Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
Enthusiasts going ape for apiaries
Beekeeping teacher surprised by buzz as business waxes
Arkansans are swarming to learn beekeeping, from school children to backyard farmers, and Lauren Anderson’s business Calm + Confidence is helping them learn how to manage their own hives.
Little-Rock based Calm + Confidence started as a student project when Anderson, from a small town outside of Fayetteville, was a high school science teacher in Tacoma, Wash., where she ran the beekeeping program for six years.
Anderson returned to Arkansas to help take care of family during the pandemic.
“I thought it would just be a couple hives and that I would try to eke out a living on it,” Anderson said. “When we started this business, we thought it would just be a few people who would want help starting a beehive, but the demand is out of control.”
Anderson said she went from four hives to over 100 in three years.
“I thought we would end up with like 20 and sort of hover around there, but we have a wait list right now of 35 people who are waiting to get hives and as spring comes, that’s just going to get longer and longer with more people interested.”
Beekeeping has been on the rise in Arkansas in recent years, according to data provided by the state Department of Agriculture.
There were 4,101 registered beekeepers and 6,776 active registered apiaries in the state in the most recent count, according to the Arkansas Department of Agriculture.
From kids to college students, hobbyists and weekenders, from those looking for a side hustle to those wanting to do it full-time, there’s a wide spectrum of people in Arkansas who want to learn beekeeping
skills and work with her company, Anderson said.
“We have one mother-and-son duo that do it together and he is nine and our youngest on-payroll beekeeper is a sophomore at Central [High School in Little Rock] right now,” Anderson said.
Ashlynn Bowman, 22, of Sherwood, is a college student majoring in horticulture who aspires to run a farm some day and has worked with Calm + Confidence for two years.
“Having that farmer and beekeeper relationship is very important but it can also be a personal one,” Bowman said.
“I garden and beekeep and I plan to be a farmer, so I kind of thought that learning to take care of your own bees would be beneficial down the road, but I also began to learn the difference because when I was a kid, I thought ‘save the bees’ meant save the honeybees,” Bowman said.
“Save the bees is more about the native bumblebees and how the honeybee can sometimes take their food, so that’s why it can also be better for honeybees to be at these farms because they are eating and doing their thing … and the native bees can have more of the crops to themselves.”
There has been frequent media attention on honeybees, but Anderson said other pollinators are important as well, such as butterflies and native bees.
“Being aware of the necessity of pollinators as it pertains to agriculture and our food production is essential,” Anderson said.
Calm + Confidence partners with people who want to learn about beekeeping, provides training on managing a hive, and supports budding beekeepers as they learn, Anderson said.
“It generally takes about two years for someone to really become independent in managing their hives,” Anderson said, adding her staff will often visit the hives during that time to help.
There are at least two private schools with official beekeeping educational programs in Arkansas: Mount St. Mary’s Academy in Little Rock and the Delta School in Wilson.
Calm + Confidence hosts beekeeping clubs, attends career days, STEAM events and other educational activities at schools around the state to connect students with beekeeping.
“We work with some classroom teachers who get their students certified, some of them do it as an extracurricular, so we really think it’s a way for kids to be able to see science in action and be able to learn about environmental stewardship through actually connecting with nature and not just reading about it in a book,” Anderson said.
Calm + Confidence has worked with Mount St. Mary Academy, Central High School, Forest Heights S.T.E.M. Academy and Pleasant Valley Elementary School in Little Rock, Boone Park Elementary in North Little Rock and Chicot Elementary in Little Rock.
“We partner with schools all the time, whether its a formal club or just going and doing a one-day experience,” Anderson said.
Anderson began working with Mount St. Mary Academy about four years ago and now visits monthly to mentor students, teaching them how to manage hives and harvest honey as well as how to create and direct market honey and wax products such as lip balm or candles made from the hives to sell at places like the Hillcrest Harvest Fest in Little Rock, said Jamie Groat, director of communications & marketing at the academy.
The student-run HoneyBelles Bee Club was started eight years ago after a group of science and art students created a habitat for pollinators on campus with the goal of protecting local bees.
The first hive was brought on campus in 2019 and now 50 club members now tend to three hives and a nearby garden space where students plant pollinators, Groat said.
“There seems to be more and more interest and growth in the HoneyBelles club every year and I hear a common theme, there’s students who started off scared of the bees and not really understanding them, and through their participation in the club or listening to presentations by the club members, that fear diminished a little bit,” Groat said.
Honey can take on unique traits of the hive’s environment, such as soybean honey produced from hives placed near soybean fields or walnut honey from the hives near a grove of walnut trees in Wilson.
The Delta School started its beekeeping program six years ago and Andrew Podoll, head of school, said the program operates harmoniously with area agricultural activities.
The program started as an effort to minimize fear of bees, transforming from a storytelling endeavor to a more handson and interactive educational experience for students, Podoll said.
“The program started with our kindergarteners, first and second graders building their own beehives, they built their own hives, they sewed their own bee suits, then they started planting flowers in the garden,” Podoll said.
“We’re small and we’re navigating the larger world of agriculture around us, the commodity row crop [activity] that’s happening, so they intentionally planted a lot of native flowers, they also have a monarch butterfly garden that is a way station for monarchs, so they’ve done some diverse planting in our garden space to help support different types of habitats.”
Anderson said right now is a good time to start a beehive.
“If people are wanting to get into it, the spring is when you really want to start, it’s really difficult to start a hive in late summer or in the fall, so this is the prime time to reach out and try to get a mentor,” Anderson said.
Calm + Confidence operates from an office at 112 S. Cross St. in Little Rock.