Busy as Bees

Justin & Randi Lowe tackle the adventure of becoming commercial beekeepers and starting Rural Route Farms.

When we sit down to enjoy a meal, we’re often reminded to thank a farmer for the hard work that goes into growing our food, but there’s another hard worker who deserves equal credit for our nation’s food supply – bees.

Weighing only one tenth of a gram, bees are tiny, but mighty. Not only do they produce their own food source in the form of honey, they’re instrumental in the production of $15 billion worth of crops each year. In fact, one out of every three bites of food we enjoy can be attributed to their direct and indirect pollination.

Bees are responsible for carrying pollen from one plant to another, facilitating reproduction in some plants. Apples, blackberries, watermelons and almonds are just a few crops that rely on bees moving pollen from one plant to another.

With reports of the decline of honeybees over the past few years, it’s more important than ever to have caretakers who help them thrive.

Justin Lowe began beekeeping in 2012 after he and his wife, Randi, were approached by members of a bee club who shared the joys of beekeeping at the Arkansas Flower and Garden Show.

“Next thing we knew, we were purchasing hives and equipment, ready to get started,” Justin said.

Soon, Justin and Randi were genuine beekeepers and the proud owners of three hives, looking forward to enjoying fresh honey. What they didn’t know, was how those first three hives would grow to become a business.

After several years of keeping bees as a hobby, Justin started working for a commercial beekeeper in Johnson County. In 2018, Justin and Randi were presented with the opportunity to buy the beekeeper’s hives, supplies and bee yards. The purchase enabled them to begin working for themselves.

Randi and Justin with children JD and Carter on the farm.

Farm Credit of Western Arkansas - Lindsey Holtzclaw

After careful thought and working out financing details with Farm Credit, the Lowes’ beekeeping operation quickly grew from a hobby and working for someone else, to owning a few hundred beehives in more than a dozen locations. From this shift, Rural Route Farms was born.

Despite having his own experience with bees, Justin said becoming a commercial beekeeper still came with its share of challenges.

“We had an idea of what we were doing on a small scale, but doing it on a large scale is different,” Justin explained. “We’ve had to learn from making mistakes and by being around the bees every day. You learn from what you did yesterday and improve on what you see year after year.”

Aside from trial and error, Randi says they also have a support system they can call with questions and, of course, plenty of information to be found on the internet and in books.

Justin and Anna suit up to take a closer look at the bees.

Farm Credit of Western Arkansas - Lindsey Holtzclaw

Justin says his biggest challenge in becoming a commercial beekeeper has been learning how to delegate his time.

“I feel like I could work 24 hours a day,” he said. “Just starting out, there’s a million things that need to be done and a lot of times it’s just Randi and me doing it, so we struggle sometimes finding time for everything else.”

Maintaining their bees and selling and marketing their products is a year-round job for the Lowes.

While they produce a large amount of honey each year, Rural Route Farms’ business plan is not built around this sweet treat. Instead, their operation is driven by helping other beekeepers.

Randi and Justin have created a brand that local beekeepers are buzzing about. Rural Route Farms specializes in selling quality nucs and queens and area beekeepers trust their bees when starting new hives. Because the bees are raised locally and their hives have good brood patterns (frames filled with eggs and very few empty cells), the nucs they sell have a high success rate.

For the non-beekeepers, a nuc is a small bee colony that includes the essentials of beekeeping – bees, brood, food and a queen. Nucs are created in a small version of a beehive, only holding five frames. Justin creates the nucs by splitting a larger, established hive.

Splitting hives also helps prevent a challenge beekeepers face – swarming.

Rural Route Farms honey ready for market.

Farm Credit of Western Arkansas - Lindsey Holtzclaw

Like us, bees need space to live their lives. In the spring and summer, a colony can expand quite dramatically, both in numbers and in the space needed. When space starts becoming too limited, bees need a solution. Their solution is to swarm, turning one colony into two.

“Swarming is a natural tendency for bees. When you take about half of the bees out, they’ll think they’ve already swarmed and it can prevent your larger hives from doing it on their own,” Justin explained.

Rural Route Farms’ nucs and queens are sold at Central Beekeepers Supply in Russellville. Justin also ships queen bees across the country using special shipping containers.

“I ship them to the northern states quite a bit,” Justin said. “Since our seasons are different, my bees are ready earlier. I’ve shipped bees as far as Illinois and Wisconsin.”

Work looks different during various seasons at Rural Route Farms. During the spring, Justin spends time checking hives to ensure the health of the queens and making sure the hives are ready to make nucs.

