BUSY AS A
Bureau County woman loving her role as a beekeeper Story and photos by Shannon Serpette
W
ith a full-time job as a speech pathologist, a huge house to keep up, and a small farm to tend to, Angela Bornemann wasn’t looking for a new hobby. But she found one in the form of an apiary, and now she enjoys her queen bee role as a beekeeper. Both Angela and her husband, Chad, grew up in the Illinois Valley. For 13 years after leaving the area, they lived in Chicago before moving to a 26-acre farm in Peru on the edge of Bureau County five and a half years ago. “We were ready to settle down and have a more relaxed lifestyle,” she said. “This is our little slice of heaven here.” Right before the pandemic hit, Angela’s brother, Luke Tomsha, who lives in LaSalle, suggested they begin beekeeping together on her property. “He’s a lover of nature, as we are,” she said. “That Christmas, he bought me my first beekeeping book, Beekeeping for Dummies,” she said. Before Tomsha had mentioned beekeeping to Angela, it hadn’t been on her radar. “I didn’t even think about beekeeping,” she said, adding that she was fascinated by the book once she started reading it. “I couldn’t put it down.” She learned more about the plight bees are facing and decided she wanted to do her part to help solve a big ecological problem – the decline of the bees. “It’s a lot to do with the loss of the habitat for the bees,” she said, adding that their decline can also be partially attributed to pesticides and insecticides being used on farms, as well as issues with diseases. The one obstacle to her plan of becoming a beekeeper was a sizeable one. “My husband is allergic to bees,” she said. Despite his allergy, Chad encouraged Angela to follow her dream. “He loves every aspect of it,” she said. “He knows how much joy it brings me.” The 10-acre field located near their house was planted with alfalfa, which is a plant that attracts bees. “We didn’t want to use pesticide or insecticide,” she said. “With alfalfa, you don’t necessarily have to spray it.” After reading the book and considering all See BEES page 12
10 May 2022 | Illinois Valley Woman | A NewsTribune Publication
Who’s Who in a Hive
As Angela Bornemann pursued her hobby of beekeeping, she quickly learned about the role each bee plays in its hive. The queen bee: “She is the most important bee in the colony,” she said. The queen is the largest bee in the hive and the only hive member who can lay both fertilized and unfertilized eggs. While queens may have an easier life than worker bees, they’ll live almost entirely in the hive. “The queen only leaves her hive typically twice during her lifetime,” Angela said. One is when she goes on a maiden mating flight where she mates with drones and the only other time she’ll leave the hive is if the colony were to swarm to find a new home. Worker bees: Worker bees are all females, but they can’t reproduce. They do most of the work in any hive, doing tasks such as finding pollen, maintaining the hive, protecting the queen, and raising the young. Most of the bees in a hive are worker bees. Drones: Drones are male bees, and they make up about 10 to 15 percent of the bees in any given hive. “Their only job is to mate with a queen,” Angela said.
Angela Bornemann points to the queen bee in one of her hives. The company she buys bees from offers customers the option to have their queen tagged. That way, she’s easier to spot when they’re checking over their hives.
