It Takes a Community to Keep Hives Healthy

On the day in June when we visited beekeeper Ryan Chamberlain at a rural property in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, he was checking on his bees and gathering materials to move some hives to the mountains.  While nectar sources were winding down in the Piedmont, they were just getting started in the cooler mountain climate.

Ryan’s honey is special because it can be traced to its source.  The flavor of honey can vary from hive to hive, site to site, and year to year.  Each Bee Wise Hives jar is marked with the specific site where the bees were raised. 

Ryan feels fortunate when he is able to harvest an abundant crop of honey.  “Everything must be just right,” he explains. “It’s really easy to mess it up, and even if you don’t mess it up, the weather can.”

This year’s cool spring temperatures and abundant rain have not created ideal honey conditions, but with his second crop of honey from the mountains, Ryan hopes to match last year’s harvest of 400 pounds.

Although beekeeping is not a full-time job for Ryan, he is trying to make it more profitable, now that he is beyond the significant startup costs.  While honey usually provides the most revenue, Ryan has also begun selling bee colonies as an additional source of income.  He is also developing agritourism experiences for people who are curious about beekeeping.

Ryan’s calm, deliberate movements during our visit reflect his seven years of beekeeping experience.  Over the years, he has become more knowledgeable and efficient in checking and managing his hives.

Bees are livestock, Ryan points out, and caring for them is challenging. Several years ago, he had a site where he could not keep hives alive through the winter.  Each August the hives would experience a surge of Varroa mites.  These mites attack and feed on honey bees and a significant infestation can cause the death of a honey bee colony.

Eventually, Ryan found that there was a nearby beekeeper who was not practicing good management of their hives.  Each year when their hives failed, they simply replaced them, but the bees carrying the Varroa mites travelled to Ryan’s clean hives.  When the neighbor quit beekeeping, Ryan’s hives began surviving the winter.

Ryan explains that there is a lot of community involved in successful beekeeping.  “You can be a detriment when you’re just trying to be helpful,” he says. Local beekeeping associations try to educate beekeepers about the importance of integrative pest management. 

“Keeping track of the mites is an absolute necessity,” Ryan says.  “If you don’t do it, you fail.”  Ryan explains that you cannot only assess mites with the bare eye, you must follow a procedure to test your hives for them.

And then there’s August.  In late summer, beekeepers often wear a full suit.  The combination of heat, humidity, direct sun and heavy equipment presents a risk of heat stroke.  “It’s brutal,” Ryan states bluntly.  There is little blooming for the bees to feed on and they become agitated.  “They’re not nice sometimes,” he continues, “they can be angry and they’re stinging insects.”

In his first year of beekeeping, bees from a particularly aggressive hive found their way into Ryan’s jacket and veil, and he was stung repeatedly on his face.  At the time, he thought, “maybe this isn’t for me.”  

So, why continue beekeeping?  “It’s definitely the honey,” Ryan says with a smile.  He loves the excited reaction that people have when they taste the honey from his bees. “When you open the honey gate on the extractor and the honey starts flowing—it’s fantastic.”