Towards the end of spring and beginning of summer, the honey harvesting phase starts. Justin collects honey supers (the top box of frames the bees fill with honey), removes the wax cappings and extracts the honey before returning the box to the hive for bees to refill. The honey supers are only harvested once, saving honey for the bees to feed on throughout the winter.

Bees hard at work to fill the comb with honey.

Farm Credit of Western Arkansas - Lindsey Holtzclaw

From summer through fall, Rural Route Farms runs their queen program. Justin says they will usually catch queens twice a week from the middle of May through the first of October. He also spends time checking the hives to see if they have enough honey stored up to feed through the winter.

Finally, in the wintertime, Justin spends his time monitoring feed levels, only opening up the hive once a month.

Working directly with the bees is only a part of the couple’s farm duties.

Justin and Randi spend many of their weekends selling honey at local farmers markets. In fact, since they sell honey at both the Dardanelle Farmers Market and the Pope County Farmers Market, you can often find Justin at one and Randi at the other.

Randi says they also heavily rely on help from family members in order to cover all their bases.

“In addition to the farmers markets, we also sell our product at community events and festivals. We’re usually spread out, trying to sell it everywhere,” she said. “That’s the struggle of operating a small business.”

Randi schedules and coordinates events and maintains stock in a few store locations. She also works part-time as a dental hygienist and handles all of the marketing for Rural Route Farms. She smiles and says she also keeps their children, Carter (age 4) and JD (age 2), in line.

Rural Route Farms has an active Facebook page. Randi shares behind-the-scenes looks at farm life and lets followers know when products are available. She also uses social media and her presence at farmer markets to educate the public and answer beekeeping questions.

Carter and JD are captivated by the beekeeping process. They know to keep their distance from the actual bees, but enjoy helping carry items and watching the honey harvesting process.

“They love anything that involves being outside,” Randi said with a grin as Carter and JD picked up large sticks and started making a game of their own. “Of course, they both love the honey too.”

Justin and Randi’s love for bees appears to be contagious. It has rubbed off on their kids and Farm Credit loan officer, Anna Lester, as well.

Anna and Randi met through Randi’s work as a dental hygienist. When the Lowes were presented with the opportunity to take on commercial beekeeping, they called Anna to see if she could finance the business, despite it being a non-traditional agribusiness.

Justin pulls a frame out of a nuc to check its progress.

Farm Credit of Western Arkansas - Lindsey Holtzclaw

“Since this is a unique type of loan, we talked through what they wanted to do and worked together to put a business plan in place,” Vice President Anna Lester said. “Once their plan was complete, we were able to structure a loan that fit their needs.”

What Anna was able to do for the Lowes is common practice for Farm Credit. With a mission to support all types of agriculture,

“Anna has been helpful every step of the way. Anything we need, we can just call her,” Randi said. “It’s really helpful that she understands beekeeping and has an appreciation for what we’re doing.”

Vice President Anna Lester shared with the Lowes that their beekeeping business fits with Farm Credit's mission to support all types of agriculture.

Farm Credit of Western Arkansas - Lindsey Holtzclaw

Every beekeeper can point to their own, unique reasons for raising bees.

For Anna, it’s that her love for beekeeping has turned into a hobby she and her husband can enjoy together. Justin and Randi say they both appreciate a bee’s natural work ethic.

Although he works with bees 365 days a year, Justin says he’s still in awe of a bee’s instinct to get the job done.

“It’s really amazing to see one hatch out of the frame. It immediately wobbles around for a little bit and then goes to work. It doesn’t have to learn anything; it just instinctively knows to do its thing,” he said.

It’s no secret that bees have an incredible task for such small creatures. Watching them shuffle across honeycomb, you’ll notice they never stop moving, much like Justin and Randi. Raising both bees and two young children comes with its share of long hours and physical demands, but the couple agrees that the work they are doing is rewarding and exciting.

Each day presents its own challenges, but beekeeping is also full of constants and patterns. Randi says it’s their annual habits that make the insects fascinating.

“I think bees are interesting in general. It’s amazing how they know to perform such complex activities for a small creature and they do it every year, almost on a schedule,” Randi said. “We even go back to our pictures and say, ‘Hey, we were doing the exact same thing on this day, last year.’ I love seeing how they work and all they do for us. It’s cool being a part of that.”

Bees work hard. The Lowes’ work ethic is equally impressive. Farm Credit believes its staff works hard, as well, to assist members like Randi and Justin with financing solutions that fit unique ag operations.