By Peter Morris
“When working a colony of honeybees, if I am at peace with myself and my surroundings, and use slow and gentle movements, the bees allow me access to their realm. However, if I am tense or use rapid movements, the worker bees quickly remind me that I am not welcome in their home. When I am working with the bees, I must put aside my own cares and demands and focus on what the bees are doing and how I am interacting with them. What is it like to open a hive with 60,000 or more stinging insects? It is not an adrenaline rush or a feeling of dominance, but a connection with the natural world and God’s creation as God intended it to be.” These are the words of Jim Rash, who tends 47 hives in Ashe County on his 40 acre homestead. He also teaches beekeeping at Wilkes Community College.
Beekeeping is big in the High Country. It seems almost everybody knows someone who keeps bees – a family member, a neighbor, or the friendly farm folk down the road who raise chickens and sell eggs. However, locating beekeepers is not such an easy matter. Yes, there are several beekeeping organizations listed on the Internet for the region, which include the Watauga County Beekeepers Association, the Ashe County Beekeepers Association, and the Toe Cane Beekeepers Association, which covers Avery, Mitchell, and Yancy Counties. There is also the official Tarheel state site known as the North Carolina State Beekeepers Associations, which has chartered beekeeping groups in 83 counties from the mountains to the coast.
With the previous facts acknowledged, it took literally dozens of phone calls and emails and list-lookings to find some of the owners of the hives which dot our hilly landscape.
“Most of the local organizations which are listed for beekeepers simply don’t have the staff to oversee them, as there are few paying positions, with every association primarily being staffed by volunteers,” explained H.S. Greene, owner of Hidden Happiness Bee Farm in Deep Gap. “Covid changed everything, and now many people don’t want to work…or volunteer.”
The history of bees being kept for honey dates back 11,000 years, with the practice being included 4500 years ago in Egyptian art.
To bring regional beekeepers together, Greene has established the High Country Beekeepers Association, which meets monthly with more than 40 members representing the five counties of Watauga, Avery, Ashe, Wilkes, and Caldwell. The organization meets in Greene’s massive Hidden Happiness “bee store” which offers everything imaginable for honey gatherers and includes a large classroom where several specialized beekeeping classes are held regularly. Greene teaches the art of beekeeping to what he calls “newbies” several times annually. However, Greene went on to acknowledge that the term is somewhat misleading.
When I am working with the bees, I must put aside my own cares and demands and focus on what the bees are doing and how I am interacting with them. What is it like to open a hive with 60,000 or more stinging insects? It is not an adrenaline rush or a feeling of dominance, but a connection with the natural world and God’s creation as God intended it to be.
– JIM RASH
“Actually, we are all newbies, as we learn everything together,” he notes. “I decided it was time for me to take up a hobby 13 years ago that I could enjoy in a new chapter in my life. Our local bee club was offering a beginner’s class, so I took time out of my schedule and took the class and then ordered enough bees for three hive setups. I couldn’t wait till I could get my girls (the lady bees) and put them into the hive,” Greene continued. “After starting the new hives and my first trip to feed the girls, looking into the hive to do my first inspection, I was hooked, line and sinker. I could say it got into my blood, and I knew right then I could build a passion for these girls right away.”
While Greene may have started his new endeavor into beekeeping with only three hives, he now tends more than 40 working hives. When questioned about the current popularity of beekeeping in the High Country, he reflected on post-Covid enthusiasm.
There are over 20,000 known bee species in the world, and 4,000 of them are native to the United States.
“The High Country’s future for beekeeping is getting stronger each year after the pandemic took place, with more people working remotely and getting into it as a hobby. More professional people are now moving to the mountains, many of them retiring, and many view beekeeping as a great way to harvest honey to eat themselves or sell or give as gifts. The average hobbyist will usually have about four hives, although I’d estimate there are probably 2000-plus hives throughout the High Country.”
Many local families see their beekeeping activities as a family affair, with parents, children and even grandchildren helping in the process of making honey. One such beekeeping operation is headed by Tim Bolick, who with wife Sharon and daughter Paige work several hives near Blowing Rock.
“I purchased Tim his first hive 10 years ago for Father’s Day,” noted Sharon. “My grandfather, Leonard, was a beekeeper, and we wanted to continue the tradition with our family. We also realized the importance of bees to our food supply and wanted to contribute to the bee population. Currently, our family has 10 hives and would love to add even more.”
