BLANCHARDVILLE - Cora Demler decided in first grade that she wanted to sell honey.
"It was just a wild idea I had," said Cora, now 13 and in seventh grade at Pecatonica.
In second grade, she got her first hive. Cora's hobby grew, and she now runs Cora's Busy Bees, selling honey and honey products.
As part of a 4-H entrepreneur project last year, she wrote a business plan, outlining how she plans to expand her market and invest in more efficient tools for getting her product from the hive to consumers.
Cora keeps her hives on the family hobby farm that includes chickens and pigs just outside of Blanchardville where she lives with parents Steve Demler and Jill Gaskell and two brothers. While Cora said her 7-year-old brother might be interested in joining the beekeeping operation at some point, for now it's mostly Cora and her dad.
The two have learned much about beekeeping, mostly by trial and error.
Bees don't actually hibernate during the winter, Steve explained. They stay together in one large ball. The beekeepers are careful to leave enough honey for the bees to survive the winter. Mites, however, can weaken the hive, causing them to die over the winter.
Winterkill is a "huge problem," Steve said. "It's always a problem."
Come spring, they check their hives to see if the bees survived. Bees will begin carrying out their dead when the weather warms - finding dead bees on the ground is actually a good sign that the rest of the hive is strong, Cora said.
But spring is also a tricky time for survival. The Demlers keep a close eye on the bees and supplement the hive with sugar water.
Keeping the number of hives at around five is also tricky. The Demlers order their bees in January - they get them from a bee supplier in Reeseville. A box of three pounds of bees consists of about 30,000 bees and costs about $65. The difficulty is bees must be ordered in January, before the damage from winterkill can be assessed, Steve said.
Each hive contains a queen who lays the eggs. The number of bees will at least triple during the warm season, Cora said. More boxes are added to prevent the growing hive from getting overcrowded and overheated - that's when bees are more likely to swarm and leave the hive.
Getting stung isn't really a problem.
"Sometimes you get bees that are really aggressive," Cora said.
But bees that are busy working are happy and calm (as in the term "busy bees") and less likely to sting.
Cora said she's been "stung enough." Once she was stung three times on her knuckles - "that didn't feel so good," she said.
As a beekeeper, "you learn to keep your cool" if you do get stung, Steve said.
"If you run, they'll follow you," he said.
The main flow of honey comes in May and June, he said, although the bees continue to make honey until fall. Bees deposit honey in the cells of frames that slide into wooden boxes. Wooden boxes are added to hives as needed to collect honey, but the first box is reserved as winter food for the bees. The surplus honey made after that is collected and sold.
"It's a nice hobby. If you do it well, it's a lot of honey," Steve said.
The Demlers advertise a little, but mostly sell the honey to friends. They have no trouble getting rid of the fruits of the bees' labor.
Cora is busy herself with 4-H, playing volleyball and softball and performing in the middle school musical. She's not sure what occupation she may want to pursue, but is thinking about being a biologist of some kind.
But for now, she plans to keep raising her bees and selling honey - after all, busy bees are happy bees.
"It was just a wild idea I had," said Cora, now 13 and in seventh grade at Pecatonica.
In second grade, she got her first hive. Cora's hobby grew, and she now runs Cora's Busy Bees, selling honey and honey products.
As part of a 4-H entrepreneur project last year, she wrote a business plan, outlining how she plans to expand her market and invest in more efficient tools for getting her product from the hive to consumers.
Cora keeps her hives on the family hobby farm that includes chickens and pigs just outside of Blanchardville where she lives with parents Steve Demler and Jill Gaskell and two brothers. While Cora said her 7-year-old brother might be interested in joining the beekeeping operation at some point, for now it's mostly Cora and her dad.
The two have learned much about beekeeping, mostly by trial and error.
Bees don't actually hibernate during the winter, Steve explained. They stay together in one large ball. The beekeepers are careful to leave enough honey for the bees to survive the winter. Mites, however, can weaken the hive, causing them to die over the winter.
Winterkill is a "huge problem," Steve said. "It's always a problem."
Come spring, they check their hives to see if the bees survived. Bees will begin carrying out their dead when the weather warms - finding dead bees on the ground is actually a good sign that the rest of the hive is strong, Cora said.
But spring is also a tricky time for survival. The Demlers keep a close eye on the bees and supplement the hive with sugar water.
Keeping the number of hives at around five is also tricky. The Demlers order their bees in January - they get them from a bee supplier in Reeseville. A box of three pounds of bees consists of about 30,000 bees and costs about $65. The difficulty is bees must be ordered in January, before the damage from winterkill can be assessed, Steve said.
Each hive contains a queen who lays the eggs. The number of bees will at least triple during the warm season, Cora said. More boxes are added to prevent the growing hive from getting overcrowded and overheated - that's when bees are more likely to swarm and leave the hive.
Getting stung isn't really a problem.
"Sometimes you get bees that are really aggressive," Cora said.
But bees that are busy working are happy and calm (as in the term "busy bees") and less likely to sting.
Cora said she's been "stung enough." Once she was stung three times on her knuckles - "that didn't feel so good," she said.
As a beekeeper, "you learn to keep your cool" if you do get stung, Steve said.
"If you run, they'll follow you," he said.
The main flow of honey comes in May and June, he said, although the bees continue to make honey until fall. Bees deposit honey in the cells of frames that slide into wooden boxes. Wooden boxes are added to hives as needed to collect honey, but the first box is reserved as winter food for the bees. The surplus honey made after that is collected and sold.
"It's a nice hobby. If you do it well, it's a lot of honey," Steve said.
The Demlers advertise a little, but mostly sell the honey to friends. They have no trouble getting rid of the fruits of the bees' labor.
Cora is busy herself with 4-H, playing volleyball and softball and performing in the middle school musical. She's not sure what occupation she may want to pursue, but is thinking about being a biologist of some kind.
But for now, she plans to keep raising her bees and selling honey - after all, busy bees are happy bees.