Couple gets hives after seeing bee movie ‘Ulee’s Gold’ inspires Tinton Falls couple to begin keeping bees By gloria stravelli Staff Writer JERRY WOLKOWITZ Mary Kosenski of Tinton Falls knows the bees do most of the work, but she still has plenty to do for her business, E&M Gold. The newly arrived queen bee meandered over her Tinton Falls bee yard as Mary Kosenski watched. "I’d just received a shipment in the mail of a newly mated queen bee," she explained. "When the box was opened, she flew out and took a 10-minute tour of the bee yard. It was funny. I thought, ‘I’ve spent this much money, and she’s gone.’ But she must have been like a teen-ager, just not ready to settle down to her work. She flew back, and I watched her go into the hive." Kosenski’s avocation as a beekeeper began when she and her husband watched a popular film. "My husband and I had just moved here," she said referring to her Tinton Falls home. "We watched the movie Ulee’s Gold. It realistically depicts the life of a beekeeper. "The next day, my husband called and said he’d just bought a beehive in South Jersey. We went down and we brought back a whole working colony — one queen and about 50,000 worker bees. Kosenski grew up around bees, so to speak. "My father was a beekeeper," she explained. "I grew up with it, but didn’t pay much attention." Now they share a common interest. "I share my beekeeping with my father," she said, "A lot of my original equipment I got from him." What began as a hobby has grown steadily over the last few years, Kosenski noted, and two years ago when she lost her job, she decided to make a business of beekeeping. After taking some business courses, she and her husband Edmond started E&M Gold Beekeepers and Distributors. The gold in the title refers, as it did in the movie, to the honey. Kosenski harvests up to 1,000 pounds of honey per season. She currently has 40 bee colonies at her own 21/2-acre property and sites scattered around Monmouth County. And she is always on the lookout for more. "I’m looking for permanent places to put my bees. I only need six or seven hives here," she explained. "I’m also a master gardener so I find new sites from people I meet, friends and farmers who need pollination for their crops." Spreading the hives out gives bees a bee yard in which to gather pollen and nectar, according to Kosenski, who explained that an ideal bee yard must have certain features. "The front should face south, there should be a tree line north of it to act as a windbreak, it should be fairly level with a slight elevation, it should be accessible by truck, and it should have a pond or stream," she explained. Among the local kitchens and retailers that E&M Gold supplies to are Mumford’s Culinary Center, Tinton Falls; Second Nature health food store and Front Street Trattoria, Red Bank; Sickles Farm Market, Little Silver; Pasta Fresca, Shrewsbury; Skip’s Deli, Eatontown; and the Farmers Markets in Red Bank and West Long Branch. In addition, Kosenski is frequently asked to share her knowledge of bees. "I have four to five requests per week from Scout groups, church groups, schools and culinary groups, and special events like Sickles’ Blueberry Festival, which will be held July 21," she said. For these events, Kosenski brings along a portable glass-sided observation hive containing two frames of live bees — minus the queen. "The schoolchildren always ask where the queen is," Kosenski noted. "I tell them I don’t take her, because she’s busy laying 1,000 eggs back at home." What can they learn from bees? "How about cleaning your room?" she asked. "The first job they do is to clean their own room. That’s what I tell the kids. They’re meticulous housekeepers." Instead of the traditional skep — or cone-shaped beehive — bee colonies these days are commonly contained in wooden boxes called supers. Each super holds up to 10 wooden frames which Kosenski builds and in which she fits preformed honeycombed sheets of wax to give the bees a foundation to build upon. "I think the bees like it better," she said. "I’ve given them a base to build on. It’s easier for them, and I can reuse it. They build up beeswax on both sides of the cells. The individual hexagonal chambers hold the honey, pollen and the brood." The supers are stacked with the queen in the bottom super which is used for the brood. Above that, shallower frames hold excess honey. Kosenski paints the supers with leftover paints. The gaily mismatched stacks are recognizable to the bees, she explained. "They know it’s theirs. They won’t go into the one next to it," she said, noting, "Flowers are colors so they really know what flowers they are visiting." According to Kosenski, when bees leave the hive, they orient themselves by using features in the landscape and the position of the sun; they always return to their own colony. "If I move them, they still go back to the same spot," she explained. "So I have to be careful. When I move them, I move them at night and move them more than a mile away. If it was closer than a mile, the next day they would go back to the same spot [they came from]." Worker bees (all females) have a unique and rather elaborate system of communicating the location of a flower patch to their hive mates. "The scouts go out and look for sources of food, then come back and tell the colony where nectar is," Kosenski explained. "They come back and do the ‘waggle dance.’ You can watch it. Scientists have studied it and found that the bees give directions to where the food source is. The other bees can interpret the information. "It’s a very intricate communication," she added. "They do it right on the frame. They turn and wiggle. They move in a circle or in a straight line. The other bees respond to the ferocity of the dance. They’re watching a lot of dances. The one who is the most adamant in its dance is the one that convinces the others that’s the place to go to. They will fly two to three miles in each direction to find food." The honeybees collect pollen and nectar to feed themselves and their larvae, carrying it back to the hive and packing it into the cells. Each worker bee will produce about one tablespoon of honey during its lifetime of five to six weeks. Kosenski checks the frames to judge when the honey is ready to be taken, being careful to leave enough for the bees’ own use. "About 60 pounds is necessary for each colony to survive the winter and take a rest," she said. "Some colonies can make in excess of 100 pounds of honey per season." To harvest the honey and collect beeswax, Kosenski uses a blower to get the bees to leave temporarily. The frames are spun in a centrifugal machine, and the honey flows out into tubes and filters. The frames are returned to the super and the bees return. Care of the bees changes with the seasons. Honey is extracted in July before the August drought when hives may go dormant. Fall flowers prompt another honey flow when the bees store their winter supply; Kosenski can usually get a little more honey, but she is careful to take only what the bees won’t need. She checks the bees again in October to make sure they have enough to feed on for the coming winter and in February, when she may add a sugar-water syrup to the hive if the food supply is low. When the spring comes, the bees stir. "They start work when the sun begins to warm things up in the spring and blooming begins. They start gathering nectar and pollen, and the queen starts laying eggs again to repopulate the hive," she explained. Kosenski sees her role in this cycle as that of caretaker. "We cannot own these bees," she said. "They are their own creatures. I maintain them to try to help them as best I can, but I have to let them do their own job. I only own the box."