(Bees gather in one of many supers, a stacked wooden box that compromises a human-made hive. Beekeepers tend to tens of thousands of the honey-making insects in local hives. Photo by Karen Wong)

Sweet, golden honey is truly precious as it takes a worker bee a lifetime to produce just one-twelfth of teaspoon worth.

The love of honey and beekeeping is alive and well in Duxbury. Many families raise bees at their homes and in community gardens.

Capraro’s hive is typical of modern beehives, a design that can be traced back to the mid-1880s, according to “The Backyard Beekeeper” by Kim Flottum. The hive consists of stacked wooden boxes called supers. Each super has eight to ten frames where the bees live and make honey. There is a narrow opening along the bottom of the hive that allows the bees to come and go while keeping mice and other animals out. During productive summer months as the bee population grows, additional supers with empty frames are placed below the top cover creating space for more bees and more honey. Hives typically start with 10,000-15,000 bees, but as the queen begins laying eggs, the hive can swell to as many as 60,000.

Capraro has one hive at her home and two at a community farm in Plympton. Two of the hives remained occupied over the winter and Capraro was hopeful they would survive. Once her empty hive was repaired and cleaned, Capraro simply had to wait until late April to pick up her package of bees from the Plymouth County Beekeeping Club.

It was warm and sunny last April when Capraro picked up her bees. Once the buzzing, screened, wooden package filled with bees was secured in the back of her SUV, it wasn’t a long drive to the Colchester Farm where Kerrie Capraro planned to install the bees into a hive.

“In beekeeping there are only two or three big events a year and the first is installation,” said Capraro. “Then there are regular check-ups to check the well-being of the bees and to add supers. Different beekeepers check with different frequency. The final big event is taking frames of honey from the hive and doing the extraction, typically in October.”

Bright spring leaves bloomed around a tall hive that remained occupied over the winter. The pastoral setting is perfect for beekeeping with shade trees and a pond to provide water, essential for the bees’ survival. Capraro trimmed away branches that touched the hive then pressed her ear against the side to listen to the gentle humming. New bees would populate a vacant hive placed nearby.

After donning a veiled hat, elbow-length gloves, long pants with socks pulled up over the bottoms and boots, Capraro and her 12-year-old son Quinn set out with a smoke pot to calm the bees in case they became agitated. Getting stung is an inevitable part of beekeeping but knowing how to dress and behave around bees keeps stings to a minimum.

The first step was to carefully lift the queen cage out of the package with a small pry-bar called a hive tool. The queen box is about 1 ½ x 3 inches and includes a few attendants who care for the queen.

“The queen will be released from the queen cage by the workers through a hole sealed with bee-candy which acts as a plug,” said Capraro.

The plug is made out of a marshmallow-like substance that is consumed in about the same time period it takes for the worker bees to get comfortable with and hopefully accept their queen.

“It’s important to return to the hive after the first week to look for eggs,” Capraro said, “because that will show if the queen is viable or if a new queen is needed, a process known as re-queening.”

Capraro put the queen cage in-between two frames in the super then removed the can of sugar water that kept the package closed. It served as the food source for the bees during transport and will continue to feed the workers until they become familiar with their new home and nectar becomes available. Next was the somewhat comical step of getting the bees out of the package and into the super. Capraro grasped the package tightly and began gently shaking out the bees as they poured into the super like a stream of water. She replaced the inner and outer covers of the super and leaned the cage of stragglers against the hive so the remaining bees could fly in through the small opening near the base. Her work at the hive was done for the day. Now it was up to the bees to acclimate to their new home.

Capraro was hopeful the bees would survive but said, “It’s up to the bees at this point.”

Laura Sullivan has raised bees for four years. She started off the 2012 season with three new beehives after losing everything the year before.

“I had one hive that we think was wiped out by yellow jackets last summer and two died over the winter, maybe due to cold or starvation, but there was uneaten food in the hives,” said Sullivan. “I was happy to start over because last year’s bees were from Florida and they were Africanized. They were very aggressive.”

Sullivan ordered bees in the late winter and installed them in early April. Laura keeps her hives far from her house in the backyard where they’re sheltered by shade and have access to a stone birdbath.

On April 20, it was time for the weekly hive check to see if the queen made her way out of her designated cage (or package) and was accepted as the queen of the hive. It’s not something beekeepers take for granted. According to beekeepers, there’s a fifty-fifty chance a queen will be accepted.

Sullivan also made sure there was enough sugar water to feed the workers until they could gather nectar to make their own honey. Sullivan makes a solution that is equal parts sugar and water.

Two weeks after Sullivan installed the bees, the queen vacated the queen cage and was inside the hive. Worker bees had already made an oval honeycomb outside of the queen cage, which Sullivan could use to make lotion or candles.

Said Sullivan, “I would rather the bees use the energy that they used on making that extra piece of comb on the queen case, on drawing out comb in the hive.”

For more information on local beekeeping visit plymouthcountybeekeepers.org.