Spring is an exciting time for lovers of the honey bee. As temperatures creep above 50 degrees, beekeepers everywhere head out to their yards in search of but one thing — the hum.It is then we start to see the earliest signs of activity. A light knock on the side of the hive should be rewarded with the buzzing promise of bottling honey and the harvesting of wax.

My husband had a bad accident last fall and so this spring it was up to me to accompany our dear friend Jim Baerwald, a commercial beekeeper from Eau Claire, out to our hives at Andrew's School farm in Buchanan. Making our way out the bumpy tractor trail to...

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