Beekeepers provide honey and pollinator education across the Lowcountry
Knaust is part of a community of pollinator-lovers.
The “queen’s court” attends to the queen of this hive at Healing Farms, Saturday, Sept. 7, 2024, in West Ashley. The hive is maintained by Queen & Comb as a part of its host-a-hive service. Tom Knaust tends to 90 hives around the Lowcountry.
The Lowcountry has a robust beekeeping community. It has plenty of hobbyists as well as clubs and conservation groups. The Charleston Area Beekeepers Association is one of the largest beekeeping groups in the state. Because the learning curve for the craft is so steep, many beekeepers form unofficial networks of help for newcomers and experts alike.
”If someone approaches me and wants to learn how to do bee extractions, I'm gonna teach you,” said Eric Sellers Jr.
Sellers, who runs A&E Bee Extraction and Control, loves to surround himself with "people that love to learn."
Sellers will mentor other people within his network from time to time. Recently, he invited Knaust to a hive extraction in West Ashley.
"This is the stickiest I've been in a while," Knaust said as the pair cut footlong chunks of honeycomb out of an outdoor awning.
Tom Knaust finishes relocating a hive at The Bend, Wednesday, Sept. 4, 2024, in Charleston. The hive was removed from an awning of a West Ashley apartment by A&E Bee Extraction and Control and donated to Knaust.
After the extraction, Knaust loaded the freshly boxed honeycomb and a tightly sealed bucket of disgruntled bees into his truck and drove it to The Bend, a sustainable multiuse outdoor space in North Charleston.
Cars whizzed past on Azalea Drive as he shook the bucket of buzzing pollinators into their new home.
Knaust believes honey is one of many benefits people can have interacting with bees. These experiences can be a powerful educational tool about the delicate balance of nature.
Tom Knaust shows first and second grade students an observation hive in Saint John’s Catholic School, Thursday, Sept. 12, 2024, in North Charleston. The Bee Cause Project, a pollinator education nonprofit, installed this observation hive in the school nine years ago.
The Bee Cause Program is an educational nonprofit that aims to raise a generation of children who understand the importance of pollinators. Knaust maintains six of their observation hives, which are completely sealed in a glass paneled box, funded by this program placed in schools and community centers scattered around the county.
Knaust hopes seeing these bees in action may help children understand how environmental factors, such as pesticides around their school, affect bee health.
One of the hive spots is Saint John Catholic School in North Charleston, a private elementary school.
“If the Hive at St John's is suffering, and, you know, we discover that there's been a pesticide kill … the kids see that,” said Knaust.
Knaust believes working with hives can show adults the consequences of environmental contamination as well.
“When you actually have an experience where you watch your colony suffer, it's just so vivid,” Knaust said. “You can't go back from understanding how intricately all of these things are connected.”
