Pantown Bee Co.

About Pantown Bee Co.

Pantown Bee Co. is owned and operated by bee enthusiast Kevin Carpenter, primarily at his home in the historic Pantown neighborhood of Saint Cloud, Minnesota. After being interested in bees for several years, Kevin started as a hobby beekeeper in 2011 with two hives. The next year Kevin had five hives and the year after that, eight.

Then in the late summer and fall of 2013 Kevin thought about becoming a commercial beekeeper. A commercial beekeeper is someone who keeps bees fulltime and/or for profit, as opposed to a hobby beekeeper who might sell a little honey but works with bees on a very part-time basis. Most commercial beekeepers have a minimum of 400-500 hives, and many of them have thousands of colonies.

In 2013 Kevin contacted several commercial beekeepers and went out and “job shadowed” them for several days. Kevin learned:

1. Commercial beekeeping is damn hard work
2. Commercial beekeepers are some of the nicest people on the planet

Kevin initially thought he’d run 400 hives in 2014 but, after considering the amount of equipment needed, the skill set he was still developing, and the need to keep earning money while building up his colonies, Kevin aimed for 40-60 hives in 2014 and wound up with 55 that summer.

In the summer of 2015 Kevin had 67 colonies.

Caring for bees

Wintering bee colonies in Minnesota is hard. Most commercial beekeepers in Minnesota ship their colonies to a warmer place for the winter, often to California where the bees will also spend time pollinating almonds.

Keeping bees alive in summer is hard, too.

1. A parasitic mite, the varroa mite, has presented the biggest challenge for beekeepers in the past several years, weakening bees and leading to many bee colonies collapsing. Beekeepers keep trying different forms of mite treatment, with varying degrees of success.
2. Bees have a lot less forage available to them than they did in the days when Minnesota had a lot of dairy farms with pastures full of clover and wildflowers.
3. Some of Kevin’s commercial beekeeper friends are convinced that they are losing bee colonies because of too many toxins in the environment.

So, for now, Kevin plans to keep 40-60 colonies for the next several years as he continues to learn how to keep them alive and healthy in both winter and summer.

Bee Yards

As all beekeepers do, Kevin keeps his bees in bee yards. He usually has three hives next to the garden in the backyard at his home in north St. Cloud. And his main bee yard has been at the farm of a friend about 13 miles south of St. Cloud. And currently Kevin keeps bees at one yard near Richmond and two yards at farms north of St. Cloud.

Lots of people contact Kevin and other beekeepers, wondering if a beekeeper might put bees in their yards. Kevin’s friends at Tri-County Beekeepers Association keep a list of folks who have spots and want bees. Kevin might be interested in new locations at some point in the future, but probably not in the next couple of years.