Gary Woodard has operated the Woodard Bee Farm for three years, along with his wife Lorrie.

Woodard’s interest in bees began when he was young, listening to his grandfather talk about honeybees and his days of beekeeping.

“He would kind of drop these little nuggets of wisdom he learned from beekeeping, you know, and I remember one day we were hunting. It was a warm fall day. We were down by a creek, and he saw honeybees in the mud by the water. He said, you know, you can drop some flour on the bee and watch and find where his hive is. I was flabbergasted by that. That was how they would hunt them in the wild. You know, just take some regular white flour or something like that and you could watch it fly out,” said Woodard.

Later in life, Woodard became concerned for honeybees and pollinators. This led him to eventually start keeping his own hives.

“I was always really fascinated but then later in life, I became kind of concerned about the bees as I read about their plight. I thought, well, it would be nice to someday have some bees if I could have a small place and get some and work them.”

Woodard cares about the bees, but his work with these pollinators supports the people of the Athens community as well.

“It’s kind of a hobby, and I think it’s something that’s good to help in the community. You know, the bees will fly up to like five miles and pollinate different things. So, it’s just a way to help out,” said Woodard.

While the Woodards primarily sell to family and friends, they’ve already harvested and nearly sold 84 pounds of honey this year.

“All of (our harvest) is pretty much gone. So, we’ll probably harvest some more later, and it’ll probably go just as quick. It’s a commodity, and a lot of people like it. They like raw honey. That’s all we operate is just pure, raw honey. We don’t do anything to it but extract it and run it through a coarse sieve, or screen if you will,” said Woodard.

When honey is available, interested parties can visit the Woodard Bee Farm Facebook page to inquire about purchasing.

Woodard is amazed by the nature of the honeybee and all they do for humankind.

“I think probably the most rewarding part is gaining an understanding of one of God’s greatest creations. The honeybee is a magnificent creature. I think the human creature is far more complex, but some of the things that the bee does and is able to do and how it helps us as humans is striking,” said Woodard.

He reminds readers that without the honeybee, much of the food on the shelves of grocery stores would be unavailable.

“A large percentage of the food that you eat is there because it was pollinated, and the honeybee is one of the major pollinators in the U.S. Many commercial beekeepers are running hundreds and sometimes thousands of hives that they will load up on a truck and move to mass farms just to pollinate their crops because there are not that many bees in those areas. A lot of the places don’t have trees in the wild with nesting bees,” said Woodard.

He explained how commercial beekeepers operate in areas with lesser natural occurrences of bees.

“They’ll bring in semi-truck loads of bees and station those in groves and help pollinate. After the Bloom is gone, they’ll pick up the bees and move to the next thing that needs bees. That’s what the big commercial beekeepers do. That’s how your food is. Basically, where a bloom is, is where a piece of fruit is going to be. and when that’s pollinated then the fruit can come about, and you have something to eat,” said Woodard.

Woodard encourages farmers and other residents to avoid using insecticides.

“So, everybody gets really excited when you know people talk about the bee may go away if we don’t do something to help protect it. So, on our farm, we don’t use insecticides, but I know farmers around the area who do, and I can’t stop that. I can only encourage people not to use those kinds of things. You just hope that they come to a common knowledge and common understanding of what it’s doing to the insects,” said Woodard.

Woodard went on to say, “use more natural sources to control insects. If a honeybee can get to it, if you use something that attracts the honeybee to a bloom and that bloom has been sprayed with some kind of insecticide, it will likely damage or kill the bee. It’s raising awareness, people need to think about what they’re doing. You know? and just remember, if you think there’s no bees around your place, that’s probably true in a lot of cases like inside the city, but there are some beekeepers here in Athens, and a lot of people don’t know that and bees fly up to five miles. So, bees are flying in from outside of Athens and there’s also bees inside of Athens that are being kept.”

He reminds readers of the beauty of the honeybee and the medicinal properties bee products bring humans.

“If you ever looked at a honeycomb close, it’s just so exact in how it’s constructed. and what’s amazing is the bee is able to build that with such great precision with no tools other than what his body has, and he does that in the dark,” said Woodard. “Inside the colony — inside the hive itself — they close up the hive any kind of gap with propolis, a lot of people call it bee glue and it certainly is a very sticky substance in the hot weather. It’s hard when it’s cool. In the fall or winter, it solidifies. But that propolis is somewhat magical. It was one of the first medicines known to man, and it’s still used in medicinal things today. That’s part of what gives honey antimicrobial, antiviral kind of properties,” said Woodard.

Woodard hopes all residents will do what they can to protect Limestone County’s friendly neighborhood pollinators.