Powerful Life

They value the power of honeybees

Other duties as assigned? Mixing business with pleasure?

Whatever you call it, Nebraska City Station’s Brian and Krista Kreifel stepped out of their power station roles and into their beekeeping suits this spring to relocate some busy bees at the plant’s site.

Brian, manager of Maintenance Services, and Krista, performance improvement specialist, took up beekeeping five years ago to help pollinate fruit trees and other produce on their 5-acre property west of Nebraska City.

Both natives of Nebraska City, they bought the acreage when they married 10 years ago and planted apple, peach, cherry and pear trees, plus pumpkins and other produce. The benefits of bees are noticeable.

“This year, we can see a huge difference; our crops are absolutely flourishing,” Krista said. “We attribute this to the bees and the opportunity to go from one to three hives this spring.”

That opportunity knocked when the bees showed up on site during Nebraska City Station’s maintenance outage.

Outage extras

Brian’s ears perked up at the morning meeting when talk turned to bees congregating on a fence around the old guard shack.

“There were a lot of contractors walking past the gate, and it was a safety concern,” said Brian, adding that hundreds of extras come onto the property during an outage.

“I offered to take care of it,” said Brian, who suited up in a bee suit and protective gloves.

The task involved using sugar water and smoke to calm them, then brushing the swarm into the bee box. Removing the bees from both sides of the fence proved challenging. He returned the next day and repeated the task to get the remaining bees, including the queen bee.

“The bees were looking for a home and food sources,” Brian said. “They cluster up because they are trying to protect the queen.”

A couple of days later, Brian got a call about another swarm by the fire protection valve, which is located outside the administration building. He enlisted Krista to help. She had been at an off-site meeting the first time.

“It was so much easier with two people,” he said.

Before joining OPPD in 2009, Brian worked as an electrician for 25 years. After nine years in the Electric Shop, he did a stint on OPPD’s Innovation team. From there, he worked as maintenance program specialist at NCS for a few years before being named to his current position.

Krista worked OPPD as a summer helper and began fulltime work in the warehouse in 2013. She has worked in her current role for energy production since 2019.

The Kreifels moved both colonies to their property, and each is in a different phase of honey production. Their knowledge of bees and bee behavior helped make the relocations a success.

‘Beekeeping for Dummies’

The Kreifels admit they have done a lot of learning over the past five years to get to this point. This included getting their hands on the “Beekeeping for Dummies” book, which they still use today, watching YouTube videos, visiting bee-related blogs, and joining the Nebraska Beekeeper’s Association Facebook group.

Chad Kuchta, supervisor of maintenance services at North Omaha Station, who’s also a beekeeper, has been a helpful resource for them, as well.

“I thought he was crazy when he first said he wanted to get some bees to help pollinate the fruit trees,” Krista said. “He was allergic to bees as a kid.”

Nonetheless, Brian purchased a beekeeper’s kit and a package of bees from a Lincoln distributor.

The kit included a brood box (section where bees raise their brood and store honey for their own consumption, especially during the winter), honey super (section that stores honey for human consumption), bee hive frames, a smoker, and protective gear (beekeeper suit, gloves).

“The three-pound package was the size of a shoe box, but it contained 9,000 to 10,000 bees.” Brian said. “It came with a queen who was isolated in a little screened matchbox so the worker bees could still take care of her and protect her.”

Krista said they were leery transporting the package back to Nebraska City on the floorboard of their back seat.

“We heard humming and buzzing the whole ride home,” she said.

Passing it down

After working with the bees for several years, they have a higher level of comfort around them.

“Bees are extremely gentle; they won’t harm you if you don’t disturb them,” Brian said.

That, too, has been a learning process.

They started the hobby when their youngest, Emma, was 2. Honey harvesting is a family affair — Emma enjoys helping her parents at the honey-harvesting station Brian created in an outbuilding on the property.

They taught her and her friends to wear shoes in the yard and to respect the bees.

Now, that lesson is being taught to two granddaughters.

Brian’s two oldest boys, Trevor and Jacob, each have a daughter.

Jacob joined OPPD in August as a helper in Production Operations. Two other sons, Cael and Jackson, attend Milford and are studying to be electricians.

Amazing creatures

Balancing work and an active family with their hobby has proved challenging at times. All their boys played football, wrestling and baseball, and they spent at a lot of time at games in past years. Now, Krista, a former Peru State softball player, coaches Emma’s traveling soccer team.

“These days, we spend a couple of hours a week checking on the bees, and honey harvest time is a weekend event,” Brian said.

“For what they do for the property, it’s well worth it,” he added. “They really are amazing creatures.”

Among the most fascinating facts they have learned is that honeybees have facial recognition. Both believe their bees recognize them behind the bee suit masks.

Other interesting tidbits revolve around the queen. A group of worker bees protect and care for the queen, whose role is laying eggs (more than 1,000 a day) and regulating the colony. When a bee colony needs a new queen, worker bees will raise a new one quickly by feeding a special royal jelly to a young larva.

“Bees populate and increase in number faster than you know,” Brian said. Their initial box of 9,000 to 10,000 grew to 60,000 to 70,000 bees in a year’s time.

“They have to overpopulate and store food because once winter hits, they don’t enter or exit the hive,” Brian said. “They feed off of the honey in the brood box, but many die.”

The extreme cold last year with the polar vortex proved harsh. He’s hoping to minimize the loss this year with insulating blankets.

Another fun fact: Honeybees were named the state insect in 1975 because they are so beneficial to Nebraska’s agriculture. Nearly 33% of all the food Americans eat is directly or indirectly affected by honeybee pollination, according to Conservation Nebraska.

Home sweet home

The bees seem to like their homes. Each colony has its own bee box hive. These are tucked into a tree line toward the back of the Kreifel property, near a small creek and a bee watering station filled with stones. Twenty fruit trees, pumpkins, tomatoes, cucumbers, and a patch of wildflowers on their property provide nectar and pollen.

“Bees are most active in the middle of the day,” Krista said. “It gets hot in the hive, and they go out and find food.”

They said watching the bees fly in and out of the hives is therapeutic.

“Sometimes we just pull the all-terrain vehicle down and watch the activity,” Krista said.

“Bees can travel up to three miles for their food,” she added. That means flora from the farms and acreages along the gravel road, including her parent’s farm a half mile away, sweeten the honey, too.

Other benefits of bees

When they started out, they were more interested in the bees for pollination for the trees and the pumpkins, rather than the honey.

After studying up, they learned the many health benefits of local raw honey. Honey is an antioxidant, and it helps with immunity and digestive issues, among other things.

They produced a couple of gallons the first year. Then, they came up with a brand name: Emma Bee Honey, based on the nickname, Emma Bee, that Krista’s dad has used for Emma since she was little.

They ordered stickers, bottled the honey and gave it to family and friends until it’s gone.  However, when they started gathering too much honey for their own consumption, they started to sell it on their Facebook page, Emma Bee Honey, and it was a hit.

Busy bee

As for the fruitful trees, Krista keeps busy this time of year peeling apples, baking apple pies and dehydrating apple rings. The dehydrator, a new purchase, offers another use for the estimated 150 pounds of apples they expect this year.

Last year, she made 50 apple pies, and sold about 35 of them. She could triple pie production this year, if she wanted to, due to the bumper crop.

Next year, they will likely have even more as some of the younger trees may bear fruit. They plan to relocate one of their bee boxes about 10 miles down the road where one of her father’s friends has a large wildflower garden. And, they anticipate some of the honey may look and taste different from the various pollination sources.

“We make a really good team,” Krista said. “It gets us outdoors, and it’s been a fun adventure.”