By Melissa Spellman
Staff Reporter
(New Journal and Guide):
As the season begins to shift to the warmth of spring Black lady beekeepers and bee enthusiasts Carrie “Honeybee” Brown and Brittany McCoy are preparing for bee season.
The most prevalent species of bees in Virginia is the honeybee. A fascinating fact, on average a hive will have about 60,000 bees with almost 99 percent being female. March is Woman’s History Month, so it is fitting to highlight two local Black women beekeepers, their work as pollinator educators, and the matriarchal community of bees.
Carrie “Honeybee” Brown works as a Success Coach at Norfolk State University’s Spartan Success Center. However, her passion lies with plants, insects, nature, more specifically honeybees.
“I am a lover of the bees,” said Brown. She continued, “I have been keeping bees for over 15 years and a pollinator educator for over 15 years.”
Brown was first introduced to bees while spending the summer with her young niece who became fascinated with the buzzing creatures. “I got into bees because my niece at that time was 5 years old and her neighbor had bees and she was hypnotized by them,” said Brown.
Astonished at her niece’s interest in the bees, Brown decided when her niece came to visit, she would have a surprise for her. “The surprise was a hive and a garden in my backyard. I knew that through the beekeeping that would be something that we would share – just the two of us because everyone else was afraid, but she was not,” said Brown.
Brittany McCoy is an Operation Specialist II in NSU’s Writing Center. McCoy and Brown are colleagues who met while working at NSU’s Library. McCoy says that coming over to help a friend is how she got into beekeeping. One day Brown asked McCoy to come over to her house to help her with something. McCoy agreed, only to find out once she arrived, that it was a beehive.
“When she lifted the lid, I saw the bees and I heard them make this humming noise; it sounded like a thunderstorm, and I fell in love with it,” said McCoy. The coworkers bonded over the honeybees and all things nature. Thus, the mentor-mentee friendship blossomed.
“It started with bees. I am in a course now to be a pollinator stewardess and learn about different pollinators but I’m more fascinated with working with honeybees,” said McCoy.
Brown and McCoy are pollinator educators which is someone who educates others about the power of pollination. A pollinator stewardess is a certification received stating one’s knowledge about pollination and pollinators. A pollinator stewardess educates anybody who’s interested in how different insects pollinate and how important pollination is.
Once bee season begins, “That’s when they really begin forging, and start pollinating and bringing it back home to the hive, and they have new babies,” said McCoy.
Brown detailed what happens during the start of bee season. “In the beekeeping world the beekeepers are ready to open their hive and make sure that the queen made it through the winter,” said Brown. In the winter the bees keep the queen warm. Most hives have only one queen bee. “All the bees in the hive sacrifice their life to keep the queen warm. They ball themselves up surrounding her to keep her warm all winter so that when spring comes, she can start her job. Her job is to begin laying eggs,” Brown explained.
She went on to say, “It’s the baby bees that make the wax to make more combs. The hive turns into a nursery jammed full of baby bees and eggs. It’s the forger bees that go outside of the hive. They go out collecting pollen and nectar to help support the hive. It’s all hands-on deck. It’s just like a company starting up everybody already knows their assignment and they get to it,” said Brown.
Ever wonder how the combs in a beehive are formed? McCoy explained, “It’s the baby bees that produce wax to make the hive or hexagon shapes we see in the beehive. The honeycomb starts off as circle shapes, the heat of the bees causes the circles to melt and merge together and you get the hexagon shape.”
Brown describes the work of the bees as “The joy of seeing God’s best example of a highly functioning team. Everybody has their role to do and no one has anything that’s more important.”
She broke down some of the duties in the hive, “The forgers have to forge the food to give to the nurse bees to feed the baby bees. The queen has to lay her eggs. The undertaker bees have to keep the hive clean and take the dead bees out. The male bees get to mate with the queen,” said Brown. The work of this highly functioning team is essential to nature and human survival.
Bees are vital to our sustainability. Brown and McCoy shared that if we lose the bees, humans will die three to four years after. “That’s how important they are. They pollinate and that’s how we grow our vegetables and our food. Without bees doing what they need to do as far as pollinating we will lose our natural resources, vegetation, flowers, and we lose grass,” said McCoy. Livestock eat grass and without grass livestock will die off. There won’t be any food left.
Brown noted several bee facts, “Bees are not out to sting you. Bees have a full-time job of supporting the hive. Other bees are pollinators that really don’t sting such as the carpenter bee and the mason bee. The mason bee all she does is pollinate.”
Brown says there are over 17,000 species of bees. “There are so many different types of bees now that are almost extinct or becoming extinct. We are not only trying to save the honeybee but the other pollinators that are having a tough time due to habitat destruction, different diseases they come in contact with, pesticides, and humans,” declared Brown.
The pollinator educators noted that since what used to happen naturally has changed, pollinators now may be trucked to the bee hives do their jobs. “It’s kind of scary if you think about it. People aren’t really paying attention to it, and they don’t realize how things have become,” said McCoy.
“It’s a billion-dollar industry where they have trucks full of honeybees that they take from orchard to field to make sure that the pollination happens,” said Brown.
She continued, “It’s a huge almond crop in California and most of the almond crop is pollinated by honeybees brought into California.” She noted that cranberry farms up the East Coast also have honeybees brought in to pollinate their crops. In Japan hand pollination goes on where they take a feather and pollinate the different fruit trees.
There are simple ways we all can contribute to pollination and bee livelihood. McCoy said we all can help just by, “Planting more wildflowers. Weeds in the grass are OK. Don’t be so urgent to rake up leaves because ground bees like to sit up under leaves that are on the ground.”
There are local beekeeping clubs for people who want to be beekeepers and handle the bees. There are also programs where people talk about plants and pollination and they just want to do the pollination habitat, the flower part of it.
Brown and McCoy will be hosting a Hive Raising. They need volunteers to come out and put the six hives together. Brown explained where the concept of hive raising comes from. “In the Amish and the Pennsylvania Dutch community, they have barn raisings where everyone in the community gets together whenever someone gets a new barn. Everyone comes together and they eat, and they raise the barn,” said Brown.
It’s a community project that benefits that farming community. “It goes back to a passage about with many hands it makes light work. It’s about the blessing of having people come together and fellowship. It’s really for the good of the community. We want to do the same thing but fashion it around putting together a hive,” said Brown.
On Earth Day, Monday, April 22, they will be giving out seeds on Norfolk State’s Campus. Brown and McCoy will also host a Bee Meet and Greet where the public can bring their bee questions.
To get involved or participate in the Hive Raising contact Carrie “Honeybee” Brown or Brittany McCoy on Instagram @pollinatoreducator.
“When she lifted the lid, I saw the bees and I heard them make this humming noise; it sounded like a thunderstorm, and I fell in love with it.”
– Brittany McCoy
“Bees are not out to sting you. Bees have a full-time job of supporting the hive. Other bees are pollinators that really don’t sting such as the carpenter bee and the mason bee. The mason bee – all she does is pollinate.”
– Carrie “Honeybee” Brown
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