In a single year, one honeybee colony can gather about 40 pounds of pollen and 265 pounds of nectar.
The Bolicks have harvested 10 gallons of honey for the past two years, always making sure to leave much more than that for the bees’ winter nutrition.
While Paige, their youngest daughter, was at first unsure around the bees, time spent in the presence of the armed insects has worked everything out.
I was hesitant when I first started tending to the bees with my parents. When you are surrounded by several thousand stingers it can feel unnerving. After a while, I became more comfortable around the bees, and I started to understand how complex and beautiful the honeybee life cycle is.
– PAIGE BOLICK
“I was hesitant when I first started tending to the bees with my parents. When you are surrounded by several thousand stingers it can feel unnerving. After a while, I became more comfortable around the bees, and I started to understand how complex and beautiful the honeybee life cycle is,” explained Paige Bolick. “Today, I love tending to the bees and harvesting honey. I am thankful for the opportunity to learn alongside my parents, and it’s a tradition I hope to carry on for generations to come.”
Mom Sharon described on that day when the honey truly comes home. “Honey harvesting day is super exciting and a lot of hard work. We begin by suiting up in bee suits, as the bees are not particularly fond of us taking their honey. A little smoke from the bee smoker will help to calm them a bit. The first step is to gently remove the frames of honey from the hive. Then, we carefully brush the bees from the frames and place them in a large tote with a lid on it.”
She continued, “After we have all the frames from 1-2 hives in the box, we bring them into the house. Then we use a wax uncapping tool to remove the wax from the tops of the cells, thus allowing the honey to flow from the frames. Next, we place the uncapped frames into a hand-crank honey extractor. Our extractor can hold 3 frames at a time. After spinning the honey from one side of the frame, we flip it onto the other side to retrieve the rest of the honey. We repeat this process until we have gathered all the frames, capped them, and extracted the honey. The golden goodness then flows through a double strainer into a five-gallon food-grade bucket. After the bucket is full, we put a lid on it and let it settle for a day or two to remove bubbles. We then wash, dry, and sterilize all our equipment immediately. Finally, it is time for the fun part of bottling the honey. Everyone in our family loves to help bottle the honey, and it’s extremely rewarding to see the product of all our hard work.”
While the process of raising the bees seems both taxing and rewarding, the real work of beekeepers extends far beyond the gathering of the honey to the plight of bees worldwide, which is of concern to many.
Beekeeper H.S. Greene is one of thousands of beekeepers who worry and “look out” for the world’s bees.
“First, we must take care of the little insect that was created for us to enjoy and be able to collect her harvest called honey, and we must take care of the bee generations to come. Honeybees are the best and most efficient pollinators in the world and the most important pollinators for modern agriculture, responsible for pollinating one-third of the foods mankind eats. Would we starve without bees?” he questions. “No, we would not starve, at least not right away, but we would get tired of eating the same old foods. Our diet would certainly be affected; the food chain would be different, and we’d rapidly see the effect on prices in the grocery store. If we lost all our bees, we would lose the plants which rely on them for pollination, then possibly the animals that rely on these plants. Problems would travel throughout the food chain. Bees are responsible for putting billions of dollars back into the economy each year.”
According to the U.S. Center for Biological Diversity, more than half of North America’s 4,000 native bee species are in decline, with one in four species at risk of extinction.
According to the United States Department of Agriculture, mankind cannot exist without the lowly bee. “Pollinators like bees and butterflies help pollinate approximately 75 percent of the world’s flowering plants. They pollinate roughly 35 percent of the world’s food crops, including fruits and vegetables. If we lose the plants that bees pollinate, all the animals that eat those plants and so on up the food chain would succumb. Which means a world without bees could struggle to sustain the global human population of 7 billion. Our supermarkets would have half the amount of fruit and vegetables.”
North Carolina, which boasts more beekeepers than any other state, also ranks among the top ten states in number of beehives.
In summary, we tip our hats to best-selling author Sue Monk Kidd, who obviously thinks highly of bees. “Place a beehive on my grave and let the honey soak through. When I’m dead and gone, that’s what I want from you. The streets of heaven are gold and sunny, But I’ll stick with my plot and a pot of honey. Place a beehive on my grave and let the honey soak through.”
You must be logged in to post a comment.