honey Archives - StoryHook

Kat Scholl

By Asha Timperley

Things have finally started to make sense for Kat Scholl.

Now, that doesn’t mean her life is perfect or that she has everything completely mapped out, but for the first time in a long time, she’s starting to understand her own journey.

During the day, Kat is a public information specialist at Lincoln Parks & Recreation. On the side, she and her husband raise bees. It may sound like the two jobs work together in perfect harmony, but that’s not always the way Kat has felt about her work life.

After growing up in a farmhouse in Seward, Nebraska, Kat went to Concordia University to get her degree in studio art. She’d always been creative and her parents encouraged this talent.

Kat grew up watching Bob Ross’s “The Joy of Painting” with her grandmother. Her parents gave her blank sheets of paper instead of defined coloring books to spur on her creativity, so pursuing an art degree seemed natural.

And yet, Kat felt like she needed a backup plan. Not only was art somewhat of a loose career path, but she is also blind in one eye. Kat feared losing her sight entirely, so she also got a massage therapy degree as a fallback career.

Kat said she struggled through college, wrestling with her beliefs, schoolwork and a lack of confidence in her own abilities. After she graduated, she job hopped for about 15 years, going from one position to the next. She felt unsettled and nothing felt like the ‘right’ job. It was during this time that she met her husband, Dustin.

The couple met online after Kat swore off the chaotic bar scene and Dustin was too shy to even consider meeting someone at a bar. Dustin sent the introductory message, Kat responded and the rest is history.

But shortly after they met, Dustin had a random idea.

“Hey, what if we took this beekeeper class?” he asked Kat one night, pointing to a list of classes offered at Southeast Community College.

“Are you serious? You’ve never mentioned anything about bees before…”

Dustin went on to explain how he’d always been interested in beekeeping and he’d hoped to someday make it his “old man” hobby.

“That’s cute,” Kat said with a laugh, and she moved on.

But Dustin kept at it. Leaving the class description in strategic places and dropping in a fact here or there about beekeeping, until Kat agreed to attend the first class.

Much like their dating experience, after one class, they were hooked. A year later they were harvesting their first batch of honey and planning their future honey business.

This was back in 2011, now, Kat and Dustin are the proud owners of K&D Honey Bees. This year they harvested nearly 400 pounds of honey and produced products like lip balm, lotion bars and hand cream with the beeswax.

Working as weekend beekeepers was a fun hobby, but Kat started to realize she loved it because of her family roots. She’d grown up in a family where stewardship of the land was important, and so had Dustin. Their families were both involved in efforts to care for the environment and educate others about habitat conservation.

In turn, much of Kat and Dustin’s bee work has a heavy educational emphasis. They invite customers out to watch them harvest honey, teach people what plants are helpful for bees and educate others on what role bees play in the environment.

This natural shift in thinking about her hobby also translated to her work life. Kat started doing some part-time work at Lincoln Parks & Recreation and eventually was offered a full-time position. Now her days are spent in area parks taking photos for their website and social media pages and helping people understand the role of the Department in the community.

She and Dustin have a few dozen hives out at her family farm in Seward. They dream about one day buying the house she grew up in, raising their kids in the country and maybe trying to make the bee thing a full-time gig, but for now, Kat’s thankful for where her story is at.

Her hobby and day job go hand-in-hand, and she’s excited about what’s next. She’s found a hobby, a way to help others and confidence in her work for the first time in a long time.

October 12, 2016

Love7

Buzz Vance

By Asha Timperley

He doesn’t wear a special suit, no gloves or mask. Just jeans, a t-shirt and his baseball hat. He moves slowly but deliberately, he knows what he’s doing. After all, he’s being doing this for 36 years.

‘Buzz’ Vance is a beekeeper.

No, his real name isn’t ‘Buzz,’ but his fitting nickname did come into play before he became a beekeeper.

What started out as a hobby in graduate school has now turned into a part time business that keeps Buzz pretty busy in addition to his regular job.

On Wednesday afternoons during the summer, Buzz is with his bees. He’ll check on the majority of his 50 hives, containing somewhere between 40-50,000 bees each, looking in on the queen bees, honey levels and the overall look of the hives.

He gets almost giddy around the bees, proudly talking about their fierce loyalty to the queen and pointing to the areas of liquid gold they’ve already created in the combs.

Simply put, Buzz loves bees. That’s probably not surprising at this point, but his love of bees actually came from a long-held fascination with bugs.

As a kid, Buzz was that toddler picking up and prodding every bug he could get his hands on. His mother encouraged his interest in bugs by taking him to the local library to check out any book he could about every bug variation.

Remember his nickname? Well before it was ‘Buzz,’ his uncle gave him the nickname ‘Bugs’ because of his unending interest in any and every bug he saw.

In college it seemed only natural that Buzz chose to study entomology at UNL. He went on to earn a Master’s degree, and while in school his friends changed his nickname of ‘Bugs’ to ‘Buzz’ and it just stuck.

During graduate school Buzz started tinkering with his first two bee hives. He was fascinated by how the bees understood their intricate roles and how they created such a delicious byproduct.

But being a beekeeper has never been Buzz’s full-time gig. He was a pastor and has also worked multiple jobs within the Nebraska Department of Agriculture.

Over the past few years, Buzz has really kicked up his beekeeping. He wanted to see if he was up for the challenge. He said it was kind of like a competition he had with himself to see how much honey he could produce with the bees he had.

At one point he had so much extra honey that he needed to start selling it, and that’s when he got a booth at the farmer’s market. Now, he has a long list of regulars who ask for honey throughout the year – even though he only harvests honey twice during the summer.

It’s a lot to keep up with, but Buzz likes the challenge.

He says he produces somewhere in the neighborhood of 250 gallons of honey each year. It’s a lot of honey, but also a lot of bees… the actual count of bees is probably somewhere in the millions he said.

When asked if he’d been stung a lot, he laughed.

“Oh yeah,” he said, but it doesn’t really bother him. The bees don’t mean anything by it, and they really only get aggressive when they feel threatened.

But Buzz doesn’t just have bees for the honey, he does it to learn. He raises queen bees, maintains his 50 hives and extracts and bottles all of his own honey. It’s not an easy or simple process, but for Buzz, it’s about learning.

“You can never learn everything there is about bees,” he said. “They are complicated and fascinating, and I still learn new things about bees after 36 years.”

If Buzz could go back to school just to study bees, he’d do it. But for now, he’s content tending to his hives and mentoring new beekeepers about the delicate process.

Being outside with his bees is where Buzz comes to life. It’s the place he smiles the most and gets excited about the intricate details of the bees and their work. He’s proud of what he does and the way he’s cultivated a hobby into a business, and it’s what makes his story that much sweeter.

June 22, 2016

Love6