Keeper of the bees
Hidden between two noisy freeways and across the street from the bustling light-rail station that carries passengers to different parts of the city, is the little brown house with the green door where Bill Green lives. It might be easy to miss it, driving by at forty-five miles an hour. A picket fence in the front protects a fish pond that is guarded by a turtle named Carlos. Each day this pond is visited by thousands of thirsty honey bees.
Along their walk down to the shopping mall, observant passersby might spot Bill walking across his rooftop, wearing his bright white bee suit and tending to the three busy beehives. It would be easy to mistake him for some kind of astronaut up there with his smoker wafting in the wind.
Other times he sits up there in a deck chair with a glass of iced-tea, watching his bees go about their business, sometimes for hours at a time. I happened to be one of the lucky ones to get to talk with Bill about his unique habit of keeping bees in the middle of the busy city.
Other times he sits up there in a deck chair with a glass of iced-tea, watching his bees go about their business, sometimes for hours at a time. I happened to be one of the lucky ones to get to talk with Bill about his unique habit of keeping bees in the middle of the busy city.
Looking around his backyard I see fifteen raised garden beds with a variety of different kinds of vegetables. In each bed growing between the plants, I see giant sunflowers taller than his small house. On these sunflowers, are busy bees buzzing around in search of pollen to take home to the wooden boxes sitting up on the roof between the solar panels. Every few minutes the passenger train goes by screeching its wheels across the rails as it bounds the corner. It is not a quiet garden, yet still charming.
As the chickens cluck away in the background I ask Bill about his earliest memory with bees in his life. Rocking back and forth on his rocking chair, he ponders for a moment starring off into his hidden vegetable garden, He mumbles to himself, “Hmm my earliest memory.”
As the chickens cluck away in the background I ask Bill about his earliest memory with bees in his life. Rocking back and forth on his rocking chair, he ponders for a moment starring off into his hidden vegetable garden, He mumbles to himself, “Hmm my earliest memory.”
“As a child, the neighbor across the street from me at my childhood home in Holladay, he had bees and had several hives and we would often whether we were riding horses in his pasture or um you know catching toads late at night, we were always around the beehives. Which initially, when I was real young, I was frightened of them but then I learned that beehives were not dangerous.”
“Did your neighbor teach you that bees were not dangerous?” I ask.
“No, I learned that by just being around them.”
He tells me how he enjoys beekeeping because it lets him leave the mundane and artificial lifestyle of people in the nine-to-five grind and instead escape for some time away in a different and seemingly more natural world of bees. He also tells me that it is almost like he escapes into a spiritual plane of existence.
He talks of how he had been learning about bees for a while before he started keeping bees. He mainly saw a lot of his friends on social media keeping bees in their backyards and that piqued his interest in it more. When he finally started his first hive back in 2019, He reached out to a couple of locals to Salt Lake City for guidance. Peter Somers and Natalie Bloomgust have been his biggest supporters in helping him with his bees. Peter Somers is the Salt Lake County Bee Inspector in the Salt Lake Metro area. Natalie Bloomgust is a local person who sells bees to people she knows. Bill also mentioned that he had learned a lot of the dos and the don'ts from Frederick Dunn’s website and from the videos of Kamon Reynolds in Tennessee.
“Do you plan on ever selling your honey?” I ask him,
He says that at this time he is only doing this hobby for himself and does not have plans to sell for a profit because he is just wanting to help the bees, and collect the beeswax and honey for himself and family. He also mentions that there are different laws and regulations in place by the state of Utah that makes it harder for the people who want to sell the product from their hives and that he is already waiting on the outcome of a lawsuit against Murray City about his bees. He is not worried about the outcome because the city is in the process of changing its regulations about keeping bees to match more on Salt Lake City’s rules and regulations. He also mentioned that he might sell some of his bees when he needs to split a hive again because he doesn’t want to have too many hives and he is good with only keeping the three he has now.
“Did your neighbor teach you that bees were not dangerous?” I ask.
“No, I learned that by just being around them.”
He tells me how he enjoys beekeeping because it lets him leave the mundane and artificial lifestyle of people in the nine-to-five grind and instead escape for some time away in a different and seemingly more natural world of bees. He also tells me that it is almost like he escapes into a spiritual plane of existence.
He talks of how he had been learning about bees for a while before he started keeping bees. He mainly saw a lot of his friends on social media keeping bees in their backyards and that piqued his interest in it more. When he finally started his first hive back in 2019, He reached out to a couple of locals to Salt Lake City for guidance. Peter Somers and Natalie Bloomgust have been his biggest supporters in helping him with his bees. Peter Somers is the Salt Lake County Bee Inspector in the Salt Lake Metro area. Natalie Bloomgust is a local person who sells bees to people she knows. Bill also mentioned that he had learned a lot of the dos and the don'ts from Frederick Dunn’s website and from the videos of Kamon Reynolds in Tennessee.
