NC beekeepers unite to revive honeybee population after Hurricane Helene's destruction

Hurricane Helene hit western North Carolina in late
September 2024, wreaking havoc in the
mountains. People lost everything, including honeybees.

According to the NC State Apiculture program at NC State
University, it’s estimated that 70% to 90% of working beehives in the mountains
were destroyed by Helene. Now there
is a project to bring them back.

In October, Dr. David Tarpy with NC State’s Apiculture Department
came up with an idea to get new beehives to western NC.

He told WRAL, “When the hurricane hit, everyone
wanted to do something right away — a harness of goodwill — and we developed a
program to begin to bring honeybees back to western Carolina.”

A group from the NC State’s Beekeepers Association went to
the mountain counties affected and assessed the situation. From there a project was born, and beekeeping
groups from around the state were assigned to certain counties to help bring
the honeybees back. In all there are 10 to 12 groups around the state working
with different counties in the mountains to restore hives.

The Wake
County Beekeepers Association teamed up with the Harnett County, Johnston County, Lee
County and Moore County beekeepers associations to form the Ashe
County Honeybee Recovery Project. It
was this project’s mission to help Ashe County beekeepers recover from Helene’s
devastation and rebuild their honeybee population.

Gordon Goeking, project manager for the Ashe County Honeybee
Recovery Project, connected with Todd Swanson, the leader of the Ashe County
Beekeeper Association, who told him he estimates close to 500 beehives were
destroyed in Ashe County. Each hive is
worth approximately $220.

The group decided to get to work on what they could so in
the spring Ashe County would have everything they needed to get their honeybee
population growing again.

On a Saturday in November, about 20 people from the project
headed to Ashe County.  In that weekend
they built 300 beehives that included 4,000 frames. Ten frames go into each hive,
and the frames are where the honeycomb grows.  

Honeybees and their hives are extremely important. Stephen Ross with the Wake County Beekeepers
Associations explained, “Why these beehives are so important is
mostly because a lot of our food requires pollination, and to get them and allow
them to produce fruit and vegetables … even on a macro level scale,
pollinators, such as honeybees, are very critical to the agriculture industry. So even the bees in my backyard. They’re pollinating
blueberries, blackberries, strawberries, squash and other things that might be
around in the area, and they’re very critical to that.”

Being pollinators is not a honeybee’s only important
job. A honeybee’s honey is an extremely
important revenue source. Bringing the bees back means honey and other products
can be made and sold again.

Krissy Ross with the Wake County Beekeepers Association
said, “People missed out on harvest festivals because the harvest festivals
took place all of October. So, they’re missing out on thousands and thousands
of dollars in revenue that they usually would be taking their honey to sell at
those harvest festivals. Honey is a very important product people like to have
a lot of. There are always other products that come from bees too. So, it’s important,
because you learn so much about the creative world in which you live by keeping
honeybees. They add so much.”

With donations and help from all over the beekeeping
community in North Carolina, the recovery project to bring the honeybees back to the Helene
hit areas is in full swing. The honeybees
are now being sent up to Ashe County.

“You know, we felt that if we help the beekeepers replace
some of the beehives, they’ll be ahead come the spring of 2025, and going
forward to recover, and also might give them hope and something to focus on and
feel good about as they try to recover from all the devastation that’s happened
up there,” explained Goeking.