Superior fifth-grader is a beekeeper training

11-year-old Ayla Henderson of Superior has the buzz on bees.

The ambitious fifth-grader who is fond of hives, swarms and honey is now a junior beekeeper working alongside Katie Benson in her bee yard at the Benson Homestead in Superior. 

On May 4, the aspiring apiarist set up her first official hive, commonly called a nuc. A nucleus colony is one of the simplest ways for beekeepers to begin a new colony. Nucs are nothing more than frames of comb that are removed from an established hive.

“After I got my bee box and painted it, and got ready to put the bees in, it hadn’t really sunk in that I was getting my very own hive,” beamed Henderson. 

It was a dream come true for the young girl who fell in love with the apiculture process through a school field trip in the second grade to the Rivulet Apiary in Alberton. 

She remarked, “Ever since then I have just wanted to learn all I can about bees, and their life cycles, and how honey is made.”

Thanks to a partnership with Benson, she can do just that. Benson took notice of Henderson’s passion for bees through the 4-H projects she had entered at the Superior Fair. Seeing her interest and dedication she offered to have Henderson come see what beekeeping was like firsthand.

“We are so excited to work with Ayla and help her add to her knowledge of bees, and their importance and help her gain a passion for their conservation” Benson remarked. 

To start working with the hives Henderson would need her own bee suit which Benson happily provided for her.

Although she’s been stung a time or two before, Henderson stated, “The bees don’t scare me. When you’re wearing the suit, you don’t have to worry about them much.” 

She went on to explain, “Unless you accidentally kill a bee, then it would put out a pheromone that alerts the other bees of danger, then they could go into attack mode.”

Henderson really is the queen of bee knowledge. 

“So, you have to know the difference between the drones and the worker bees. Drones kind of look like they have sunglasses on their heads, and are bigger, while workers have eyes on the side and are a little smaller,” she detailed. 

Drones are male honey bees, and worker bees are females whose reproductive organs are undeveloped. The majority of the honey bees in a colony are worker bees, and they do all the work in the colony except for laying fertile eggs.

She also mentioned, “Did you realize that it takes about 12 bees to make one teaspoon of honey?”

One difficult part of beekeeping is when you split a hive. 

“Sometimes they decide they don’t like the new queen, and the bees don’t realize they need to leave the old queen to make a new one," Henderson said.

Her favorite thing about bees, beekeeping, and the busy world of apiaries is knowing how foundational they all are to everything around them. 

Henderson shared, “It’s really important because without bees, like nothing else would even be alive. The flowers, the trees, the plants, animals, people, everything depends on them.”

In her junior beekeeper training Henderson will be helping in the coming weeks with mite treatments for the hives, which are crucial to have a healthy bee population for colony survival. Varroa mite feeding causes vitellogenin levels to decline. The feeding mites can also spread viral diseases, which significantly cut the bees' lifespans.

As the school year wraps up and summer begins Henderson hopes to frequent Benson’s bee yard often to don her white suit and veil. She’s not sure where her beekeeping journey will take her yet, perhaps an apiary of her own one day, or an opportunity to sell honey down the road. Either way, it's encouraging to see a young person Bee-lieve in themselves as Henderson does. And don’t forget, anyone who thinks they’re too small to make a difference hasn’t met a honey bee – or Ayla Henderson.

    Ayla Henderson, from Superior wears her bee suit for the first time. The traditional protective gear was purchased for her by Katie Benson who is sponsoring Henderson as a junior beekeeper at their apiary. (Mineral Independent/Amy Quinlivan)