Cousins: Back Row: Cindy Gustafson, Barry Wetzel, Vanessa Dolce, Kay Wetzel, Douglas Lang. Front Row: Kim Wetzel, Mike Dolce, Dean Lang, David Lang, Gary Dolce, Diane Lang, Jan Gustafson. Photo taken Alice's house, Beulah, Mercer Co., ND, 1959. Photo courtesy of Kay Koslan.

Kay Koslan comments: My dad started with a small bee screened box in our garden to pollinate his large 1/2 acre garden, probably as an experiment. It was around 1960. I decided to check them out one day. They started buzzing around my head and I left running. I once took them to school for show and tell. The bee bit this boy I liked. I was embarrassed but I found the bee sack, so he didn't feel the sting. Over the years it grew to hives on farmer's lands. They loved it and he would bring them honey every year. Dad used it to make extra money but also loved the outdoors. A couple of years it was my job to wash all the honey jars in hot soapy water and add his label, "Spring Creek Apiary" to the jars. They'd sell it at the local grocery store. My brothers, Barry and Kim, had to help with the honey extraction. It was quite a setup. His hot knife to slice off the top layer of bees wax and then an expensive honey extractor to centrifugally remove the honey. It was always in the hot part of the summer. Then my dad and brothers would move the honey into honey barrels for packaging. Dad readied all his bee frames each year and the flat wax with octagonal shapes begun to give the bees a place to start that was added to the frames. He subscribed to Bee Journal magazines to learn more. Once the word spread and it sold in places in South Dakota, where they also had crops of sweet clover. The honey was the best, according to Dad, because it was sweet clover honey and never mixed with other types of pollen. Only bees that propagated sweet clover. And then Dad collected the extra bee pollen that he placed in the freezer. He said it was good for arthritis. He'd take a spoonful every day. Sometimes people would bring their jars to dad at our house and they'd pay just for the honey. There were other years, someone would call and ask to get rid of the bees. So he'd pull out his honey bee hive smoker and go over to the location. This was the same way the hives were emptied of the bees so the honey boxes could be brought in to harvest the honey. He'd smoke the bees and they'd fill up on honey and move away. They did not sting then. Dad quit selling locally eventually and sold his honey to the large apiaries in South Dakota in barrels. The amount varied by year because of the bees, but the largest crop of honey he got was 63 barrels, each at 600 lb. Thus 37,800 lb (18.9 tons). He kept up the bees until after my mother died. He sold all of his equipment and barrels to an apiarist in 2004. It was sad to see it go but by that time, Dad was 76. The final day in 2004, my brother and Dad loaded up the boxes ready for the new owner.

Dad and my brothers and spent late summer every year until 2004 with honey bees - more than 40 years. I forget how many hives we had, but we had a lot. They were on ten different locations; one was on my Grandma Alice Abbey's land, which the Abbey children and family still own today.

Photos courtesy of Kay Koslan.