Beekeeper
Employer
245 1st Avenue
Zurich , MT 59547
United States
Job description
Worker will be required to perform a variety of duties related to the production of wax, honey and honey bees.
General Beekeeping Work will include the following responsibilities: removing supers (bee boxes) from storage and loading onto flat bed trucks; repairing and maintaining supers (sanding, painting, etc.); checking health of hives; adding and removing supers from the hive as needed; extracting honey from frames using extracting equipment; filling drums with honey and moving drums to storage using hand carts; placing empty supers in storage; preparing bee colonies for winter; gathering supers and strapping onto trucks for transport; inspect maintain, and repair equipment, machinery, buildings, pens, yard, and fences; blow smoke into hives to quiet bees, using smoke producing device, assemble beehives, using hand tools; open hive and pour sugar on tops of frames to feed bees; mixes and kneads specified types and quantities of ingredients to make bee candy; 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; force bees from hive, using smoke pot or by placing carbolic acid soaked pad over hive to inspect hive and to harvest honeycomb; scrape out parasites, such as wax moth larvae, and removes vermin, such as birds and mice; destroy superfluous queen bee cells to prevent division of colony by swarming; burn hives of diseased bee colony or sterilizes hive, using caustic soda solution; uncaps harvested honeycombs and extracts honey; tends machine that extracts liquid honey from combs; place decapped honeycombs in baskets of honey-extracting machine and closed cover; sets clock for specified time cycle and starts extractor machine to pump honey; stops machine when time bell rings; removes emptied honeycombs from machine and places them in vacant supers; cut caps from honeycombs; Turns valve to admit honey from blending tanks to pasteurizer and to adjust and control pasteurizing temperature; installs pads in filter press and turns hand crank to tighten pads; starts pumps and adjusts pressure to force honey through filter and transfer honey to bottling machine or cooling vats; bottle honey.; mowing weeds and grass in apiaries and around warehouse; weed eating to clean entrance of grass and shrubs from entrance of active hives; repairing and stacking honey drip pans; rolling straps from hive pallets for summer storage; removing straps for placement back on hive pallets in fall; placing pollen patties on colonies; inspecting and installing/removing entrance cleets; transferring damaged hive equipment and replacing/repairing equipment.
Special Requirements
Applicants must have 20 days experience with beekeeping work.