The Bee’s Knees: Local Couple Adopts a Healthful Honey of a Hobby

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Three years ago, Paula Cunningham looked out at the little apple orchard behind her and husband Tom’s Ashland, Wisconsin, home and had an aha thought: “It would be a great idea to get some bees.”

Some quarter of a million bees later, they have their payoff: golden sweet honey – 250 pounds last year and likely more this year.

Tom, a family practice physician with St. Luke’s Chequamegon Clinic in Ashland, has become the chief beekeeper, drawn by the science and art of hive keeping.

“For me, there is a fascination to everything surrounding bees,” Tom says. “I’m fascinated by the orderliness of how things happen in the hive, by how you can manipulate a colony and the science of it.”

Scientists are just as intrigued by honey and its properties. Honey has a long history of being used as medicine. Modern testing has debunked some old myths – sorry, eating local honey isn’t going to cure your allergies – but others have merit.

Honey remains a popular remedy for sore throats and coughs. Recent research supports this tradition.

In one study, honey soothed night coughs of children with upper respiratory tract infections. “Honey appeared to be as effective as a common cough suppressant ingredient, dextromethorphan, in typical over-the-counter doses. Since honey is low-cost and widely available, it might be worth a try,” suggests Mayo Clinic’s Dr. James M. Steckelberg.

Because of its antiseptic properties, honey has been used for millennia to dress wounds. It’s used commercially today in products like MediHoney to prevent infection, reduce inflammation and speed the healing of wounds and burns.

The real health benefit from the Cunninghams’ hives, though, might be in the keeping of the bees rather than the harvesting of honey.

“When I first thought of having bees, I had the idea someone else would just come and put a hive here,” laughs Paula, an instructor at Wisconsin Indianhead Technical College and project coordinator at NorthLakes Community Clinic. “But the next thing I knew we were managing the hive.”

The couple now keeps five hives, filled with 250,000 buzzing, swarming and sometimes-testy Carniolan and Russian bees.

Like gardening, classified as a moderate-level activity by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, beekeeping requires plenty of full-body movement: bending, lifting, squatting, walking, hauling. Plus there are the proven restorative benefits – stress reduction to boosting mental acuity – of spending time with nature. “It’s a very active hobby,” Paula agrees. “It requires you to be outdoors, tinkering with the hives. Depending on how many hives you have and where they are placed, you might do a lot of walking back and forth.”

Each Cunningham hive consists of a wooden box filled with racks serving as the foundation for honeycombs. Maneuvering the honey-laden racks can be a workout itself.

“We’ve weighed our hives,” Pauls says. “Some have put on 200 pounds of honey.”

Honey has become the staple sweetener in the Cunningham home, favored in tea and on peanut butter sandwiches. Recent research suggests nutrients in natural honey aid digestion, while honey’s prebiotics support good bacteria in the system.

And while it’s unlikely swarms of folk will take up beekeeping for the exercise, it turns out honey can aid a workout.

Honey’s fructose burns slowly, providing sustained energy throughout physical activity. It’s for this reason that athletes should consider honey when they need a lift. In a study of long-distance cyclists, fructose-rich honey provided a bigger performance boost than a high-glucose carbohydrate gel.

As the Cunningham colonies thrived, another healthful bounty arose in their little backyard orchard. “Our apples and cherries became prolific,” Paula says. “It is amazing.”

Their bees help local producers, too. Fred Erickson of Bayfield’s Erickson Orchard had Tom install seven relatively maintenance-free Perone-style hives (they look like small houses) among his apple trees.

The result? Fred says apple production is up since the pollinators have come to live on site.

Based on that success, the Cunninghams placed a hive at Weber Orchards, Bayfield, and at Northern Garden of Life near Ashland.

What started as a whim and a way to help their own apple trees has become the Cunninghams’ contribution to strengthening the local orchard economy. But the real buzz is that they’ve found a healthy passion to last a lifetime.

Good to Know

Find regional beekeeping associations through these websites:

Ontario Beekeepers, www.ontariobee.com

Northeastern Minnesota Beekeepers, www.nemnbeekeepers.org

Northwestern Wisconsin Beekeepers, www.wihoney.org

Upper Peninsula Beekeepers, www.michiganbees.org

Writer Claire Duquette probably won’t be adding hives to her Washburn, Wisconsin, home, but she does like local honey.