he had learned into practice. An aging beekeeper who lived behind him at the time had had hip and knee replacements and could no longer move his hives. The neighbor had lost most of his bees, but he gave Dennis the last remaining hive. Soon, Dennis added six more and bought the necessary beekeeping equipment. The following year, he added 30 more hives. He had obviously been bitten or “stung” with the “bee bug.” At one time, Hermann owned 50 hives, and he began selling honey at a variety of farmers’ markets and festivals in the region. Dennis is a virtual encyclopedia of bee knowledge. According to him, honey bees are not native to this country but arrived here from Europe. “They probably came over on the Mayflower. Early ships that came to this country brought bees here.” He goes on to provide a plethora of interesting facts about bees. First there is the hierarchy. Each swarm contains one queen bee that can live up to four years. She lays 1,500-2,000 eggs a day, about one a minute. The queen controls the hive with her chemical odor. If a new queen needs to be chosen, the worker bees will develop queen cells, 12 to 15 in two hive boxes. “The first queen that hatches out goes through the hive searching for her queen sisters. She chews through the cell and stings them to death,” according to Herrmann. “She then begins mating, and she becomes the new reigning queen.” If her egglaying ability becomes hampered in any way, the workers will replace her, driving her off or killing her. Nurse bees are needed to create the queen bees. They have the ability to make royal jelly in their mandibles, supplying 150 servings before their cell is capped. After approximately 500 feedings of royal jelly, a worker becomes a queen, developing in sixteen days. The nurse bees are so gentle they won’t harm a person who removes the frame where they reside. Then there are the worker bees. Worker bees make wax in the wax glands in their abdomens and draw it out. Workers have to consume eight to ten pounds of honey to make one pound of wax. In the summer,
worker bees live about six weeks, dying when their wings wear out. According to Dennis, “Drones are loafers. They don’t have a stinger. They just hover, waiting for a virgin queen to mate.” After mating the drone dies. If he doesn’t mate in the summer, he’ll be driven out in the winter and freeze to death. Herrmann also provides fascinating tidbits of bee trivia. For example, bees have no eyelids and never sleep. Also, since honey will spoil if it contains too much moisture, the bees have a ventilation system, using their wings to dry the moisture. “When it gets to 17 percent, they’ll cap it off,” says Dennis. Finally, bees always come back to the hive. “Scouts will go out to find nectar sources. They then return and do a bee dance, the waggle dance, to tell how far away the source is.” Of course, where there are bees, there is honey, and according to Dennis, it can be used for a variety of ailments. “Honey will help with allergies. People are allergic to pollen. Bees eat the pollen. When people eat the honey, they become desensitized to the pollen,” he explains. For people in this region, it’s best to eat Mid-Western honey coming from the same pollen sources. Although bees will only go up to three miles from their hives, honey within a 100-mile radius of Posey County would be helpful for allergy sufferers. “Eat two tablespoons of honey a day. If I don’t eat honey, I can tell by noon—my head stops up,” says Dennis. Dennis goes on to claim that honey is also good for treating burns, sunburns, cuts and blisters. In fact, a man he knows in New Harmony used honey to treat his dog. “The dog had a mange the vet couldn’t get rid of. He put honey on the dog and washed it off. He put it on his food. In a week, the mange was gone.” But for all their remarkable abilities, bees have a weakness. “Bees are very fragile,” says Dennis. “You must keep bees healthy.” That is a difficult task when they can contract up to 19 viruses, sometimes having six or seven at one time. Bees also have to battle wax worm moths, varola mites,