Athletic Trainer by day... Honey Bee Keeper on the side!
Meet JP Hamilton. A 1996 graduate of Valdosta State University with an MS from Nova Southeastern, JP is a 25-year member of the NATA who is employed by Crisp Regional Health Services as an extension of Elite Physical Therapy. You might recognize JP as the Head Athletic Trainer of the Crisp County Cougars, but we are buzzing with excitement to tell you what he does in his spare time.
Ok, we couldn't help that one... but how many Honey Bee Keepers do you know? What originally started out as a Christmas Gift to his wife Kelly became a venture into bee-keeping as a tag team\husband-wife hobby and they have been at it for over a year now. Bee keeping also gives JP a chance to help promote the saving of honey bees because of their importance to the local farmers. His initial goal was to increase the number of bees - they started with 2 hives - while his wife's goal was to produce enough honey for family consumption and gifts to friends.
"Bee keeping is very unique and interesting, and though totally having nothing to do with Athletic Training it reminds me of many things associated with our profession." - JP
How does the activity in a bee hive compare to athletics? It is all about Teamwork: just as an athletic team and department must all be working toward the same goal, all the bees in a hive must have a singular focus while each type of bee plays a different role. The Queen Bee is the most important bee in the hive. She lays eggs daily and is responsible for the strength of the hive. Much like a Head AT, she keeps things going. Female Worker Bees are the hardest working bee in the hive - like AT staff and students - and they do all the grunt work in helping collect honey, pollen and nectar to help make honey and feed the hive. Male Drone Bees have the craziest job in the hive... They tries to tell all the worker bees what to do but their only real duty is waiting to mate with an unfertilized queen.
Just as there are frustrations that come with working in athletics, bee keeping has them too. First, it is an expensive hobby. And then there are varroa mites, small hive beetles, diseases, predators, swarming, absconding hives, and of course Bee Stings - ouch! But there is also a rewarding side to bee keeping. Like returning athletes to play and winning championships, there are many wins in bee keeping too: Growing the number of bees and working to save the honey bee population; Honey for consumption; plus the happy farmers and local gardeners who benefit from the bees' pollination efforts.
JP finds it funny that most people want nothing to do with honey bees, the raising of them, or even know their importance in society... but EVERYONE seems to want to reap their rewards- HONEY! But he has survived the first year in bee keeping - the most critical time - while growing his numbers and producing some honey along the way. Most importantly, he has had fun and enjoyed spending the time with his wife doing something productive and exciting outside of work. We can't wait to get a taste of Hamilton's Honey sometime soon!
Did You Know?
1. Honey bees are super-important pollinators for flowers, fruits and vegetables. This means that they help other plants grow! Bees transfer pollen between the male and female parts, allowing plants to grow seeds and fruit.
2. What are these buzzing bugs most famous for? Delicious honey! But did you know they produce honey as food stores for the hive during winter? Luckily for us, these efficient little workers produce 2-3 time more honey than they need, so we get to enjoy the tasty treat, too!
3. If the queen bee dies, workers will create a new queen by selecting a young larva (the newly hatched baby insects) and feeding it a special food called “royal jelly“. This enables the larva to develop into a fertile queen.
4. Honey bees are fab flyers. They fly at a speed of around 25km per hour and beat their wings 200 times per second!
5. Each bee has 170 odorant receptors, which means they have one serious sense of smell! They use this to communicate within the hive and to recognize different types of flowers when looking for food.
6. The average worker bee lives for just five to six weeks. During this time, she’ll produce around a twelfth of a teaspoon of honey.
7. The queen can live up to five years. She is busiest in the summer months, when she can lay up to 2,500 eggs a day!
8. Honey bees are also brilliant boogers! To share information about the best food sources, they perform their ‘waggle dance’. When the worker returns to the hive, it moves in a figure-of-eight and waggles its body to indicate the direction of the food source. Cool, huh?
9. Sadly, over the past 15 years, colonies of bees have been disappearing, and the reason remains unknown. Referred to as ‘colony collapse disorder’, billions of honey bees across the world are leaving their hives, never to return. In some regions, up to 90% of bees have disappeared!
10. The agricultural benefit of honey bees is estimated to be between 10 and 20 times the total value of honey and beeswax. In fact, bee pollination accounts for about $15 billion in added crop value. Honey bees are like flying dollar bills buzzing over U.S. crops.
What do you do "Off the Clock" as an AT?
If you (or an AT you know) have a special interest or intriguing hobby that you pursue in your free time - yes we said "free time"... ha ha... we know... - then we want to hear from you! Get in touch with us and maybe you can be the next "Off the Clock" feature. Hope we hear from you soon!
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