By Keysha Drexel
Journal editor
As a fertility specialist, Michael Steinkampf knows a lot about the birds and the bees, but it’s the Mountain Brook physician’s work with the “bees” part of that old adage that is creating buzz.
Steinkampf, who is director of Alabama Fertility Specialists, is also an avid beekeeper who is working under a research grant from the National Honey Board to find out more about the health of honey bees.
“I suppose it is kind of funny that the birds and the bees are my day job and then I come home to tend to the bees, but there is actually an interesting dovetail between the two because both have a lot to do with reproductive issues,” he said.
Steinkampf said it makes sense that his hobby would be as entrenched in science as his day job.
A native of Louisiana, Steinkampf said he originally trained to be a chemist before receiving his medical degree from the Louisiana State University School of Medicine in New Orleans and his specialty training in obstetrics-gynecology and reproductive endocrinology and infertility at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical School.
“Bees’ function is a lot about reproduction and chemistry, and it’s kind of a fun fact that in humans, the female makes all the eggs she will ever have before she’s born and the male makes sperm throughout his adult life,” he said. “But in honey bees, it is just the opposite. The queen bee continues to make eggs all her life and the drones make all their sperm before they’re adults. The drones mate once–in midair–and they die,” he said.
Before he became a beekeeper, Steinkampf said he knew little about bees or how to raise them.
“I was pretty clueless about beekeeping, but once I got into it, I’ve been into it full-blast ever since,” he said.
Steinkampf was introduced to beekeeping in 2009 by his mentor, John Hurst. Hurst is a Birmingham gynecologist and has been an avid beekeeper for more than 30 years.
“One day we were in the break room, and John showed me some pictures of his hives. I guess it was few days later and I couldn’t stop thinking about it. Something just clicked, so I went to him after a staff meeting at work one day and asked him if he’d be my beekeeping mentor. He suggested that I go to the Birmingham Botanical Gardens and take a beekeeping class and then think about ordering some bees,” he said.
But typical of his jump-in-with-both-feet nature, Steinkampf said he was one step ahead of his mentor on the plan to start beekeeping.
“I told him that actually, I had already built a hive and ordered my bees and that they’d be here within the next week,” he said, laughing. “I ended up taking the course at the Gardens when it was offered about 10 months after I got started.”
By the time he enrolled in the beekeeping course at the Birmingham Botanical Gardens, Steinkampf already had two hives set up in the backyard of his Mountain Brook home.
Steinkampf said he was immediately immersed in his new hobby and learned as much as he could about how honey bee colonies operate.
“Beekeeping can be a very time-consuming hobby or it can go the other way. It’s an interesting practice that’s flexible enough to let you invest the time and effort into it that you can. You can have 200 hives or just one hive, and it would be just as rewarding,” he said.
From his first two hives in 2009, Steinkampf’s home apiary has grown to about 20 hives.
Steinkampf and Hurst also maintain an innovative observation hive they created to help visitors to the Birmingham Zoo learn more about honey bees. The observation hive design won Steinkampf the Best in Show award in 2011 at the Young Harris College/University of Georgia Beekeeping Institute.
“We built the hive in my workshop and raised the queen and continued to maintain the hive at the zoo for about a year or so,” he said.
Steinkampf said watching children and others visiting the hive at the zoo has been one of the most rewarding parts of beekeeping so far.
“I love to watch people visiting the hive because they get a kick out of being that close to something that could sting them, and I hope it helps people look at bees a little closer and think about their role in our environment,” he said.
Beekeepers across the country for several years have been dealing with Colony Collapse Disorder, a phenomenon in which worker bees abruptly disappear. Colony collapse can be significant because many agricultural crops are pollinated by honey bees and in recent years, some U.S. farmers have had to rent bees for pollination services.
Steinkampf said colony collapse illustrates how much bees enrich our daily lives.
“Well, we wouldn’t starve, but our diets would be less enriched without honey bees,” he said. “The staples of our diet–wheat, corn, rice–are not dependent on honey bees for pollination. It’s the vegetables and the fruits that we need help from the honey bees to grow. And yeah, those are kind of important,” he said.
