Creating a buzz

People are often surprised to find four boxes filled with thousands of honey bees buzzing in and out, hard at work on the Samford University campus. The hives are located right outside of the College of Health Professions, in a big, sunlit patch of grass. 

“[The honey bees] come and go as they are needed, and work sun-up to sun-down every day, as long as it’s not raining. … They’re industrious. They’re going to work until they can’t anymore,” Adam Hickman, the creator of Foxhound BeeCompany, said. 

Hickman installed the hives in Homewood three years ago, but the spring of 2019 is the first time he is teaching his beginner beekeeping classes on the campus. When Red Mountain Park, his former class site, moved their offices in early 2019, Hickman approached Samford and they readily agreed to host his classes near the hives.

Hickman first got interested in bees when he was in middle school, after his great-grandfather, who was also a beekeeper, passed away. Hickman was intrigued by the smoker, extractor and other equipment he left behind, so his father explained it all to him. 

Eight years ago, when Hickman had some time, money and space, he started keeping hives and learning all he could about beekeeping. He joined the Jefferson County Bee Association, where he taught people about beekeeping, and eventually decided to start his own bee company, Foxhound Bee Company.

“I recognized that there was kind of a real need in the area for basically good teachers and quality equipment for beekeepers and also honey,”he said. 

To him, honey is just the byproduct of beekeeping, while education and contributing healthy bees to the community is the main project. Since most of his hives do produce honey, Hickman sells some and then gives the honey produced at Samford to staff and others who come through the campus. The people at Samford love the bees, he said, and love learning more about it.

“I don’t struggle if I’m in some kind of social event and people find out I’m a beekeeper. Everyone always has questions on how it works, it’s fun,” Hickman said. “You kind of look like a cowboy a little bit. … It seems a lot more dangerous than it actually is.”

The number of bees in the Samford hives contracts and expands throughout the year, Hickman said, with the boxes holding about 60,000 bees at their peak and 15,000 in the dead of winter. All the bees fly within three miles of the hive from time to time to get to a water source, as long as the weather is above 55 degrees. Below that temperature, they are unable to move their wings. 

Many people in his classes ask him how the bees know to come back to their hives, Hickman said, and he explains that is just the way they are programmed. Often, he uses the analogy of how it feels when someone drives home in auto-pilot mode and then looks up and can’t remember driving. 

“They are kind of the same way. The bees leave the entrance and will start flying in circles and will take mental pictures in of what their surroundings look like,” he said.

They “map” the area with pictures in their minds so they can remember the area and know how to come back to their queen. When Hickman first moved them from their hives in Hoover to their new spot on the campus, he said they were able to “do a hard reset” and recognize the smell of their queen in order to readjust and start making honey again.

Even though there’s a lot of good beekeepers in the Birmingham area, Hickman said, there aren’t a lot of teachers, which is why he wanted to contribute. 

The food economy is dependent on honey bees for pollination, and honey bees are the most economically valuable pollinator worldwide, according to the American Beekeeping Federation. Some food sources, such as almonds, wouldn’t continue to exist without bee pollination, Hickman said. In the mid-2000s, after about half of the nation’s honey bees collapsed and died for undiscovered reasons, the public took notice and more people started beekeeping. 

Hickman said after people rallied to the hobby, popularity has spread and continued even to today. 

“A lot of people have done their part for helping the bees and getting into beekeeping,” he said.

Beekeeping attracts people from all background and walks of life, Hickman said, from “people who have just stepped out of the woods to medical doctors and people with Ph.D.s,” all the way to “people who love mother earth and name their queen bees.”

“One thing I think is kind of cool about beekeeping is there is something there for everyone, whether you are a food person or a nature person or you like to build things with your hands or you like science or there’s a lot of math in it,” Hickman said.

Hickman teaches a variety of classes, from short demos to a day-long course that acts as a condensed four-week beginner class. He also developed and created workbooks he gives to his students to take home. These workbooks include one of the trickier things to figure out about beekeeping, he said, which is contact information on where to get locally-sourced equipment and quality bees from private beekeepers. He shares prices, phone numbers and advice on the best way to transport bees, as well as plenty of pictures and videos during the demos.

“Those are hard things to figure out when you’re getting started because you just don’t know anybody, who to ask. I try to teach the class from the viewpoint of a beginner because I remember what it was like exactly when I started beekeeping and how confusing it was. … I don’t teach how I keep bees, I teach a couple different ways, and they can decide what works best with them,” he said.

He also suits people up and opens up the hives to show them the inside during each class. Although a lot of people are scared of honey bees because they think they’ve been stung by one, Hickman said, the probability of a honey bee stinging someone is low. Usually, people have been stung by wasps, yellow jackets or hornets and have mistaken them for honey bees, he said, because honey bees are generally hesitant to sting people since they will die from the sting.

For more information on signing up for classes or hive days, go to their Facebook page or go to foxhoundbeecompany.com.