In the spring, honey bees may be found almost all over the place within the South Bay, as can beekeeper Jack Carter.
Armed with a honeycomb mobile phone and a garage stuffed with beekeeping equipment, the Cupertino resident is all the time ready to reply to calls from locals to remove swarms or monitor the health of their backyard hives.
The 73-year-old, who has been doing the job as a hobby for greater than a decade, likes to make use of these opportunities to get people excited concerning the topic of bees and to support beehive growth.
“Beekeepers are like drug dealers,” Carter said. “We want to get everyone hooked.”
California has the biggest beekeeping industry of any state, boasting nearly 500,000 colonies operated by 400 industrial and semi-commercial beekeepers, and one other 2,000 hobbyist beekeepers have a number of hives. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, honey bees are a vital a part of U.S. agriculture, pollinating $15 billion price of crops every year, including greater than 130 fruits, nuts and vegetables.
Colonies have been going through hard times recently. Parasites, pesticides and extreme weather conditions have led to this All contributed to the decline within the bee population. U.S. beekeepers lost an estimated 48% of their honeybee colonies in 2022-23, the second highest death rate on record, after losing 51% in 2020-2021. in keeping with a national study on bee decline.
As a member of the Santa Clara Valley Beekeepers Guild, a county-based organization that promotes local beekeeping and advocates for bee welfare, Carter provides free swarm rescue services in Cupertino, Los Altos, Los Altos Hills, Saratoga, Sunnyvale and Western San Jose. He tells those that stop by his homemade honey stand, Third Acre Farm, concerning the bees and preaches to the passersby who crowd around him as he brings a swarm right into a hive, fascinated by the bees' behavior.
“Once you have the queen in the box, the bees start going in like little soldiers in a column,” he said. “And everyone thinks you’re God.”
After catching a swarm, he keeps the bees within the box and delivers it to anyone who wants a hive of their backyard. He owns seven in his home but monitors 21 others in ten different homes. He personally visits each hive and takes careful notes about which of them have stable honey production and healthy bee behavior and which of them he needs to alter.
To finance his hobby, Carter collects honey from beehives and sells it in jars outside his home on Vai Avenue west of Highway 85. Unlike most stands, Third Acre is a self-service shop where locals drop money within the box , before taking an amber. coloured glass. A 3-ounce jar costs about $6 and a pound costs $20. At the underside of every hive there’s a sticker indicating which hive produced the honey.
“It puts a smile on my neighbors’ faces,” he said. “People enjoy the fact that there is a little self-service honey stand that is very local and very raw.”
Taking care of the hives, especially within the spring when activity is at its peak, may be tiring, and a decade of physical labor is catching up with Carter. Nevertheless, he does it for the bees and to make people completely satisfied.
“I’m getting to the point where I’m ready to give up,” he said. “Then someone says, 'Jack, I really appreciate what you're doing for bees and pollination.'”
“I’m in awe of it because it’s a lot of work,” the Cupertino resident said. “You have to make sure that the hives are clean and that there are no diseases in the bee population. He comes over to make sure they’re making enough honey.”
Carter recently gave Eilts and her husband 1 / 4 of his honey. The couple works at it, one teaspoon of goodness at a time.
“It's so much better than what you buy at the store, which is some fancy colored corn syrup,” she said. “You can’t understand how good honey is unless you get it from a beekeeper.”
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