Beeline for California

Thirty-three years ago, Bobby Frierson was working an early morning shift at a chemical plant in St. Gabriel when a swarm of honeybees settled into a key piece of equipment.

Frierson’s coworkers froze, operations screeched to a halt and managers quickly set off to find an exterminator.

Frierson asked them to wait. He’d been raised around bees—a family tradition started by his great-grandmother, a Pearl River native who had harvested honey because it was a cheap alternative to sugar.

“I don’t know why I spoke up about those bees,” he recalls. “But something inside me just clicked.”

Frierson knew that honeybees in mid-swarm had neither the interest, nor the physical fortitude to sting. He gently pushed the vibrating mass into a plywood box, spotted the queen by the shape of her legs and abdomen, and took the lot home.

A perpetual Jack-of-all-trades whose side businesses have ranged from farming to raising rabbits, Frierson was no stranger to dabbling. One colony quickly grew to six. But these bees were different from anything he’d tinkered with. He fell in love.

“I read everything I could get my hands on about them,” he says. “And eventually, I figured I could make a living at it.”

Today the Denham Springs beekeeper is on the verge of supporting himself and his family exclusively through bees. In years with normal rainfall, Frierson’s 350 colonies can produce 2,700 gallons of commercial honey. He also breeds and sells queens for other beekeepers, and provides humane bee removal with a special vacuum system of his own design. He also supplies Juban’s with honeycombs, which the restaurant infuses in bourbon to create its signature honey bourbon cocktail.

Mysteriously, honeybee colonies around the country have shrunk or, in some cases, literally disappeared, a continuing crisis for citrus, almond and other growers, who depend on honeybees for pollination. So this year, Frierson is planning to more than double his colonies to meet the growing demand for “rental” bees.

It’s a growing industry, sparked by years of honeybee population decline. Between 1947 and 2005, U.S. honeybee colonies dwindled by more than 40%, due in large part to two varieties of mites, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The drop intensified last year because of an additional problem, an intermittent phenomenon called Colony Collapse Disorder.

The honeybee decline is a huge issue since crops that depend on bees for pollination make up nearly one-third of the American diet, says Dale Pollet, LSU professor of entomology. The exact dollar value of honeybee pollination varies, but experts agree it’s in the billions.

“In Louisiana alone, the value of pollination is $400 million,” Pollet says. “One out of every third bite you take is there because of pollination, and a second third is indirectly related to pollination.”

The bad news disturbs Frierson, who knows cold every vital statistic associated with the honeybee, and lives in awe of its deliberate and industrious life. But the situation also gives him a window, since desperate almond growers in California are willing to pay top dollar for the temporary use of colonies.

Frierson will spend this year growing his bee population in anticipation of a forthcoming trip out West. Then, he and other members of the Capital Area Bee Association will load an 18-wheeler with their colonies and head to California, where growers will pay them to position hundreds of bee boxes throughout almond groves.

It’s part of a dream that grew out of a hobby, which all started with Frierson’s appreciation for an insect that most people try to avoid.

“I love bees,” he says. “I always have. They’re smart little things. And they’re terribly important.”