Alayne Torretta is a 4-H agent from Lopatcong. She maintains that everything she’s done prior to her involvement with 4-H has brought her directly to 4-H Youth Development and their “learn by doing” approach. She earned her master’s degree in recreational therapy. Though 4-H showed up on her radar because of her recreational therapy background, 4-H is more an informal educational program than a recreational program, she says.

Alayne joined the Department of 4-H in 1999 at the state level and became a 4-H agent in Warren County the following year as part of the Rutgers Cooperative Extension. All agents are considered Rutgers University faculty and, as such, she is similar to an associate professor of 4-H Youth Development.

Additionally, she is the county 4-H coordinator, overseeing the 4-H horse show and the 4-H building at the Warren County Farmers’ Fair, along with livestock clubs, shooting club, and archery club.

Rutgers Cooperative Extension brings a wealth of knowledge from New Jersey’s state university to local communities. She says, “Extension professionals know a little bit about a lot.”

About four years ago, she started the Barnyard Bruisers, the first 4-H junior roller derby club in the country, with another adult skater named Chrome. She became certified in archery so she could bring it to the county. She got into beekeeping about five years ago and started a 4-H Beekeeping Club called the Bug-a-Boos. Her retirement plan is to keep bees and sell honey (she’s already decided on a name, “She’s A Keeper,” and designed a label for her jars of sweet golden goodness).

Beekeeping

The 4-H Bug-a-Boos include boys and girls in kindergarten through third grade. They also run the Butterfly Pavilion at the Farmers’ Fair to teach people about pollinators. The Bug-a-Boos meet once a month, either at the office to jar honey, or at a hive to harvest honey or test for mites. Next month they’ll finish jarring honey and rendering wax.

Did you know? Most honeybees are female. The males, called drones, are only used for reproduction and are all killed off in the fall before the hive hunkers down for winter. Keep reading for more interesting bee information!

For those considering beekeeping, Alayne says winter is a good time to research and begin making purchases. The outlay of money at startup can be daunting – suit, veil, gloves, smoker, other equipment, not to mention the hives and the bees. It can cost about $150 for the bees alone. Alternatively, “You can use lemon oil to make the hives attractive to bees,” Alayne said. “In addition, swarm lures [pheromones] can be purchased commercially and dabbed into the woodwork of a bait hive [an empty hive].” There are a few more simple tips for beehive maintenance: to make the hives waterproof, the outside of the hives can be painted any color; frames must be replaced as they get damaged or fall apart after years of use; mold and mildew that builds up has to be cleaned out of the hive.

The three hives Alayne tends were donated by a farmer, Rick Gardner, in Asbury. “If 4-H and Youth Corps want them,” the farmer had told her, “go ahead.”

“The cattle had pushed through them, stepped on them,” she said. She recruited help from the New Jersey Youth Corps of Phillipsburg. She began speaking again just as a bee flew by the hive and caught her delighted attention. “When the Youth Corps came, we cleaned everything up. These boxes were shattered. … Rick seems to think there was a bear that came and really scattered them. So, we cleaned them up with a bleach solution and fire. I took a torch and went around all the crevices to kill whatever might be growing in there.”

The Corps built their own boxes and Alayne helped set them up with their own hives. They even won The Corps Network 2020 Project of the Year Award with their beekeeping/pollination project called Plan “Bee.”

Alayne has another hive at the Hoff-Vanatta Homestead, which she lost right after Thanksgiving. She explained, “I had a cover, like an insulated garbage bag, made just for hives. I put it on and as I was adjusting it, I noticed none of the bees were coming out. So, I opened up the hive and they were all gone, the colony had collapsed. Although it was cold, they had lots of food, the mite count was low, so I’m not sure what got them. The queen was in there, she was marked, she had died too.”

That one is a 4-H hive; she considers those at the Gardner’s farm more or less hers, although most of the honey goes to 4-H, anyway.

