This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2007, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
"Bee Day" at the Jones Bee Co. on Saturday brought more than 250 backyard beekeepers to the Salt Lake City business to claim more than 3 million pre-ordered bees.
Robert and Kenneth Kirk, of Utah County, were replacing colonies that died during the bitter-cold winter. Robert Kirk said he gives bottled honey as Christmas gifts, "but I'm in it for the bees. I love to watch them. The whole bee culture - it's a miracle!"
Charles McCulloch, of Fountain Green, lost four hives to parasitic mites and is restarting them so his sons can sell honey to earn cash for LDS Church missions.
Mindy Wheeler-Crawford was getting bees for the first time because of a recent move to Centerville, where she has a large lot and room for a garden. She has heard bees can increase a vegetable crop by up to 30 percent.
Alma F. Harris, of North Ogden, was replacing two bee colonies that mysteriously disappeared and adding a new one, for a total of five hives.
"It's kind of fun," he said. "It's a return-to-nature kind of thing."
Bee Day is always hectic for the Jones family, which has been in the bee and honey business for over 40 years.
Inside the store, 82-year-old matriarch Olive Jones works with granddaughter Tracie Crookston to help the customers paying $59 for each buzzing wood-and-mesh box, which contains a mated queen and 2 1/2 pounds of worker bees - about 5,000 bees in all.
As the sun climbs outside, the air begins to swirl with "hitchhiker" bees - stowaways intoxicated by the smell of the queens that boarded the trailer Friday at the northern California bee farm and were driven straight through to Utah.
Olive's son Skip Jones said that during the nearly nonstop 14-hour drive, they keep a close watch on temperature sensors placed among the cages.
"We worry like crazy from the minute we pick up those bees," he said. "We keep 'em moving because you keep 'em cooler that way. You've got to be careful you don't get them overheated."
But this trip was "very nice," said Jones' sister-in-law, Jody Jones, who arrives from Texas each year to help drive the bees. "It was not too cool, and not too hot."
Once the bees are safely installed in their hives, their numbers can grow to 60,000 during the summer. And with the right conditions, the colony will make enough honey to see the hive through the winter, and some for the beekeeper.
Beekeeper numbers have fallen over the years, according to state entomologist Ed Bianco, "probably because of the cost of keeping bees. And, commercially, we don't have a lot of young beekeepers anymore, because they can make more money doing something else."
The Utah Agriculture Department lists about 300 licensed beekeepers. Neil Shelley, president of the Utah County Beekeepers Association, said about half of the group's 50 members are new to the hobby.
"There's lots of interest," Shelley said. "People see stories about colony collapse [a phenomenon in which entire colonies disappear from hives] and the importance of bees as pollinators. And they want safe food - food they can produce themselves."
Shelley said he started keeping bees four years ago and will have 12 hives this season. He collects about 75 pounds of honey per hive and sells the "local honey" for $6 a pound over the Internet.
Olive Jones says she advises beekeepers not to quit their day jobs.
"It's a lovely hobby, but an expensive hobby," she said.
The genesis of the Jones Bee Co. dates back to 1961, when Olive's son Richard Jones got some beehives for a Boy Scout merit badge project. When Richard went away to college, he sold seven hives to his father, Bill Jones, then a civil engineer with the Bureau of Reclamation.
Family members say Bill Jones, now deceased, fell instantly in love with the social insects and he and Olive started the business in 1963. As the number of hives grew, so did the family's increasing role in supplying local beekeepers with bees, equipment and sound advice.
"Bill decided he wanted 1,000 hives," Olive recalled - a goal he came close to achieving by placing hives in farmers' fields in southern and central Utah to take advantage of flowering alfalfa crops. She said they sold their honey by the barrel, chiefly to bakeries.
Bill Jones used a hat and veil to keep bees off his face, but rejected gloves and other protective gear as too cumbersome.
"He was in hog heaven working directly with his bees," said Kathy Jones, the company bookkeeper. "That was his fun. The store was just extra - it went with the territory."
"He loved his bees," agreed Skip Jones, who manages about 150 hives. "To me, it's a job. To him, it was a passion."
Skip Jones said he started working with bees when he was 12. He later spent 15 years managing a trucking company, but returned in 1988 to help run the family business. Stung seven times while setting up 100 hives in a Magna field a week ago, Jones said the secret to working with bees is to "move slowly and deliberately and don't show fear. . . . I don't like to get stung, but it's just part of the business."
Jones recommends scraping the stinger out as soon as possible, because it continues to pump venom even after tearing free from the bee, which dies as a result.
Jones Bee Company does 25 percent of its beekeeping business during April. And on Bee Day, in-laws, nephews and grandchildren pitch in to help handle the influx of customers.
The family members all look up to Olive Jones, whom Skip Jones refers to as "The Queen Bee." But Olive said the nickname is a misnomer.
"No, no," she protests. "The queen bee doesn't do any work; she only lays eggs. I'm a working person."
Olive has worked full-time at the bee company since retiring in 1974 from a career as a first-grade school teacher.
"It's a fascination," Olive said. "It's so interesting. . . . "I don't know any beekeepers who are atheists."
* A box of about 5,000 bees costs about $59.
* Beekeepers calm bees by blowing smoke into hives, which prompts them to gorge on honey and makes them more docile. But even the most careful beekeepers occasionally get stung.
U.S. honeybee populations have dropped since the 1980s with the introduction of non-native parasitic mites that have killed off thousands of colonies in Utah and across the nation.
The nationwide shortage was significant enough in 1995 that honeybees had to be brought in from Canada and Mexico for the first time since 1922.