Growing up, when [my family would] go visit my grandpa, we’d always see his beehives. We were never able to help with the bees—we’d always get honey and we could chew on the honeycomb. So I had that familiarity with [beekeeping] through my grandpa. After I was married, my wife and I took a beekeeping class in Michigan. That sparked our interest.
We probably started it for the honey … My wife’s goal is to keep us all healthy, which leads us to eating organically and producing what we can. We lean towards buying things from a small farm instead of buying things from
the big businesses out there.
[My kids] want to be involved—touching the honeycomb, lifting the honey frames out of the hives, opening the boxes. When we process the honey … [the kids] want to be the ones cranking the extractor to get all the honey out.
There are different stages with the bees when they’re developing. They’ve got eggs, larva and then the brood, and so I’ll try and point out all those things to [my kids] and help them grow their understanding of bees, how bees grow and how they develop.
—Ben Kopnick