Beekeeper

Work description

Crops/Commodities: bees and honey. Primary duties (performed the majority of workdays): Worker must be familiar with working with bees in all stages, from the egg through fully developed workers, drones and queens; must work all aspects of commercial bee keeping, including assessing a colony to determine if it needs food or medicine, feeding and medicating bees, maintaining hives in a healthy state, increasing number of hives, raising and replacing queens, making divides, making, painting and cleaning boxes, supering hives. Harvest/extract honey. Run queen breeding yard and produce queen bees. Manipulate and service hive structures and haul bees to and from different hive locations to ensure healthy and productive honeybee colonies. Must respond correctly to bees to harmonize with their natural cycle and keep them in the healthiest state possible for survival and profitability. General maintenance and servicing of equipment and facility. Workers will raise bees to produce honey and pollinate crops. Assembles beehives using hand tools. Inserts honeycomb of bees into beehive or inducts wild swarming bees into hive of prepared honeycomb frames. Places screen plug in hive entrance to confine bees and sets hive in orchard, clover field, or near other source of nectar and pollen. Forces bees from hive, using smoke pot or by placing carbolic acid soaked pad over hive to inspect hive and to harvest honeycomb. Scrapes out parasites, such as wax moth larvae, and removes vermin such as birds and mice. Collects royal jelly form queen bee cells for sale as base for cosmetics and as health food. Destroys superfluous queen bee cells to prevent division of colony by swarming. Burns hive of diseased bee colony or sterilizes hive, using caustic soda solution. Uncaps harvested honeycombs and extracts hone. Workers will load and unload trucks of beehives. Will find and remove old queens from hives and replace with new queen. Workers will remove frames covered with bees, and shake them off into cages. All workers will be responsible for picking up trash cleaning bathrooms, sweeping floors and other farm sanitation duties. Work is to be done in the field for long periods of time. Workers are expected to perform duties including boxing, weighing and loading. Workers will assist in loading trucks with product weighing up to and including 70 pounds and lifting to a height of 5 feet daily for long periods of time. Workers should be able to work on their feet in bent positions for long periods of time. Work requires repetitive movements and extensive walking. Allergies to ragweed, goldenrod, insect spray, related chemicals, etc. may affect workers' ability to perform the job. Workers must have no fear of bees and be non-allergic to bee stings, pollen, honey or other products of the hive. Workers are exposed to wet weather early in the morning through the heat of the day. Temperatures may range from 10 to 110 F. Must be able to work in excessive humidity. Workers may be required to work during occasional showers not severe enough to stop operations. This is a very demanding and competitive business in which quality specifications must be rigorously adhered to. Saturday work required. Workers should be physically able to do the work required with or without reasonable accommodations. Employer has a strict prohibition on tobacco usage. No smoking or tobacco use of any kind will be permitted in the fields, in worker housing, or anywhere on company premises. This is necessary to protect against transmission of toxins by hands and tools contaminated with tobacco by-products. Employer reserves the right to discharge any employee found smoking or found in possession of smoking materials including cigarettes, cigars, snuff, chewing tobacco, pipe tobacco or smoking paraphernalia. Workers will drive tractors, if needed. Workers will be instructed in the safety and operation of light trucks and tractors before operating.