Hiding in Lenexa off 107th and Pflumm is one of the area’s sweetest secrets: a full-service beekeeping shop, one of the few in the region.
BeeKeepers.com may be well-hidden in the back of a non-descript business park, but the fourth-generation family business is well known in the beekeeping community, and connects with entrepreneurs and hobbyists all across the country through its website of the same name.
A much more challenging environment to help bees and collect honey
Owner and fourth generation beekeeper Robert Hughes said the beekeeping business is much more complicated and difficult today than it was when he entered into it in 1967.
“Even in the 1980s, you could just throw bees into a box and they wouldn’t require a lot of maintenance,” Hughes said. “We didn’t know how easy we had it.”
He points to pesticides, diseases, and parasites (Varroa mites, chief among them) as driving the difficulties in the business and destroying the health of the bee population. He hopes his work continues to inspire more people to start their own hives, something that he has seen as a trend since the COVID-19 shutdowns three years ago.
His family still enjoys visiting and meeting new beekeepers in the area, embracing everyone who wants to get involved in the Hughes family business and hobby.
“I don’t see anyone as competition,” Hughes said. “Knowing how hard this is, I welcome everyone who wants to get involved.”
From a $6 website to a thriving online operation
Hughes recalls paying only $6 for the website in the 1990s, while he was still working for IBM.
“I bought the domain name when I could kind of see where things were going,” Hughes said. “Now, we’ve got orders coming in, constantly, from all over the country.”
Now retired, Hughes — who started beekeeping as a 9-year-old in Soldier, Kansas — took the family business out of the world of festivals and onto the internet. His shop at 14054 W. 107th St. is sometimes overwhelmed with inventory stacked strategically up to the ceiling (much to the chagrin of his wife, Linda), but they find a way to ship everything from protective clothing to honey containers out to customers across the country, six days a week.
“I moved out of the garage and into this location five years ago when my wife kicked me out,” Hughes said. “It’s a lot of work, but we have a lot of fun. If we were just money motivated, we couldn’t be here.”
Robert’s son, Jordan, helps manage the shop, while his wife, Linda, runs the booth Saturday mornings at the Overland Park Farmers’ Market. It’s one of the few places to find Jordy’s Honey (named after their son), which features their own locally collected honey. Attendees of the warm weather event in downtown Overland Park area are both thrilled and surprised when they’re told the source of the delicious honey.
“Most people don’t believe that the honey they’re getting could come from bee boxes we have set up at JCCC,” Hughes said, in reference to Johnson County Community College.
JCCC is home to hundreds of honeybees that help teach classes
The bee boxes Hughes mentioned are hiding in a wooded area, just off College Boulevard. They are nine strange looking boxes, and seem very much out of place. They are also home to hundreds of honeybees, and serve as a focal point of the beekeeping classes he has been teaching for over 20 years.
Hughes said he taught only one of two classes at JCCC that continued teaching in person during COVID social distancing. He teaches eight classes on the subject, but always gives students who are new to the world of bees the same message as they begin their journey.
“They need to expect that in their first year of beekeeping all of their bees will die, and they will get no honey,” Hughes said. “They need to see how hard this is, and you have to love doing this in order to just keep trying.”
Most of the students still take to the profession after the experience of digging into a hive for the first time. Hughes will also get out to the Deanna Rose Children’s Farmstead in the summer to teach children about bees. The teaching brings him a great deal of joy, even though the business frustrates him now, more than ever.
“We’re a lonely lot. We just want to help keep bees alive, and hopefully get a little honey out of it.”
Ben McCarthy is a contributor to the Post and other publications in the Kansas City area. He can be reached at ben.c.mccarthy@gmail.com with questions, comments and story suggestions.