“I’ll buy another nucleus hive for the kids – five frames in a box with a queen and workers, basically all set up,” she said.

The benefit of locating the hives on the farm is how close they are to each other. In the winter the bees can maintain a nice 70 degrees inside the hive. They do overwinter in the hive. Alayne said, “That’s why you want to leave them with lots of honey, lots of food, a sugar candy patty that gives them the energy they need. They just ball around the queen and constantly rotate in and out. The ones closest to the queen are the most tired because they’ve been there the longest. They’ll rotate out and rest a little bit, and then go back and keep going around and around so the queen stays warm.”

Keeping them warm and safe during winter is very tricky. If you ask 101 beekeepers how best to overwinter, you’ll get 101 different answers because everybody does it their own way. There are a few constants – venting or a barrier – wrapping the perimeter with plastic so the wind doesn’t reach it. The location and placement of the hive is important – they should face east. As for finding answers, Alayne said, “Google and Extension are my friends. That’s where I get a lot of the information I need, so I’m not bothering my mentor every day. A lot of good websites from the cooperative extension service have a lot of great research-based information.”

If all is well during the winter and the bees are alive you should be able to hear a hum inside. Alayne produced a stethoscope, put it in her ears, and pressed it to the side of the hive, moving it around as if she were listening for 30,000 heartbeats from inside.

“Everybody should have a [beekeeping] mentor,” she said. “My mentors are Tim and Mim Dunne from Belvidere.”

Now, she has become mentors to youngsters in the beekeeping club. “My club members are young, mostly it’s me showing them different things. If I had older kids that could really dig in, I’d give them these hives.”

The club recently received a $1,500 grant for hives, bees, and educational materials, and Alayne looks forward to showing off a new display at this year’s Farmers’ Fair that will show visitors what goes on inside the hive.

Now that winter is nearing its ends, she’s begun looking towards the coming season: “If it was spring, we could open up the hives. You’d hear the buzz. You just calmly do what you’ve got to do, and the bees go about their business. It’s very relaxing. They kind of let you be part of the hive.”

Although, she added, “Make no mistake, I have been stung, they can get kind of ornery if conditions aren’t right – if it’s too cold, if it’s windy, if it’s rainy, they don’t like that.”

They can feel threatened by humans too. “Rick and I were putting up some posts around the hives, and the bees were not having it,” she said. “They didn’t like him around. They chased him into his truck. I felt horrible. Who would have thought? It was a nice day, they were out and about, they just didn’t like the sound of us pushing the fenceposts in. I apologized profusely and he was okay with it.”

Another tip from the beekeeper: “You work with the bees on their terms. As a beekeeper you pick up all the subtleties of their behavior. You kind of try to set the odds in your favor. You go in between 10 a.m. and 3 p.m. during the day because most of them are out gathering pollen, so most of the hive is gone. That’s when you open them up, so you don’t have that many to deal with.”

She explained that hives usually have 50,000 to 60,000 bees. So, going in when there are less around – maybe 10-20,000, she said – is desirable.

Sunny, warm days are helpful, and using smokers calm the bees down dramatically.

“I use dried grass and rolled up newspaper in my smoker. I puff a little bit of smoke in the hive and that calms them down. It’s kind of like they think there’s a fire. If it were a true fire, they would have to eat some honey, gather everybody up, then head out. What they do is they eat the honey and the smoke fades away. Now they’re all just happy, full, lazy bees.”

As soon as the temperature rises to 50 degrees, Alayne will open the hives and place some candy patties (a soft-ish mix of a lot of sugar and a little water) inside. Soon after, the bees begin to look for the first flowers.

Alayne has three hives—made of stacks of boxes—at the farm. Separate hives are separate entities, no matter how closely they are placed to each other. Guard bees from one hive won’t allow workers from other hives inside. Drone bees can go anywhere they want, but that’s how disease is spread. When a mite-infested drone comes knocking at the hive.

