Honey boosts southern West Virginia economy and brings value to Appalachia and the Mountain State
Sweet, nutritious honey and our resilient bees are a Godsend for West Virginia and Appalachia. Honey is boosting the economy of southern West Virginia and bringing positive benefits to us.
After decades of public service and foundation management, I was blessed to be able to return to my hometown and help stand up and grow a meaningful non-profit social enterprise that is making a huge difference – protecting our pollinators, growing more native plants, restoring coal-impacted lands and boosting the state’s economy.
The Appalachian Beekeeping Collective (ABC), a project of Appalachian Headwaters, trains, supports, and provides bees and equipment free of charge to partner beekeepers in economically distressed counties throughout southern West Virginia and parts of Virginia. We help our partners produce honey (and income) in the “greenest” possible way. Since 2016, we have helped more than 100 partners get started in beekeeping for profit.
Beekeeping can be a great way to earn a sustainable living in rural areas, but the start-up costs and learning curve can be steep. Our educational staff helps eliminate some of the risk for partners. We support our members by teaching beekeeping skills in classrooms and through regular mentoring at their hives. We start with a five-week Beekeeping 101 class each winter, before any partner receives a hive. Each partner is assigned a staff mentor, who provides regular support and is on call for help. Mentors visit each partner at least five times over the course of the year. After the first year, each partner continues to build his or her skills, participating in advanced classes and workshops.
Our program also provides the materials necessary to overcome beekeeping’s considerable start-up costs. We start each partner with 2-6 hives, depending on experience and ability. Each set up includes the full-sized bee colony, hive boxes, smoker, veil, and hive tool. We provide additional honey supers and queen bees as needed. We also work with partners to provide any necessary bear fencing.
Each year, we help our partners to grow their operations. Successful partners in the program continue to expand their apiaries. We teach partners to split off new colonies from their growing hives and provide additional hives to members who have proven themselves to be diligent beekeepers. We also provide replacement hives to help with any losses. We teach partners to requeen each hive annually to ensure strong hives year after year. We even breed our own bees to ensure they are adapted to the local ecosystem. This work promotes disease resistance in the bees and eliminates the need to use synthetic chemicals and antibiotics.
We extract, bottle, market, and distribute ABC honey on behalf of member beekeepers. We connect to consumers who would be otherwise inaccessible to small-scale rural beekeepers, helping members of the Collective earn a sustainable income from their hard work. We use the proceeds to pay partner beekeepers and continue our educational programs.
Teaching people how to keep bees helps them understand local ecosystems and increases their awareness of worldwide threats to pollinators such as climate change and deforestation. As ABC beekeepers learn about natural beekeeping, they become better environmental stewards. In addition, our program is also 100% solar powered. Our bottling and honey extraction facility and education center hosts 184 solar panels.
We have shared our efforts with many government agencies and leaders who can support our efforts. U.S. Senator Joe Manchin believed in us early, and he has done the most to help us accelerate our progress and growth. Thanks to the Senator and U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Agricultural Research Service (ARS), we have secured funding since 2020 through ARS’ Kearneysville office to create a Pollinator Recovery, Research and Education Center.
The Center’s mission is to (1) educate the public about the importance of diverse pollinator populations, (2) to foster pollinator related economic opportunities in the region, and (3) restore native ecosystems. The program boasts sites in multiple counties in West Virginia, including a recently renovated 100-acre residential camp and conference center in Summers County, and a 160-acre pollinator park and teaching lab in Greenbrier County. These sites are well-suited to support pollinator recovery programs because the region is characterized by large areas of diverse pollinator forage with minimal pesticide use and a community of industrious and outdoor-focused residents.
Our programs provide hands-on educational experiences for hundreds of people each year, focusing on programs in Summers, Greenbrier, McDowell, Wyoming, Fayette, Mercer, Monroe, Raleigh, Pocahontas, and Nicholas counties. We also provide for a wider community through virtual programming and educational materials. We engage with regional communities through community science, summer camps, school programs, internships, and a beekeeping cooperative.
Central Appalachia boasts a wide variety of sites ideal for studying and protecting pollinators, uniquely large swathes of diverse forests, limited development and a culture of beekeeping and agriculture conducive to restoring and nurturing a variety of pollinators.
Pollinators are keystone species in most terrestrial ecosystems. The ecological service they provide is necessary for the reproduction of most of the world’s flowering plants, including more than two-thirds of the world’s crop species. The United States alone grows more than 100 crops that benefit from pollinators, and the economic value of these native pollinators is estimated at $3 billion per year in the United States.
