Busy Bees

Busy Bees

By Susan Langenhennig Granger

Steve Bernard was 14 by the time he was actually paid to work with the bees in his family’s apiary business in the Atchafalaya Basin. But by then, he was well-acquainted with the hives.

“I’ve been getting stung regularly since I was 10 years old,” he said, chuckling as he remembered how he quit playing baseball in the summer when he turned 14 so he could work for his family’s business. “I made $5 a day, for an eight-hour day. I guess it paid off; now I own the company.”

Bernard and his wife, Jeanise, run Bernard’s Apiaries in Henderson, Louisiana, honey producers and bottlers of the popular Bernard’s Acadiana Honey sold in all Rouses stores. Thomas Bernard, who also was a postmaster and railroad agent, sold just about everything, including bees, which he wholesaled to beekeepers around the country, shipping them by train (which stopped right near the general store).

Bernard took over the company from his father in 1988, but its roots go much further back. His grandfather, Thomas Bernard, ran a general store and fish dock in Atchafalaya, Louisiana near Butte La Rose, serving all the needs of the small but bustling community of fishermen, pipeline workers and families. “The earliest records (for the store) are from 1918,” Steve Bernard said.

“They ran about 2,500 to 3,000 (hives) at that time,” Steve Bernard said. They used boats to access colonies deep in the basin. “There was a big need for beeswax in the 1940s because of World War II,” he said. (Beeswax was used for waterproofing. The military coated “airplanes, shells, drills, bits, cables and pulleys, adhesive tape, varnishes, canvases and awnings” with it, according to the National WWII Museum in New Orleans.)

The general store and fish dock are long gone, but Bernard’s Apiaries is still busy with its bees. Over the years, the business changed to primarily a honey farming and bottling operation, rather than wholesale bees. Bernard keeps about 2,500 hives today and procures honey from other local keepers, which he bottles for distribution.

The sweet stuff isn’t quite liquid gold, but it is big business. Louisiana ranks in the top 10 honey-producing states in the nation, bringing in 2.15 million pounds of honey in 2021, worth about $5.37 million, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Louisiana has more than 45,000 bee colonies throughout the state, with family-owned businesses — like Bernard’s — responsible for much of the production. (While Louisiana is a big producer, the state’s haul is dwarfed by the nation’s leading honey producer, North Dakota, which racked up around 28 million pounds of honey in 2021. Nationally, honey production was valued at $321 million that year.)

Other Gulf Coast states are also in this sweet business, with Alabama producing 273,000 pounds of honey in 2020, worth about $1.5 million, while Mississippi brought in 1.83 million pounds, worth $3.54 million.

Though he still enjoys keeping bees, Bernard’s focus is mainly on bottling. “It’s two different businesses, production and bottling,” he said.

Not far from Bernard’s is Carmichael’s Honey in Breaux Bridge, Louisiana. It bottles about 4 million pounds of honey per year according to Nathan Carmichael, who founded the business with his wife, Marcela, in 2013.

Like Bernard’s, Carmichael’s Honey has deep Louisiana roots. Nathan’s family has been beekeeping for three generations. “By the time I was five years old, my dad was teaching me a trade that would forever change my life,” Nathan Carmichael said on the company’s website. “When I was eight years old, I bought my first beehive from my dad. I remember bottling the honey with our little hand filler and selling it to neighbors, church members and family friends. I kept my own hives on and off throughout childhood, and even into my college years.”

Today, Carmichael doesn’t have hives, but instead procures honey from producers around Louisiana, Texas and elsewhere. He offers state-specific products for Louisiana and Texas, with bottles filled with honey collected only in those geographic areas, including for Rouses Markets’ private label Louisiana honey. He also sells certified organic honey nationwide.

When he started out, Carmichael was selling in bulk to wholesale companies, which were putting the product into cereal bars. “I knew we had great honey,” he said, “and I thought it would be delightful to see consumers get it in a bottle and put it on whatever they want.”

The company, whose labels specify that the honey is “100 percent pure, raw and unfiltered,” has grown exponentially, going from hand-filling and capping bottles to a state-of-the-art facility that just added another 3,000-square-foot processing plant scheduled to start work soon. Just one of the tanks in that new facility can hold more than 50,000 pounds of honey.

Bernard’s Apiaries also initially sold its honey in bulk, not in bottles. “My grandfather always wanted to get into bottling but never did,” Bernard said. “We did bulk sales even after I bought the business. We used to ship a lot of barrels to Ohio.”

Around 1990, Bernard started experimenting with bottling. “I remember I’d stay after work and bottle honey by hand. Once I sold five cases, I thought, ‘Hey, it’s taking off,” he said, laughing, estimating that he now bottles more than 250,000 pounds of honey a year. “It’s really grown, and we’ve been really blessed.”

FLOWERS, THEN HONEY

If you love Louisiana honey, you can most likely thank the Chinese tallow tree (Triadica sebifera) for your sweet treat. Though the plant is an invasive species — and there have been efforts in recent years to reduce the trees’ population — much of the honey

in Louisiana comes from the nectar from this tree, which produces flowers as early as February and lasting through May.

Tallow “can be found in all 64 parishes in Louisiana and also in 55 counties of Texas,” according to the Louisiana Farm Bureau. Although it’s a major source of Louisiana wildflower honey, tallow isn’t the only one. Other major nectar plants in the state include willow, clover, American buckwheat vine, aster and goldenrod, according to the LSU AgCenter.

Some wildflowers “are not abundant enough in any one location to be good sources for any volume of nectar but can help colonies make it through times of need,” according to “Louisiana Honey Plants,” a 32-page book by entomologist Dale Pollet published by the LSU AgCenter.

Bernard’s favorite honey comes from willow nectar. “You can tell willow honey by the fragrance and flavor,” he said. “It’s lighter in color.” Willow trees bloom in the spring in this area.

Bernard also loves a honey made from a plant in the mint family that grows deep in the Atchafalaya. “It makes an excellent honey, but you can’t depend on it,” he said.

Tallow is summer honey. “It’s a little darker in color with a very mellow flavor,” he said. “That’s our volume honey. In the fall of the year, goldenrod and aster are the predominate ones. They’re darker in color.”

Bernard’s hives are mostly along the basin. “We also go out in St. Landry, Iberville, the edge of Lafayette Parish and St. Martin Parish. He’s supplied honey to Rouses Markets for 25 years.

Marcela Carmichael, a native of Brazil, loves to bake with the honey she and her husband bring home to their two daughters, Nathan Carmichael said. But he has a more direct way to enjoy the fruits of his labor. “I like to take a half-scoop of peanut butter, hit it with some clover honey,” he said, laughing. “Then I chase it with some milk.” Now, that’s a sweet treat.