BUSY BEES

photos by ryan moser story by hannah lee leidy

Beekeeping is not for the

faint of heart. Despite

working in our tempermental

coastal environment, local

beekeepers still find success

in their pursuit of liquid gold.

Bees – a keystone species – build and maintain the vegetation in our natural environments. Without their pollination, around one-third of plant life – including fruits, vegetables and flowers – would go extinct. But as astounding as that is, bees are also revered for a much simpler reason: their honey.

That rich, sweet elixir has fascinated humans for thousands of years. Prehistoric cave paintings even show that humans foraged for honey at least 8,000 years ago – if not longer. For centuries it’s been utilized as everything from a sweetener to a topical ointment loaded with antimicrobial properties, and the ancient Egyptians famously used it for embalming purposes and to pay taxes.

With such a rich history, it’s perhaps unsurprising that beekeeping has evolved over the centuries and across continents as people have sated their taste for honey. Today, beekeeping primarily occurs in inland locations, where rich soil supports diverse and plentiful plant life. But a small, yet enthusiastic, number of people also cultivate and tend to bees right here on the Outer Banks.

“We’re not considered a big agricultural center on the Outer Banks,” says Hatteras Island resident Don Babin. “But, for a lot of reasons, our floral vegetation still relies on bees.”

Among the Outer Banks beekeeping community, Don’s considered a sort of godfather. He’s been in the game for 60 years, and people often come to him when they have trouble with their hives. His beekeeping career began in New Hampshire, where he studied entomology in college, apprenticed with beekeepers, and at one point ran a part-time business

Honeybees toil away at one of Don Babin’s hives here on the Outer Banks.

Don Babin with his hive in Rodanthe (top). A bee alights on the comb (center). Ever the busy pollinators, bees rely on clover, along with countless other wildflowers, for pollen (bottom).

with around 150 hives. They provided a source of honey, and he also rented them out to local fruit farmers in order to increase pollinations.

Don keeps the most hives of any beekeeper on the Outer Banks, totaling around 20 or so. This number may not seem large to a mainland beekeeper, who can easily keep 20 to 30 hives in one location, but the Outer Banks’ island environment and shrubby vegetation make it a less hospitable territory for bees. A local lack of nectar-yielding vegetation limits Don to keeping around two hives (at most) in a single location.

“I find that if I’m going to be able to harvest any honey, I have to travel a lot,” Don explains. He scatters his bee hives across the area, dotting Hatteras, Nags Head, Kitty Hawk, Duck, Currituck and in relatively far-flung places such as Edenton. “Location is like real estate,” he adds.

Don tries out a few new spots each year. To introduce a new hive, he extracts frames containing young larvae from a current hive and places them in a fresh box along with a queen bee. Like many beekeepers, he orders a package of honeybees (which includes a queen with workers) or just a queen bee from a supplier in Rocky Mount. A queen is then introduced to a hive with the larvae frames, and a new colony begins.

Don stays on the go, jetting up and down the islands to visit his hives and scout out different locations. He checks his hives every 10 to 14 days, spending around three to five minutes assessing each one. The bees are busiest during the spring, and Don usually plans his first honey extraction around late May to early June, waiting for the frames to fill to at least 98 percent with capped honey.

But while Don’s method is fairly conventional, it isn’t the only way beekeeping occurs on the Outer Banks. Kitty Hawk native Matthew McCoy also started forging a different way to keep bees locally in the summer of 2020, striving to replicate as much of the bees’ natural environment as possible.

Matthew studied the craft extensively for about five years before starting his own hives in Manteo and Pitt County. He was a member of the Five County Beekeepers Association (covering Wake, Johnston, Wilson, Nash and Franklin counties) and also did some independent research, which gravitated toward traditional European practices.

“I saw what people were doing, and learned what they were having problems with,” he says. “After that, I thought I’d give the old ways a try.”

For starters, Matthew catches his own bees in order to avoid ordering packages of honeybees that can often come from different states unadapted

to the local environment. Once he’s located and captured a wild swarm, he can safely transfer it to one of his apiaries. Wild bee swarms tend to seek out hollow locations – such as logs or tree branches – in order to reproduce. When they find a suitable home, the scouts return to their original hive and bring the queen and a few worker bees back to the new location. Matthew mimics this process by setting up a swarm trap (which is essentially a framed box) inside a hollow. He smears the inside of the box with lemongrass essential oil and propolis – a resinous mixture honeybees produce to seal gaps in their hives – and waits for a swarm to find it. Once the trap catches a swarm, Matthew can close its small entrances and move the box (“very carefully!”) to one of his beehives. “I find that if I’m His beekeeping also differs in his style of hive boxes. Wild beehives going to be able to have one chamber, which can help the bees control their climate conditions harvest any honey, better. Inspired by beekeeping styles in Europe, particularly in Spain, I have to travel a Matthew uses one-chambered layens hives – developed by French lot. Location is botanist and apiculturist Georges de Layens – who believed beekeeping like real estate.” should be done with local bees and hives that are as close to the bees’ natural habitats as possible. -Don Babin “It’s a really complicated thing you’re doing to go in and modify a bee’s environment, and you don’t want to get in the way of nature,” Matthew explains. “It makes me think: What’s my role? What can a human being do for bees? Well, I can build them a box, a habitat to live in…but it better be a good habitat.” Both Matthew and Don depend on their hives for honey production, which they then extract and sell locally under the labels of The Real McCoy and Babin Apiary, respectively. “Getting quality honey is difficult,” Matthew adds, however. “The Outer Banks isn’t necessarily the best place for bees.” “An off-island beekeeper could probably harvest 100 to 125 pounds of honey per hive. Here, 50 pounds is a good harvest,” Don says in agreement. Despite these challenges, he sells Babin Apiary’s raw honey with minimal production. He filters it, bottles it and even handwrites his own labels in order to keep everything as natural as possible. “A bee colony is a pretty powerful thing, and to go and collect their honey is amazing,” Matthew adds while describing the process behind his Real McCoy line, which features an equally natural whipped honey. “It’s such a wonderful product – and it’s truly the best medicine you can find.”