Steinkampf completed the three-year rigorous training and certification process at the Young Harris College/University of Georgia Beekeeping Institute, where he learned about everything from integrated pest management to honey bee genetics to how to make mead. He passed all of his tests and is now a certified master beekeeper.
In 2011, he won a research grant from the National Honey Board to find ways to improve honey bee health and honey production by changing hive designs.
Steinkampf also works to educate people about honey bees by writing articles for Bee Culture magazine, giving presentations on the medical aspects of beekeeping and documenting his beekeeping adventures on an educational blog at HYPERLINK “http://www.sandhurstbees.com” www.sandhurstbees.com.
He has also mentored a Boy Scout on an Eagle Service project that involved beekeeping.
One of the sweetest rewards of Steinkampf’s hobby is, of course, the honey.
Steinkampf sells some honey and gives some away and said his bees have been big honey producers since the very beginning.
“The first hive did so well that the colony divided and took up residence in my neighbor’s house. Getting bees out of a house can be a challenging enterprise, because if you don’t remove it properly, you’re left with wax and honey in a cavity in a house where it can ferment and ultimately leak through the walls,” he said. “Fortunately, it only required the removal of a single board under one of my neighbor’s windows.”
To this day, that gracious neighbor gets the first honey of the season, Steinkampf said.
“The neighbors have been great. As most beekeepers do, I have my apiary shielded by hedges to minimize the bees’ wandering into the neighbors’ yards,” he said. “This can be a challenge if your neighbors have pools, because the bees love to go and drink out of the pools.”
This is prime honey season, Steinkampf said. He said he recently put two hives on the scales, and they are gaining about five to eight pounds a day, which means the honey production is really ramping up for the year.
“In this part of the country, most of the honey is made within a three-month period,” he said.
Steinkampf said his hives usually produce about 50 pounds of honey each year. Not all of his hives are managed for honey, Steinkampf said. Some are used for research or to get beeswax.
“Another fun fact about bees, they maintain a colony during the winter. Other insects will hibernate, but bees huddle up and shiver and generate heat and eat the honey they’ve stored up in better times,” he said. “As beekeepers, we take advantage of that urge to stay active and we give them space to keep doing what they’re doing. With that method, you can make up to 200 or 300 pounds of honey a year.”
Beekeeping has made him especially attuned to the weather and cycles of nature, Steinkampf said, and he knows that if the weather is unseasonable, it can affect the bees.
“Bees are just like the rest of us, they want to be able to reproduce and survive the weather,” he said.
Steinkampf’s wife of more than 30 years, Stephanie, has been supportive of his beekeeping hobby, he said, even if she’s a little leery of the bees.
“My wife’s okay as long as the bees don’t chase her,” said.
The couple have five children, one of whom still lives at home.
“He’ll put the whole protective suit on and mow the grass near the hives for me, so that’s his way of being supportive of dad’s hobby,” Steinkampf said, laughing.
His daughter makes labels for the honey jars Steinkampf uses to store and sell the honey from his hives.
“My family supports my beekeeping activities from what you would call a very safe distance,” he said.
Steinkampf sometimes dons a safety suit when tending to his bees but said he hasn’t escaped the stinging wrath of his tiny charges.
“I get stung every week. The suit protects me, but I don’t always wear it,” he said.
Not only is it painful physically when the bees sting, but Steinkampf said it also makes him a little sad.
“The bees ultimately end up dying after they sting, so that makes it a sad occasion because you never want to lose a bee,” he said.
Steinkampf said his ultimate goal is to use his knowledge of reproductive biology and chemistry to become a better beekeeper.
He said the image of beekeeping is changing as more people become interested in how their food is pollinated and the roles of bees in nature.
“I think beekeeping used to be associated with older people, but with the environmental movement, I think we’re seeing more people develop an interest in it, and I hope that continues. The Jefferson County Beekeeping Association has an informative course every spring and it has been filling up faster every year and they are having to turn people away, so I definitely think more people are looking into it because again, it can mean as much work or as little as you want,” he said.
Steinkampf said he advises would-be beekeepers to take a course and find a mentor by contacting local beekeeping clubs to talk to experienced beekeepers.
“It’s fun and you’re learning,” he said. “Plus, you get all that sweet honey.”