She visits the hive every two weeks in the spring to test for mites. The test is simple: “Scoop out some bees and put them in a cup with a fine wire mesh on top. Pour some confectioner’s sugar in the cup and roll the bees around in it. The mites will fall off. Shake out the powder and the mites into a white bucket and let the bees go back in the hive. Squirt water into the bucket. … Two to three mites per 100 bees would indicate treatment is needed.”

Bee society

What indicates a healthy hive? First and foremost, Alayne advised, “There should be a good number of bees. The pattern on the frame should resemble a rainbow – honey is up in the top corners, brood is in the middle – you don’t want them scattered all over. You want to be able to find the queen, see evidence of the queen – eggs being laid, larvae in the brood, one egg in each chamber. If there’s a laying worker, there will be more than one egg in a chamber – that’s not good – you have to keep the queen healthy and happy.”

Each bee has a role in the success of the colony. The females in the hive consist of the queen, who lays the eggs; the nurse bees, who take care of the brood by secreting wax and collecting pollen; and the workers who do everything else! The drones (males) eat the honey and mate with a queen. That’s it!

The bees at the flowers foraging for nectar are workers. They build comb. They clean the hive and remove the dead. They maintain the temperature inside the hive. Since the males are not needed during the winter, the workers kill off all the drones in the fall when it gets cooler, tossing them outside. Then they’ll hunker down for the winter. The workers take care of the queen and tell her what the hive needs. They’ll say she needs to lay drones or she may be told to make a new queen – if she’s getting old, not doing her job, or there are too many bees in the hive.

If it’s getting crowded, the queen may make four or five queen eggs, and then take 60 percent of the hive elsewhere. Those left behind will nurture the new queen. However, since there can only be one queen, as the new queens emerge, they fight to the death.

Bees generally only live a couple of months, but the queen can live a couple years. If she’s a good queen.

Beekeeper tip: Plantain weeds – you’ll know them when you Google them — are good for taking the sting and swelling out of a bee sting. Simply crush it and press it on.

Rutgers Cooperative Extension History

In 1863, President Lincoln granted all the states land if they’d each build a school of higher learning, a way to give back to the state. Later, Teddy Roosevelt started the Cooperative Extension, where extension means reaching out. In this way, these land-grant institutions “extend” their resources and make research accessible to the people by solving public needs with college or university resources through non-formal, non-credit programs. For example, by supporting 4-H.

Rutgers University, founded in 1766 and designated the land-grant college of New Jersey in 1864, is the oldest school that currently holds land-grant status. The Rutgers Cooperative Extension of Warren County offers a number of different programs. Those interested in beekeeping can attend an introductory beekeeping program for adults and children in Belvidere, offered twice a year.

How to get involved

Alayne is always looking for Warren County adults to volunteer to share their interests and hobbies with youth. Currently she’s looking for a volunteer to assist with the beekeeping club. In addition, 4-H will be looking for host families for the Japanese Exchange Program this summer for a few weeks and of course, for the for 2021 4-HICUP program.  To be a host family, a background check for everyone over 18 in the family is required by Rutgers University. To host Japanese students, there is an additional requirement  that families should have a child of the same gender and age so the Japanese youth are more comfortable. Alayne believes that host families are what makes these international trips so successful. They bond and learn about life in the US first hand. In 4-H, the kids are the heroes and the 4-H professionals simply help them along the way. 

Visit the 4-H at the 2020 Warren County Farmers’ Fair from July 27-Aug. 1.

For more information about Warren County 4‑H or to otherwise get involved, please visit the website, www.warren4-h.org, or email Alayne Torretta at torretta@njaes.rutgers.edu.

Cooperative Extension of Warren County
Rutgers New Jersey Agricultural Experiment Station
Wayne Dumont Administration Building, Suite 102
165 County Rd. 519 South
Belvidere, NJ 07823-1949
4-H Youth Development: 908-475-6502

If you would like to nominate someone for person of the week, please reach out to Cathy at info@insidewarren.com.