POWERGRAMS

35 L ike a lot of Alabama Power employees, Paul Combs does a job safety briefing (JSB) before starting work each day. But then he does another one when he gets off work – before tending to thousands of honeybees in their hives. Put it another way. Combs gets the bugs out of washers, dryers and refrigerators making house calls as an Appliance Service technician in Selma. Then he works with bugs in the evenings. The boom line: He oen works as hard with his bees as on his day job, with their honey now sold in 14 central Alabama stores. Ten years aer starting as a hobby, Combs processed more than 5,000 pounds of the sweet stuff in 2017. "I enjoy the peacefulness working with my bees," Combs said. "I enjoy the product they produce and the challenges of the honey business." Hives are wooden boxes – called "supers" – that hold eight to 10 "frames" that slide into each box. Bees make the honey on the frames that beekeepers slide out when full of honey. A hive normally consists of three supers stacked on top of each other, giving the appearance of three boxes. The focus of the hive is the queen, who lays 2,000 eggs a day. A typical colony has 50,000 female worker bees who work themselves literally to death in about 60 days collecting nectar from flowers. Drones are males, with no stinger, who mate once with the queen, then die. An average hive produces 5 gallons of honey a year. Combs "robs" the hives of the honey, first by applying a chemical called Bee-Go to the top of the hive; the fumes from which the bees flee to avoid. He then hauls his bee-less hives on a truck trailer to the "honey house" on the family farm in Marion Junction where machines strip the wax bees use to seal the honey. Frames are placed in a spinner where centrifugal force removes the honey. It collects in a clarifying tank to remove heavy debris, and is then pumped through a two-stage filter and into storage drums or a boling tank. "Another great thing is my family gets involved from processing, packaging, distribution. It really is a family business," he said. Family is wife Lori Ann; daughter Sarah, a rising junior at Judson College in Marion; and Mary Caroline, a rising eighth-grader at Morgan Academy in Selma – who all intentionally work behind the scenes. "They don't enjoy the field work because of the stings," Combs said. Lori Ann and the girls bole, seal, label and distribute honey to stores. How to avoid geing stung is one of the first questions an outside observer asks. The pain of just one sting by a bee, wasp or yellow jacket prompts people to wonder what Combs does with a swarm of thousands of honeybees. "As for geing stung, it still smarts," Combs concedes. "I avoid stings by doing a JSB and wearing the proper PPE (personal protective equipment)," consisting of a bee jacket, gloves and veil." The key is "smoking" the bees; puffing flumes of smoke from a tin can into the hive. The smoke makes bees think there's a fire and they must soon leave to find a new home. They gorge themselves on honey to prepare for the trip, but become too lethargic to swarm and sting. The smoke also neutralizes phenomes excreted in the air by the bees to alert fellow bees of danger. Combs has about 200 hives spread out in two counties: Dallas, where he lives, and adjacent Perry. He will soon add hives in Autauga County. He places them in the fields of his farmer-friends in exchange for Combs is an appliance service technician in Selma. Combs 'smokes' hives to make bees lethargic. Wildflowers become a summertime staple for pollen-gathering.

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