This week’s Adventure Arkansas is creating quite the buzz.
I teamed up with Patrick Edwards, co-owner Prepper Bee Supply in Garfield, AR to help learn about making a difference in the bee population locally.
“Beekeeping is extremely addictive you start off with 1 hive, you end up with 70 hives, a bee store, and President of the local club,” said Edwards.
And now is the time to get involved.
Twice a year we offer free classes through either the Benton County Beekeepers or the Northwest Arkansas Beekeepers, we are members of both, and then after that we will offer classes throughout the year
And it’s an important role Edwards wants others to join in on.
“Colony collapse disorder is an undetermined reason why we’ve had sudden kill offs or die offs of honey bees where honey bees will just leave the hive for no apparent reason, leave nothing behind, and they are just gone,” said Edwards.
Age is just a number for this hobby too.
“ We’ve had grandchildren as young as eight, and then we have beekeepers well into their eighties,” Edwards
Bees can improve your crops or gardening as well.
“There are a lot of food sources out there that don’t require pollination, but you can expect at least twice the normal amount of fruit and vegetables by having honey bees local,” said Edwards.
Suited up, I was now ready to “bee” involved.
Did you know bees are responsible for every 3 of 5 bites of food you take? And this hive has only been around since the beginning of the year, but there is already a population of 20,000, by the end of the year 80,000, that’s more that our town!
That’s 6,000 more than the population of Fayetteville to be exact and just within one hive!
Now that’s the bee’s knees!
We even spotted the Queen Bee.
For more information about getting involved in beekeeping, click here!
For this week’s Adventure Arkansas, I’m Megan Graddy.
Segment Sponsored By: Adventure Subaru