Appalachian Bee owner Diane Ravens’ bees – several million of them, in fact-are like her children. Although caring for them is a big job, Ravens has 23 years of beekeeping under her belt, and wouldn’t have it any other way. Cross-pollinating her creativity and her love for bees, she constructed a successful business built on hard work, the (more than) occasional sting, and of course, lots and lots of honey.
? I’ve worked in beekeeping full time for 14 years, but I’ve been a beekeeper for 23 years. You have to have a passion for bees to want to be with them that long. It takes several years to become a good beekeeper. That’s not something you can learn overnight or in a week or two. To really think like a bee you have to know everything about it and have a passion for it.
? To this day I still see things that amaze me in a honey bee colony. They aren’t always black and white, and they don’t always go by the book and work the way they’re supposed to. It takes regular maintenance and monitoring in order for a colony to be successful.
? I care for millions of bees. An average colony this time of year can have between 60,000 and 80,000 bees in it depending on the size of the colony. I usually run between 50-100 colonies, and each colony with that many bees-that’s a lot of bees. I’m the sole beekeeper. I’m not sure I would trust many people with my bees. It’s kind of like taking your baby to daycare; you’re really cautious of who you would take your child to.
? One of my jobs is also to pollinate crops with my bees, so I’ll move them to farms or orchards, like Apple Valley Orchard, which hires me to have my bees pollinate the apple trees when they’re in full blossom. It’s been a great journey. I never thought I’d be operating as many colonies as I have or pollinating crops, which is a dream for a beekeeper to do.