A Beekeeper Shares His Knowledge

Advanced master beekeeper Gary Van Cleef has been involved in beekeeping since he was in junior high school. Even then he was harvesting honey and depositing the earnings in the bank. And it wasn’t long before Van Cleef’s father decided he wanted to keep bees just like his son.

“My limit is 400 bee stings,” Van Cleef said. “I know that because my dad accidentally dropped a frame of bees on me — the doctors removed every one of the stingers.”

Van Cleef’s fascination with bees continued into adulthood, even with a brief interruption when he entered military service. And then, about three years ago, he contacted staff members Laurie Walker and Kim Hutton and offered to start a bee colony and teach a class.

“We’d wanted to have a colony for a long time,” Hutton said. “We were really excited about Gary’s offer until he didn’t show up for our first meeting. He called to apologize, explaining that a young female bear had gotten into his hives and he was trying to repair the damage.”

Now, Van Cleef leads a monthly beekeeping course at the Botanical Gardens. It meets the third Saturday of each month.

On Aug. 20, about 25 people attended a honey harvesting session, part of a yearlong course for those interested in completing the state beekeeping certification. Because there is not yet a place for honey extraction at the garden, the extraction took place in a biology classroom at USF.

“Some folks like to use the natural way of extraction — just put the honeycomb in a plastic container and crush it with any sort of utensil with prongs,” Van Cleef said. “It works fine, but today we’ll use an extractor.”

After students took turns scraping the caps off the honeycombs, the frames, three at a time, were placed into the extractor. Much like an ice-cream churn, the extractor was powered by hand: the operator turned the handle and then the honey was drained from a faucet at the bottom.

The extractor looked a mess, with thick honey, comb wax and often some bee parts stuck to the inside drum.

“We’ll place the extractor next to the hives and tomorrow morning they’ll be spotless — the bees will completely remove all the excess honey,” Van Cleef said.

The Many Uses of Honey

Honey has many well-documented medicinal qualities. And bee venom is used to treat tumors and cancer in other countries, explained Van Cleef. He said he knows a fellow in the Tampa Bay Beekeepers group with multiple sclerosis who finds that by being stung once a day, he’s able to keep his MS under control.

Honey also is effective as a wound dressing. When diluted with body fluids, honey produces hydrogen peroxide and acts as an antiseptic.

“We’re working with Dr. Ray Ball, director of medical sciences at , to provide honey for wound care for injured manatees,” Walker said.

Van Cleef said he sees an increase in the number of people interested in backyard beekeeping since the collapse of the worldwide bee colony in the winter of 2006.

“We get a hundred new students a year interested in learning how to cultivate bees,” he said. “Regulations on keeping bee hives vary from city to city: basically you’re fine as long as none of your neighbors complain.”

The bee colony at the USF Botanical Garden has grown steadily over the last three years under Van Cleef’s supervision. People who don't have a place on their property to keep a hive can, for $10 a month, keep their hive at the garden.

For anyone interested in learning about beekeeping, Van Cleef is a unique resource. “He’s so wonderful,” Hutton said, “he will stay until the last question is answered when he leads sessions.”

The USF Botanical Gardens Beekeeping Course is ongoing. Students may join at anytime for a fee of $10 per class. The takes place Sept. 17.

On Sept. 24, the garden is having a honey tasting fundraiser from 3-5 p.m. For $20, attendees will have the chance to taste honey from all over the world and enjoy live jazz and libations from Tampa Bay’s oldest homebrew club. Van Cleef will talk about the bee colony collapse and give demonstrations on hive assemblage and beekeeping outfits.