Women in Agriculture – The Life of a Beekeeper at Miss Bee Haven

BY DEBRA J. MORRIS

In the verdant orchards of cherry trees, peach trees, blackberry vines, and star thistle fields of Brentwood you’ll find beehives filled with healthy honey bees. They roam over seven different bee yards throughout Brentwood and the Delta to fill the hives with pollen while also pollinating the surrounding fruit trees, and generously giving forth their amazing sweet honey and beeswax.

These locations are full of flowers to forage year-round and are vital to the strength and health of the bees. As a woman-owned business, Kelly Knapp, founder, owner, and operator of Miss Bee Haven, keeps an eye on her bees like a fierce mother watching her children grow and thrive. She once thought she would like to become a midwife, but realized that she wanted more quality time with her children and much more time outdoors.

This deep love of nature led her to discover a fascination with bees. She worked with friends who were beekeepers to help out with swarm removals and learned all she could about beekeeping. The rest is history.

She says her favorite part of beekeeping is of course, being outside, but she loves being creative and discovering fun things to do with the honey and wax. “I incorporate everything I love in my life into my business,” she affirms. “I like the hard labor but also adding my own touch to the finished products.”

This year she has increased her number of hives to 250 and has entered into a larger contract with neighboring farmers to pollinate large almond orchards. She says, “It’s the first time I’ve taken on something this large and commercial and I’m feeling proud of myself.”

Along with expanding the number of hives, she has also expanded into breeding queen bees. Once the bees come back from the orchards in late February to early March she begins by using the strongest hives to breed them. “I’m still a novice at this but I can tell if a hive is strong and how the bees work together,” Kelly notes. She studies every colony, takes lots of notes, and asks others in the industry for tips. She used to let the bees alone to do their natural thing, but discovered she kept losing bees, so now she does more to feed them and “manipulate” them a bit. Queen breeding helps produce the strongest queens to then keep building stronger hives. It’s a complicated and delicate process but worth the results.

While working with others to learn about breeding queens she has discovered there are a lot of women who are beekeepers and has learned a lot from those more experienced than she. She has noted that several times, male beekeepers or farmers don’t take her very seriously as a woman beekeeper. But, “I can be overly sensitive, too,” Kelly laments. “I choose to see the good outweighing the bad. But those old-fashioned historically-male roles and values still exist.” As a woman farmer she just has to remember to “keep people around you that will lift you up. Find a team that works well together, and remember that you are strong and you are amazing! Working with the bees drains you. Mentally, physically, and spiritually. They’re loud and you’ve got thousands around you. It’s scary and exhausting. You’ve gotta find your strength, and let that lead you.”

Kelly mentions, “Local farmers markets have opened a lot of doors for beekeepers in the last few years. It’s more competitive now than ever before.” She has seen a huge boom in women businesses at the market level. She notices the competition a little more at the farmers’ market, but feels anchored in her Brentwood community because of the market.

Now more than ever, there are increased opportunities for women in every occupational space, including farming. Historically a male-dominated industry, female farmers are proving that there’s more than enough room for everyone to make their way in agriculture. Her final advice for women in the agricultural field is to “be confident in what you do, put your own spirit into everything, and don’t let people knock you down.”

You’ll find Miss Bee Haven in the Martinez Farmers Market.