TheBeekeeper

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An Interview with Russell “Buzz” Riopelle Conducted by Kathie Lester

The BeekeeperA Reading A–Z Level O Leveled Reader

Word Count: 1,200

LLEEVVEELLEEDD RREEAADDEERR •• OO

TheBeekeeper

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The BeekeeperLevel O Leveled Reader© 2003 Learning Page, Inc.An Interview with Russell “Buzz” Riopelle Conducted by Kathie LesterIllustration by Fred Volke

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TheBeekeeper

www.readinga-z.com

An Interview with Russell “Buzz” Riopelle Conducted by Kathie Lester

Photo Credits:Front cover, pages 4, 5, 6, 7, 11, 19, 20: © Buzz Riopelle; backcover, pages 3, 8, 9, 12, 13: © Kim Flottum; title page, pages 16,21: clipart.com; page 10: John Meyer/© learningpage.com; page15: © Justin O. Schmidt; page 18: USDA/ARS.

CorrelationLEVEL O

Fountas & Pinnell MReading Recovery 20

DRA 28

43

Table of Contents

The Work of a Beekeeper . . . . . . . . . . . 4

Life in the Hive . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8

Types of Bees . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13

Making Honey . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16

Glossary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22

The Work of a Beekeeper

Interviewer: Did you get the name“Buzz” because you keep bees?

Buzz: No, my parents started calling meBuzz before I was born.

Russell “Buzz” Riopelle is a beekeeper in the Cleveland, Ohio,area. He has been keeping bees for 30 years.

5

Interviewer: What kind of equipmentdo you need?

Buzz: I wear a bee suit to keep myclothes clean. I also wear a veil over myhead to protect my eyes and head fromstings. I use a smoker to calm the bees.That’s a small can with a bellows on it.I build a little fire in there and put thelid on. When you blow smoke on bees,they think it’s a forest fire. They fill

their stomachswith honey incase they have to leave theirtree. That’s whysmoke seems to calm them,because it keepsthem busy.

Interviewer: How much work isinvolved in beekeeping?

Buzz: There’s a lot of work, and it has to be done at the correct time. A one- or two-week delay can affect your honeycrop drastically. You have to make surethe queen is laying eggs. You have tolook at your bees every two to threeweeks to make sure everything is allright. Removing the honey is a lot ofheavy work. I have to lift the honeycombout of the hives and put it on the truck.Then I carry it into the honey house,where I extract the honey.

Buzz’s truck carries honey boxes and a bee blower. The blowerblows the bees out of the boxes. Each box holds 35 to 45pounds (16–20 kg.) of honey.

Buzz pours smoke over an open hive.

6

7

Life in the Hive

Interviewer: Tell me about the kinds of bees.

Buzz: There arequeens, drones, andworkers. The queensand workers are female,and the drones are male.

All the bees in the hive comefrom eggs laid by the queen.In the springtime she lays1,500 to 2,000 eggs a day.Drones are only useful formating. They don’t work at all. Every day

they congregate outside thehive, waiting for a queen tofly by. Then they race afterher and mate with her.

Interviewer: How often doyou get stung?

Buzz: I get stung a couple thousandtimes a year because I don’t weargloves. Gloves are bulky and hard tokeep clean, so they can spread disease. I don’t swell up from stings anymore,but they still hurt. I work the bees on nice sunny days around 2 o’clock in the afternoon when all the flowers areproducing nectar. When half the beesare out collecting nectar, I only have to deal with the other half. Top to bottom: A worker, a drone, and a queen

Even after Buzz calmsthe bees with smoke,they may still sting hisbare hands as he movesthe boxes.

8

109

Interviewer: I thought the queen neverleft the hive. She flies around?

Buzz: She makes short flights to mate.Other than that, she only leaves toswarm. If a second queen develops inthe hive, the colony divides. The newqueen stays in the old location. The old queen and half the bees find a newplace to live. They fill their stomachswith two or three days’ supply ofhoney. They find another place to build a honeycomb. Then they store the honey in this new comb and start laying eggs.

Do You Know?Bees make beeswax from glands on their

bellies. They scrape thin sheets of wax off theirbellies with their legs. Then they form the waxinto the six-sided cells of the honeycomb.People use beeswax to make candles, lip gloss,moisturizer, and decorations. Even the sealsunderneath your toilet that keep it from leakingare made of beeswax. For health reasons,people eat pollen and “royal jelly,” a specialfood that bees make for the queen. Honey isalso used in many health and beauty products.Honeycomb with eggs in the cells. The eggs look like tiny grains

of rice standing on end.

Interviewer: How long do bees live?

Buzz: Queens can live two to threeyears. In the summertime, drones andworkers live for only four to six weeksbecause their wings wear out. In thewinter they live longer because theydon’t fly. In the wintertime, they eathoney and shiver to generate heat.When it’s 5 degrees below zero(Fahrenheit; –20° C) outside, it’s 95degrees (Fahrenheit; 35° C) in the centerof the beehive. This keeps the colonyalive during the winter.

11

A honeybee queen (the larger bee in the center) is surrounded by workers that feed, clean, and take care of her.

Interviewer: How many bees live in a hive?

Buzz: In the summertime, there can be60,000 to 80,000.

Interviewer: How do bees find theirway back to the hive?

