YOUNGSTOWN, Ohio – Each year at the Canfield Fair, children crowd around a display of busy honeybees in a glass-enclosed hive.
It was a similar observation hive that got Julie Bartolone interested in beekeeping. A naturalist, Bartolone was working for Mill Creek MetroParks when there was an observation hive in its nature center. She was fascinated.
“That’s how I fell in love and became a beekeeper,” Bartolone says, adding she asked Don Kovach, who built and tended to the observation hive, questions every chance she got. “The more I learned, the more fascinated I was, and the rest is history. … Don has been my bee mentor since that time.”
Kovach, treasurer of the Columbiana and Mahoning County Beekeepers Association, believes in educating the public and future beekeepers. The organization is also responsible for the display at the Canfield Fair.
Mahoning and Columbiana counties each have about 200 colonies of bees at about 100 locations, known as apiaries, according to Arthur Conser, who has 55 years of beekeeping experience and now serves as the inspector for both counties following his retirement from commercial beekeeping. The number of hives per location ranges from one or two to 50.
Conser says there are fewer commercial beekeepers than 40 years ago, but more hobbyist beekeepers spread throughout the area. Some hobbyists are as knowledgeable as their commercial counterparts.
“I will say the hobby beekeepers that I’m meeting in my job and in the (beekeepers) association are excellent beekeepers,” Conser says. “We try to mentor the new beekeepers. Anytime somebody’s just starting up one hive or five hives, we try to have someone there to give them good advice.”
The association keeps reference books and offers the knowledge of members, some with 30 or more years of experience. Bartolone has been learning for nine years.
When he was a commercial beekeeper, Conser says he had no trade secrets. Sharing information promotes a healthy bee population.
“Ten years ago, we had a massive die-off of the bees,” Conser says. “This spring, again, has been a pretty big die-off of the commercial bees, I’m talking upwards of 60% maybe. … When you have 80,000 colonies and you lose 60% that’s nearly 50,000 empty beehives.”
The loss of so many bees is a matter for concern for longtime beekeepers. Conser said the cause could be a combination of things. There is a lot that goes into maintaining a healthy bee colony.
Bees will fly up to a 2-mile radius of their hive on average to forage for food, so spreading them out can be good. The ideal area has a variety of plants, blooming at different times. But Conser cautions it is also important that the bees have plenty of places to forage that have not been sprayed with chemicals. Dirty, contaminated water can kill a bee.
“These are pretty delicate little insects,” says Conser, who admits he lost three-fourths of his operation twice – once to pesticides and once when a flood washed away 700 hives.
Placement of beehive boxes, treatment for pests like Varroa mites and weather conditions like drought or extreme cold can all affect production and jeopardize the health of the hive.
Beekeepers leave 50 pounds of honey in each hive for the bees to consume until the end of March.
“Those are the calories they burn to keep warm during the wintertime,” Kovach says, adding he supplements with dry sugar in the winter. This year, the cold, wet May was not conducive for bee activity.
“They don’t come out of a hive unless it’s 50 degrees or warmer,” Kovach says.
Honeybees need good airflow to make honey from the nectar – too much moisture is bad. Yet when it’s hot, the bees bring water into the hive and beat their wings to cool it. If it’s too hot, the colony will overheat; too shady and beetles will invade and destroy the hive.
Big Business in Ohio
Ohio honey production in 2024 totaled 1.25 million pounds from producers with five or more colonies. Both Ohio and national production was down 4% from 2023, according to Ben Torrance, the USDA Ohio statistician for the Great Lakes region. According to Torrance’s numbers released by the USDA in March, there were 22,000 honey producing colonies in the state producing an average of 57 pounds per colony, which was down eight pounds from a year ago. Production value totaled $7.62 million, with the average price of honey at $6.08 per pound, up $1.72 from 2023.
Groups like the Columbiana and Mahoning Beekeepers Association and the Trumbull County Beekeepers Association provide members with continuing education and mentors. They work with 4-H or scouting troops interested in completing beekeeping projects. The group also works to educate the public about honeybees, the latest honey harvesting techniques and protective measures against pests.
Each hive is a sophisticated colony with one queen and workers, guards, housekeepers, undertakers, nurses and attendants to protect and serve her.
Her death or disappearance riles the hive and it takes more than two weeks for a new queen to develop. Then she leaves to mate, hopefully returning to lay eggs to supplement the workforce.
If a hive becomes overcrowded, a swarm of bees may leave. That’s when worried homeowners may call a beekeeper like Kovach.
He keeps bait hives in several locations, boxes that are inviting for bees to relocate into – something that benefits Kovach too.
Relocating and collecting swarms is much less expensive than buying bees. A three-pound box of bees with a new queen can cost nearly $300.
He wishes people understood honeybees better. Too often he gets a call later in the summer about a swarm that turns out to be yellow jackets, hornets or wasps – many people don’t see a difference. And too often he gets a call about a swarm, but someone has already sprayed them with insecticide out of fear.
“A swarm of bees don’t bother you, they’re just on a pit stop looking for a home,” Kovach says.
Kovach keeps some of his hives in his suburban backyard in Youngstown near Austintown. He has additional hives and a honey house for harvesting and processing on his parents’ property and helps care for another group of hives in a field near Canfield.
Educating the Public
Kovach will be speaking at the Ford Nature Center in Millcreek Park in July. He also supplies bees for an observation hive set up annually at the Beaver Creek Wildlife Center and loans small observation hives to Bartolone, who founded Wild You! after leaving her position at Millcreek. Wild You! is a nonprofit, which gives educational presentations to school groups, clubs, children and families about a variety of naturalist topics, like a sponsored Lightning Bug Night planned for June 28 that will be free for children. Bartolone aims to get children interested in the outside world.
For Kovach and others in the Columbiana and Mahoning County Beekeepers Association, the biggest education program of summer is at the Canfield Fair.
The group has already started ordering product – bottles, honey straws and containers. They will sell thousands of pounds of products during the week of the fair and educate fairgoers along the way.
Keeping the next generation interested is important, Kovach notes, adding pollinators are in danger from pesticides, pests, mites and habitat loss. Without pollinators, other animals and food sources are in jeopardy.
“My mission is to make better beekeepers and inform the public about the importance of the pollinator,” Kovach says.
Pictured at top: Don Kovach watches bees work in a top bar system beehive behind his Youngstown home.