High school student’s hobby leads to her selection as spokeswoman for state association.
By: Emily Craighead
PLAINSBORO A Honey Queen knows that few hobbies yield as sweet a reward as beekeeping.
She learns to manage the world within the hive, replacing damaged combs in the winter, feeding the bees sugar water in early spring. Then, in late summer she harvests gallons of honey and wax for creams, lip balm, soap and candles.
"How the bees work in the hive, how from the different jobs you can tell where they are in their life," fascinates this year’s Honey Queen, Cora Lane resident Nicole Wagenblast.
Named Honey Queen by the New Jersey Beekeepers Association, Nicole will be a spokeswoman for the group this year, educating New Jerseyans about bees and beekeeping.
Nicole, a senior at West Windsor-Plainsboro High School North, is one of the youngest members of the beekeepers association. She and her father, Dave, have kept bees in their backyard since Nicole was 5 years old.
She became more serious about beekeeping after she took a course at Rutgers University on a scholarship from the state Beekeepers Association.
That also was the first time Nicole worked on a hive without a protective suit, and a bee sting to the head landed her in the hospital. She began carrying an EpiPen auto-injector, but continued, undeterred, tending her hives.
"She’d been stung before, and she’s been stung since" without experiencing a serious allergic reaction, Mr. Wagenblast said.
Nicole’s hobby elicits a morbid fascination among her friends, not unlike the reality television show "Fear Factor," she said.
"I think because people are so scared of bees, and there I am up to my elbows in them," Nicole said.
Stinging bees are one myth the Honey Queen is charged with dispelling.
According to New Jersey Beekeepers Association spokesman Curtis Crowell, the perpetrators of most "bee stings" in New Jersey are actually yellow jackets and wasps.
With a shield between themselves and the bees, however, more people will risk getting up close and personal with the bees.
"It’s amazing how many people we can get to go in the hives once we put them in a suit," Nicole said.
Nicole’s bees usually come from North Carolina, ordered through a catalogue and delivered by the U.S. Postal Service not a task the mailmen relish, according to Mr. Wagenblast.
Over the past couple of years, honey bee colonies in New Jersey and other parts of the country have fallen victim to mites that attack and weaken the bees.
"It wasn’t until I took the class (at Rutgers) that I started to realize the severity of the mite problems," Nicole said. "We were going through hives rather quickly then."
According to Mr. Crowell, mites are another reason his association wants to encourage more people to take up beekeeping.
In New Jersey, more than 8,000 honey bee colonies are used to pollinate the New Jersey blueberry crop each year. Other fruit and vegetables such as apples, strawberries, cantaloupes, squash, cranberries and watermelons also rely on honey bee pollination.
"We are trying to promote it as an interesting hobby," Mr. Crowell said.
Nicole’s beekeeping has become part of the third-grade science curriculum at Wicoff and Maurice Hawk schools. Each year, she visits classes to talk about her hobby and show students what it takes to be a beekeeper.
Getting started requires about a $250 investment in tools, equipment and, of course, the bees.
"There’s a lot to it, there’s stuff to know, but it’s still pretty simple," Nicole said.
Aside from the honey harvest, keeping bees is not a labor-intensive hobby.
Devoting 15 minutes five times a year to each hive is usually sufficient, according to Mr. Wagenblast.
In the Wagenblast household, the hobby yields jars and jars of honey and lip balm that Nicole’s mother Kathleen makes from the wax.
They keep some of the products and give others away to friends and family.
"Last year, we had a very good year, so we have a lot of gifts left," Mr. Wagenblast said.
In the fall, Nicole will attend Elizabethtown College in central Pennsylvania.
Her bees will stay behind it would probably too much to ask a new roommate to welcome honey bees into the dorm room.