Buzz: When they leave the hive, theynotice where the sun is in the sky. Whenthey come back, they use the sun to find their way. On cloudy or rainy days,

bees don’t fly becausethey can’t seethe sun.

This beehive is a largebox with a row offrames inside. The bees build honeycombson the frames. Thehoneycomb is wherebees lay eggs, raisetheir young, and storepollen and honey.

12

Interviewer: What’s the differencebetween honeybees and “killer bees”?

Buzz: There is no difference, other thanwhere they come from. They producehoney just like regular bees. A scientistfrom South America bred bees fromAfrica with South American bees. Butthe Africanized bees he created areeasily riled up. Hundreds or thousandsof bees will attack one animal or person.

The Africanized bees, which somepeople call “killer bees,” come into a beehive, kick out the bees that livethere, and take over. You can come backnext week, open your beehive, andsuddenly get lots of stings. The beesmove in that quickly. People have beentrying to get rid of them for thirty years.But Africanized bees and honeybees dothe same job.

Types of Bees

Interviewer: Are there different kindsof honeybees?

Buzz: There are different kinds of beesfrom different places. Caucasian beescome from the Caucasus Mountains inEurope. Italian bees come from Italy,and there are bees from Africa. Theseare all honeybees. America actually hasno native honeybees. The Pilgrims andsettlers brought bees from Europe ontheir ships. Then those bees flew allover the United States and built hives.

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1. Bumblebee2. Mudwasp3. European

hornet4. Solitary bee5. Bald-faced

hornets6. Carpenter

bee

1

2 3

4

56

Making Honey

Interviewer: Do bees use pollen to make honey?

Buzz: No, they make honey from nectar,the liquid they collect from flowers. The bee goes to the flower and eats the nectar, putting it into her honeystomach. She flies back to the beehive,spits the nectar out, and other bees store it in the comb. Then bees fan theirwings to evaporate water from thenectar and make it thicker.

1615

Do You Know?Both queen and

worker bees havestingers. A workerbee’s stinger has a hook on the end.When a worker beestings, the stinger pullsout some of its insides.This kills the bee, so a bee will only stingwhen its life, or thehive, is at risk. Thequeen bee has asmooth stinger, so she can sting over and over.

Some people areallergic to bee stings.Their throats can swell up and causebreathing problems.People who are allergicto stings must carry aspecial medicine withthem to stop a reactionbefore it gets too bad.

A bee pushes its hookedstinger into the skin.

When the stinger sticks, it pullsout part of the bee’s insides.

The bee leaves a venom sacthat causes the sting to hurt.

A bee collects pollen and nectar from flowers.

But the biggest purpose of bees in thiscountry is not to make honey. Theirpurpose is to pollinate crops like alfalfa,an important animal feed, and melonsand almonds. Inside every flower, ananther produces pollen. This is apowder that contains the male cells ofthe plant. There is also a pistil, whichproduces seeds when pollen fromanother flower brushes on it. When a bee goes into a flower to get nectar,pollen from the anther rubs onto thebee. Whenshe goes tothe nextflower, thepollen rubsonto thepistil.

17

Honey comes in manydelicious flavors,depending on which flower the nectar came from.

The parts of a flower

Different flowershave differentflavors of nectar.Orange-blossomhoney tastesdifferent fromapple-blossomhoney. People

with orchards don’t have time to keep bees, so they rent bees from me. I take my bees into their orchard atnight and leave them for a week or two. After the flowers have fallen offthe trees, I take the bees home. When I take my bees to an apple orchard, I get apple-blossom honey. If I tookthem to an orange orchard, I’d getorange-blossom honey.

18

antherpistil

petals

stem

Interviewer: How do you get thehoney out of the comb?

Buzz: A wax cap seals the honeycomb. I have to cut off the capping and thenput the frame into a machine that spinsaround. This makes the honey fly out of the cells. I give the comb back to thebees, and they fill it up again. After thehoney comes out, I heat it to thin it.Then I filter out the wax and put thehoney in jars.

Interviewer: How much honey do youget from one beehive?

Buzz: Between 60 and 350 pounds(27–159 kg.) of honey a year, dependingon the location and how hardworkingthe bees are. Bees are like people. Somepeople get up early and work. But somelazy people don’t get up until 2 o’clockin the afternoon.

2019

Buzz’s honey house has a heating tank (lower right-hand corner)and a tube that pumps the honey through a filter bag (center)and into a bucket.

A frame of honeycomb. The honey is on the outside. The lightcircle contains eggs whose cells are capped to protect them untilthey hatch. The very center contains pollen.

Glossary

anther the male part of a flower;produces pollen (p. 17)

antibacterial kills bacteria (p. 21)

bellows pump that blows air (p. 6)

cells the six-sided cups that forma honeycomb; they holdeggs, honey, or pollen (p. 9)

congregate to gather together (p. 8)

extract take out (p. 5)

honeycomb layers of cells that form a beehive (p. 5)

native belonging to a specific placeor country by birth (p. 13)

pistil the female part of theflower; produces seeds (p. 17)

pollen male flower cells; often looklike yellow dust (p. 12)

2221

Do You Know?Honey never spoils.Bacteria don’t grow in it because it has toomuch acid. The acid is antibacterial. Puttinghoney on a burn or awound will help preventinfection and help thewound heal faster.

This bee is covered in pollen. She willspread the pollen to other flowers,producing seeds.