Branxholm's beekeeper
“I find it very relaxing and very rewarding. Opening up a beehive and looking through, making sure things are alright and then all of a sudden after a couple of months you have a food source you can eat...”
• Larry Steenkamer shares the joy of beekeeping from his Branxholm property.
By Daisy Baker
December 23, 2020
It was purely by chance that Branxholm’s Larry Steenkamer took up beekeeping around five years ago.
At the time he was living in Ringarooma and one day he noticed a hive had been knocked over by a cow on a neighbouring farm.
With no knowledge of beekeeping, Mr Steenkamer embarked on a steep learning curve, with more stings than he cares to remember.
When Larry Steenkamer went to investigate the fallen hive, the farmer said he didn’t want anything to do with bees but was happy for Larry to keep the hive.
“I knew nothing about bees and the next minute he said, ‘let’s go and get it’,” Mr Steenkamer said.
“So we lifted it up, straight onto the back of his ute and of course we got stung a number of times.”
With a brood box and several boxes on top weighing around 40 kilos, Mr Steenkamer jumped headfirst into his new hobby.
He sought the guidance of the late Lance Burr who had more than 40 years’ experience in beekeeping and learned the ropes.
“I knocked on his door and told him I had just been given a hive but knew nothing about bees and he said, ‘come and sit down and I’ll teach you a few things,” Mr Steenkamer recalled.
“One thing led to another and I ended up giving him a hand for a number of years, helping him with his bees, extracting honey and we kind of helped each other from there.”
Beekeeping is not a hobby that Mr Steenkamer ever expected to take on, having suffered severe allergic reactions to bees as a child.
After undergoing more than a year’s worth of injections to desensitize him, a young Mr Steenkamer stayed away from bees until he was given the hive.
“I did question myself at first when I was getting involved and wondered if I was still allergic,” he said.
“I was working with Mr Burr one day and the box fell apart. I had probably about 2,000 bees in front of my veil and I was trying not to panic and standing there like a statue and these bees got into everywhere and I ended up with 32 stings on my back.
“I did wonder if the hobby was really worth it,” he laughed.
Five years on, Mr Steenkamer now has five hives on his block, which vary in size, housing anywhere from a couple of thousand bees to 50-60,000 bees in one hive.
It’s not all about honey though – he takes honey from three of the hives, while the other two are dedicated for bees to act as pollinators for the local community.
With a small gap at the bottom of the hive, bees come and go as they please, travelling up to five miles.
Mr Steenkamer said because of the distance they travel, the flavour of the honey they produce varies, depending on local crops such as poppies and potatoes.
“Then you’ve got flowering gum, white clover in people’s grasses, and basically any flower that has a stamen, a bee will get attracted to,” he said.
“When the wattle first comes out the bees go mad with that because they get all the pollen and they put it in for their young as food.”
Mr Steenkamer uses the winter months when the bees are largely dormant to do his maintenance, making frames and waxing them.
Over summer, a single box on top of a hive can be filled by bees in less than a week if the bees are on a good honey flow.
“How much honey you get out of them depends basically on the weather. If they get on a good flow, they’ll bring back heaps and all of a sudden you can fill a box in a week. That’s anywhere between 10-16 kilos of honey in a box,” he said.
“The first year I was into it I probably got around five kilos in a bucket.
“The following year after keeping up with it and looking after the bees, it was 120 kilos.
Up until last year I’d averaged around about the 100 kilos plus mark every year.”
He said a calm temperament is the key when handling bees because as soon as they sense nerves, you will become a target.
A smoker is also a key tool of the trade when accessing hives.
A few puffs of smoke prompt bees to close in the hive and gorge themselves with honey in case a fire is coming and they need to leave the hive and find a new tree to start again.
Mr Steenkamer is one of several hobby beekeepers around the North‑East.
He said that he enjoys the scale he currently operates at and while he’s not a big-time producer, he appreciates the little bit of honey he’s able to sell every year, profits from which go back into supplies.
When he’s not beekeeping, he’s doing odd jobs around the district, including lamb marking, painting and garden maintenance.
While his hobby is time consuming and costly, Mr Steenkamer said it’s rewarding.
“I find it very relaxing and very rewarding. Opening up a beehive and looking through, making sure things are alright and then all of a sudden after a couple of months you have a food source you can eat,” Mr Steenkamer said.
He said considering the vital role that bees play in the world’s food production, he would like to see more people acknowledging their work and taking an interest in beekeeping.
However, he said with the fast-paced nature of our lifestyles, beekeeping is becoming a less common hobby.
“In this day and age, everything is commercialised and flashing to gain your attention,” Mr Steenkamer said.
“A bit of old-fashioned watching and being taught how to do something with bees is I think beneficial to everybody, not just the instant gratification of buying something off the TV and here it is.
“Yes, there is a lot of work involved with beekeeping and you’ve more or less got to retrain your thoughts – that’s why I like doing it because if I remain calm, the bees remain calm.”
Our reporter was only mildly harmed in the making of this story, coming away with one bee sting to the head – enough to tell a funny tale.