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Busy Bees By Susan Langenhennig Granger Steve Bernard was 14 by the time he was actually paid to work with the bees in his family’s apiary business in the Atchafalaya Basin. But by then, he was well-acquainted with the hives.

“I ’ve been getting stung regularly since I was 10 years old,” he said, chuckling as he remembered how he quit playing baseball in the summer when he turned 14 so he could work for his family’s business. “I made $5 a day, for an eight-hour day. I guess it paid off; now I own the company.” Bernard and his wife, Jeanise, run Bernard’s Apiaries in Henderson, Louisiana, honey producers and bottlers of the popular Bernard’s Acadiana Honey sold in all Rouses stores. Thomas Bernard, who also was a postmaster and railroad agent, sold just about everything, including bees, which he wholesaled to beekeepers around the country, shipping them by train (which stopped right near the general store). Bernard took over the company from his father in 1988, but its roots go much further back. His grandfather, Thomas Bernard, ran a general store and fish dock in Atchafalaya, Louisiana near Butte La Rose, serving all the needs of the small but bustling community of fishermen, pipeline workers and families. “The earliest records (for the store) are from 1918,” Steve Bernard said. “They ran about 2,500 to 3,000 (hives) at that time,” Steve Bernard said. They used boats to access colonies deep in the basin. “There was a big need for beeswax in the 1940s because of World War II,” he said. (Beeswax was used for waterproofing. The military coated “airplanes, shells, drills, bits, cables and pulleys, adhesive tape, varnishes, canvases and awnings” with it, according to the National WWII Museum in New Orleans.) The general store and fish dock are long gone, but Bernard’s Apiaries is still busy with its bees. Over the years, the business changed to primarily a honey farming and

bottling operation, rather than wholesale bees. Bernard keeps about 2,500 hives today and procures honey from other local keepers, which he bottles for distribution. The sweet stuff isn’t quite liquid gold, but it is big business. Louisiana ranks in the top 10 honey-producing states in the nation, bringing in 2.15 million pounds of honey in 2021, worth about $5.37 million, according to the U.S. Depart ment of Agriculture. Louisiana has more than 45,000 bee colonies throughout the state, with family-owned businesses — like Bernard’s — responsible for much of the production. (While Louisiana is a big producer, the state’s haul is dwarfed by the nation’s leading honey producer, North Dakota, which racked up around 28 million pounds of honey in 2021. Nationally, honey production was valued at $321 million that year.) Other Gulf Coast states are also in this sweet business, with Alabama producing 273,000 pounds of honey in 2020, worth about $1.5 million, while Mississippi brought in 1.83 million pounds, worth $3.54 million. Though he still enjoys keeping bees, Bernard’s focus is mainly on bottling. “It’s two different businesses, production and bottling,” he said. Not far from Bernard’s is Carmichael’s Honey in Breaux Bridge, Louisiana. It bottles about 4 million pounds of honey per year according to Nathan Carmichael, who founded the business with his wife, Marcela, in 2013. Like Bernard’s, Carmichael’s Honey has deep Louisiana roots. Nathan’s family has been beekeeping for three generations. “By the time I was five years old, my dad was teaching me a trade that would forever change my life,” Nathan Carmichael said on the company’s website. “When I was

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