Bees are systematic creatures. Each hive has one queen, and she can lay upwards of 2,000 eggs per day during peak season.
“[The queen] doesn’t lay too many (eggs) bees. She lays exactly what she needs to create the situation inside the hive that she needs,” Clum said as she lifted the top off of another hive on her Lackawanna County farm. She used a miniature crowbar called a hive tool to pry the frames apart.
Propolis, or ‘bee glue,’ makes the frames sticky. It’s made out of tree resin that bees gather in the pollen baskets on their hind legs and carry into the hive.
Clum said bees use propolis to shape the hive and to protect from intruders.
“If … a mouse comes into the hive … they'll put propolis around it to encapsulate it so that it doesn't infect the rest of the hive. They're smart,” Clum said. “They know what they need to do, and they just do it. And I find that really quite amazing.”
Inside the hive in July, bees are at the height of honey-making season. Most frames, which are filled with a sheet of honeycomb, are full of fresh honey. Clum said honey is ready once the bees pack the outside with wax.
“[It] means that they've taken out all the liquid they needed from it, all the water, and it is ready. It's ready to go. What is it ready for? It's ready for them to eat. In the winter, bees make honey because that is their primary food source. But we take the honey because we love it,” Clum said.
Besides honey, bees fill other cells in a honeycomb with eggs. A cell in a honeycomb is a singular hexagonal hole.
You can identify where the queen laid an egg by looking for paper-like coverings on individual cells.
Bees also do not need a queen to turn an egg into another queen if she dies. Clum said the colony creates food that helps a bee’s development and can create a new queen.
“They make … this thing called bee bread for bees that are over three days old. Everyone gets fed the bee bread, but an egg that is under three days old gets fed royal jelly,” she said.
“Now, if they're short a queen, then they will pick one egg, they create a cell around it with their wax that's a little bit bigger, kind of like a peanut shell, and they will continue to feed her royal jelly. That's how they make the queen,” Clum said.
Clum: ‘I became enamored with them’
Outside of beekeeping and selling honey from her Scott Township home, Clum runs Summit Mobile, a tax and notary business. She also cares for several chickens, goats and other animals on her farm.
Clum said she never planned to become a beekeeper until she visited a local club to overcome her fear of bees.
“I’m all about learning new things, so I thought it's a good thing to learn, but I don't have to have [bees,]” she said.
After around six months with the Wayne County Beekeepers Association and Lackawanna Backyard Beekeepers, Clum’s confidence around bees grew and she soon after began her first hive.
She described her journey to appreciation for the bees as “a labor of love.”
“Once I had them, I kind of became enamored by them,” she said as she gestured to the bees swarming around a hive below her. “Can you hear the hum … of the bee? They're just working. They don't care. They're not bothered by what's going on in the world. They're just doing their job,” Clum said.
Clum said she started teaching others how to overcome their fears around bees and to understand their importance in the greater ecosystem, not long afterwards.
“The best part about beekeeping for me is that I get to go out and educate people. I really think it's important that people understand where their food comes from … it's really important to know what they do for us,” Clum said.
Clum spends a lot of her time volunteering with museums and schools to educate kids about bees. One of her more recent bee excursions was to Scranton’s Everhart Museum of Natural History, Science and Art.
Clum Family Farm bees at the Everhart Museum
Hundreds of bees from Clum’s farm are on display at the Everhart through the fall. Camille Dantone, the museum’s director of education, showed off the bees in the Natural History wing. It’s part of a permanent installation, the museum’s first colony of bees in roughly 15 to 17 years.
Part of the hive is completely visible to visitors. A smaller portion of the hive is attached to the viewing box with rows of frames of bees. The bees exit the hive through a clear pipe that connects to the outside and allows the bees to pollinate Nay Aug Park.
Dantone said the bees know how to get back home because of the queen bee’s scent.
Bees communicate through pheromones, their biochemical communication line. It allows them to notify the hive of possible intruders, where to get nectar and more.
The Everhart last had its own hive in the early 2000s. Dantone said the museum got rid of its bees after a disease killed most of the colony. Now, she hopes the new hive inspires awe in visitors, young and old.
“We're very happy to have them back. This is something that has been a generational stop for a lot of different families … so I'm glad that we can create those memories for parents, grandparents and … their children,” said Dantone.
Dantone highlighted how Clum’s work with the hive reflects the county’s local ecology, as Clum’s farm is just a few miles outside of Scranton.
“Orna (Clum) is very much locally oriented… [and] very supportive of us,” said Dantone.
Clum taught at the museum’s summer camp program. Dantone said she showed kids the “importance” of bees in our ecosystem, “because without them, we really would not have food and water and everything else.”
The Everhart Museum’s hive is supported by Clum, The Willary Foundation, and Liam Tierney, who raised funds and built the base of the hive for his Eagle Scout service project under Christopher Kane.
This is the Everhart Museum’s second season with its new colony. It plans to sell honey from its hive next month through its Farm-to-Table Fundraiser on August 22.
