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While the term “livestock” might bring to mind images of cows, chickens or pigs, for these Coffee County beekeepers, that term represents something a whole lot smaller.

Hillsboro resident Terry Floyd has been keeping bees since the spring of 2019, when his son ordered some to produce honey for a beard oil he was making.

“We started out with two hives, lost most of them during the winter months then we bought five and then five had turned into what we have now,” Floyd said.

Now the owner of 13 hives, Floyd makes a variety of products, including honey, beeswax candles, lip balm and lotion.

“When people get my honey, they are like this is the best honey I have ever had, and I am like, well honey is everywhere, but my honey does taste different,” he said. “We do have a lot of wild blackberries, we have tulip poplar trees and I do plant a lot of white Dutch Clover.”

After collecting the frames containing the honey from the beehives, the process to get honey jarred and ready for the dining table remains relatively simple.

After removing the cappings from the frames, which will be used in his candles and lip balm, Floyd drops the frames in a machine called an extractor, which spins the frames containing the honey, slinging it out.

After being strained, the honey goes directly into the jar and is ready to be sold and enjoyed.

Floyd said that while he typically averages more than 500 pounds of honey each year, he is seeing a significant decrease this season.

“This year honey has been terrible,” he said. “Everybody is like 50% down and they are blaming it on the hard freeze we had.”

“Last year I had over 558 pounds of honey and this year like 130 pounds,” Floyd added.

In addition to his regular beehives, Floyd also has what are known as “Queen Castles.”

“This is my cell developer,” he said. “I will draft eggs from my best hive, take those eggs and stick in that hive and they will make a queen cell and before that hatches I will take it and place it in these mating boxes.”

Floyd said there is a lot to learn with beekeeping, and the beekeeping community is always there to help each other out.

“Nothing is cutthroat,” he said. “If I learn something new then I am going to pass it on.”

For Matthew Wiser, beekeeping is in the blood.

“My grandfather had this property, and he had probably a handful of hives here,” Wiser said from his Manchester home.

“I kind of grew up seeing them and knowing about them but too young to really help,” he said.

After college and a few years in Colorado, Wiser moved back to Coffee County and decided he wanted to begin beekeeping.

“That was one of the first things that I got into,” Wiser said.

Without a lot of hands-on beekeeping experience, Wiser became involved with the Duck River Beekeepers Association.

“They have monthly meetings, and they talk about seasonal changes and what different things to expect and farming in general,” he said. “It is one of those kind of community driven things that talking with other local farmers about their livestock, because that is ultimately what we as beekeepers kind of are.”

After getting some knowledge, Wiser purchased what are known as nucleolus colonies, which are excess bees resulting from a large hive that had a very productive year.

“They outgrew their space or they weren’t happy with it to some degree,” he said of the bees.

Wiser said beekeepers typically either raise bees to sell nucleolus colonies or they produce honey.

“You can’t do both,” he said. “You are going to get too lean and then the bees starve out one way or another.”

Wiser said he is planning on getting into the honey game in the near future.

“Right now I am building my house, so this year I am focusing on finishing it and kind of just minding what I have going,” he said. “Next year I think I am going to try to raise more bees.”

Wiser said one significant issue facing beekeepers since the 1990s is the Varroa mite, which can wreak havoc on a beehive.

“It is crazy to think, but it is a little mite that gets on the bee and they carry a lot of illnesses and diseases,” Wiser said. “They basically get the bees sick and weaken them over time and that is what ultimately kills them.

Wiser is also involved in a research project with Tennessee Tech University regarding bees in Tennessee.

“I went up and took them some honey samples and then they are going to analyze the DNA for which species of plants they are foraging,” Wiser said.

When it comes to people joining the hobby, Wiser said his best advice is to become involved with a local bee club.

“They are a good community resource and all the people there, like most all farmers, are very passionate about the stewardship of the livestock itself,” he said.

Ben Young of Hillsboro, said he is relatively new to the beekeeping game, just starting up his own beehives last year.

“Some people I know were into it and somebody invited me to put a suit on and go look in their beehive,” Young said. “It is kind of one of those things where the more I learned about it the more fascinated I was with it.”

After taking a few beginner beekeeping classes offered through the Duck River Beekeeping Association and the Pick Tennessee Conference, Young now has tens of thousands of bees spread across three different locations.

Young said he has yet to harvest any honey from his beehives.

“The advice I was given, and I think it was good advice, is don’t harvest honey until they have established for a year,” he said. “I am only going to harvest honey off one hive this year, but the rest of the hives I have are first year hives.”

Young said his newest hives are the result of swarms that people have called him about and he was able to remove.

“One colony I got a couple months ago was a hive that had been in a friend’s barn for several years and I got those bees out of the barn.”

Young said catching bee swarms is one of his favorite aspects of beekeeping.

“Just being able to help somebody that has bees in their yard that doesn’t want them there, but then also getting to bring them home and watch them grow,” Young said.