African American beekeeper talks about the fascinating life of bees
“All bees matter!”
Those are the words of African American beekeeper Thad Smith, founder and owner of Westside Bee Boyz LLC, a prolific bee and honey-based product business with apiaries operating in North Lawndale and other parts of the city.
But how exactly did beekeeping pique his interest?
“Long story short, I was homeless and did some things and had to do some time,” Smith explained.
After following a more positive path, Smith found himself at Sweet Beginnings, a wholly owned subsidiary of the North Lawndale Employment Network. It is here where he got his start in beekeeping. (Sweet Beginnings has several apiaries operating throughout Chicagoland.)
“I fell in love with it and that was in 2013,” he said.
A year later, he turned his passion for beekeeping into what is now a thriving business.
By incorporating sustainable methods into neglected and abandoned properties, his bee operation serves as an urban center for sustainable community development and an urban outpost for Midwest permaculture studies, according to information on his website.
“Lawndale is where I learned beekeeping, that’s why I love Lawndale,” Smith said. “The other special meaning for me is that my grandmother owned a restaurant in Lawndale. I was born in Cook County, so the West Side has a strong cultural significance to me.”
A black man raising bees is not something one often comes across, he said.
“When I first started, there was another Black master beekeeper by the name of Michael Howard,” Smith said. “He’s one of my heroes in this industry. … It’s really me and him in the city doing things with bees. There are other Black beekeepers you may not hear about, but as far as being in the forefront and doing this, it’s just me and him.”
Wherever he brings his bees, Smith attracts attention with people asking a lot of questions. This gives him the opportunity to talk about the origin and the life of bees.
“There are 20,000 bee species on the planet and close to 800 in Illinois and we really only talk about the honeybee and that’s because of honey,” Smith explained. “People like to put hives on the West and South side because there’s a lot of vacant land, but the honeybees crowd out the native bees that were there before the honeybees got there.”
When you hear people talking about saving the bees, they are talking about the honeybee,” Smith added. “Honeybees are the largest growing livestock in the last five years and are never going to go out of style.”
The native pollinators, he added, do a better job at pollination than the honeybees that are brought in. Smith said that the “save the bee talk” is propaganda from honey organizations that want to sell more honey.
“They want you to focus on the honeybee and take your attention from the native bee which has declined, some species 70 to 80 percent.” Smith said. “Right here in Chicago, the rusty patched bumble bee is on the endangered species list, but we don’t even talk about it here.”
Without bees, many of the world’s most important crops would fail, impacting the food supply of humans and countless other species, according the Earth Day.org
“Being a beekeeper means, I’m a keeper of all bees,” he said. “My honeybee should not be over any other species. We should find a way to work together with all the species. All bees matter.”
Smith is working with a couple of schools as a way to engage Black youth and to hopefully pique their interest in running a beekeeping operation. The connection with bees and food production is a critical part of any education to beekeeping, he said.
“Black beekeepers and Black farmers need to work together,” said Smith. “It’s essential that the apiaries are located in areas where there is no pesticide spraying.”
Business is thriving and he’s looking to expand.
“I consider myself a honey palace where you can buy at any point, up to six different kinds of honey,” Smith said.
Though he currently does not have hives in operation, Howard, the other beekeeper, runs Eden’s Place Nature Center and Eden’s Place Farms on the South Side. He’s also the founder and CEO Fuller Park Community Development,
“We have a full farm, and we feed a lot of people,” Howard said.
Howard agreed that too African Americans are in the beekeeping field. He added that it’s vital for African Americans, who have the highest numbers in chronic disease, to get involved with farming beekeeping as a way to have better control of their food sources.
“If people could see a profit in it, they would do it,” he said. “The city limits the hive sites and locations. There’s so much bureaucracy in trying to establish a honeybee and honey-based product business.”
For Bee Boyz Product and other information go to www.westsidebeeboyz.com