“Do you plan on ever selling your honey?” I ask him,
He says that at this time he is only doing this hobby for himself and does not have plans to sell for a profit because he is just wanting to help the bees, and collect the beeswax and honey for himself and family. He also mentions that there are different laws and regulations in place by the state of Utah that makes it harder for the people who want to sell the product from their hives and that he is already waiting on the outcome of a lawsuit against Murray City about his bees. He is not worried about the outcome because the city is in the process of changing its regulations about keeping bees to match more on Salt Lake City’s rules and regulations. He also mentioned that he might sell some of his bees when he needs to split a hive again because he doesn’t want to have too many hives and he is good with only keeping the three he has now.
Works Cited
Dunn, Frederick. “Fred's Fine Fowl and Honey Bees.” Beginning with Honey Bees All About Backyard Beekeeping, http://www.fredsfinefowl.com/honeybeefaqvids.html. Accessed on: September 21, 2020.
Leonard, Wendy. “City Library Turns out 50 Pounds of Honey.” Deseret News, Deseret News, 31 Aug. 2014, www.deseret.com/2014/8/30/20547660/city-library-turns-out-50-pounds-of-honey. Accessed on: September 21, 2020
Jarnevich, Catherine S., et al. “Regional Distribution Models with Lack of Proximate Predictors: Africanized Honeybees Expanding North.” Diversity & Distributions, vol. 20, no. 2, Feb. 2014, pp. 193–201. EBSCOhost, doi:10.1111/ddi.12143.
Moriarty, Robert T. “Backyard Beekeeping in the Beehive State: Salt Lake City’s Beekeeping Regulations, Nuisance Concerns, and the Legal Status of Honey Bees.” Utah Law Review, vol. 2018, no. 1, Jan. 2018, pp. 237–258. EBSCOhost, search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=asn&AN=128304563&site=eds-live.
Phillips, Valerie. “Oh, Honey: Utahns Helping Bees Survive by Being Backyard Beekeepers.” Deseret News, Deseret News, 26 June 2012, www.deseret.com/2012/6/26/20421114/oh-honey-utahns-helping-bees-survive-by-being-backyard-beekeepers. Accessed on September 21, 2020.
“Q&A With J. Michael Hunter on Bees and Beekeeping.” Utah Division of State History, 6 Aug. 2020, https://history.utah.gov/qa-with-j-michael-hunter-on-bees-and-beekeeping/. Accessed on September 21, 2020.
Reynolds, Kamon. “Kamon Reynolds - Tennessee's Bees.” YouTube, YouTube, www.youtube.com/channel/UCkoAuqRakc1TtvXxL4Kr76Q/featured. Accessed on: September 21, 2020.
Somers, Peter. “USU Extension Beekeeping.” Beekeeping in Salt Lake County, https://beekeeping.usu.edu/help/salt_lake_county. Accessed on: September 21, 2020.
Leonard, Wendy. “City Library Turns out 50 Pounds of Honey.” Deseret News, Deseret News, 31 Aug. 2014, www.deseret.com/2014/8/30/20547660/city-library-turns-out-50-pounds-of-honey. Accessed on: September 21, 2020
Jarnevich, Catherine S., et al. “Regional Distribution Models with Lack of Proximate Predictors: Africanized Honeybees Expanding North.” Diversity & Distributions, vol. 20, no. 2, Feb. 2014, pp. 193–201. EBSCOhost, doi:10.1111/ddi.12143.
Moriarty, Robert T. “Backyard Beekeeping in the Beehive State: Salt Lake City’s Beekeeping Regulations, Nuisance Concerns, and the Legal Status of Honey Bees.” Utah Law Review, vol. 2018, no. 1, Jan. 2018, pp. 237–258. EBSCOhost, search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=asn&AN=128304563&site=eds-live.
Phillips, Valerie. “Oh, Honey: Utahns Helping Bees Survive by Being Backyard Beekeepers.” Deseret News, Deseret News, 26 June 2012, www.deseret.com/2012/6/26/20421114/oh-honey-utahns-helping-bees-survive-by-being-backyard-beekeepers. Accessed on September 21, 2020.
“Q&A With J. Michael Hunter on Bees and Beekeeping.” Utah Division of State History, 6 Aug. 2020, https://history.utah.gov/qa-with-j-michael-hunter-on-bees-and-beekeeping/. Accessed on September 21, 2020.
Reynolds, Kamon. “Kamon Reynolds - Tennessee's Bees.” YouTube, YouTube, www.youtube.com/channel/UCkoAuqRakc1TtvXxL4Kr76Q/featured. Accessed on: September 21, 2020.
Somers, Peter. “USU Extension Beekeeping.” Beekeeping in Salt Lake County, https://beekeeping.usu.edu/help/salt_lake_county. Accessed on: September 21, 2020.