EDITOR’S NOTE: This is one in a weekly series of profiles on locally owned and operated businesses in Southern Oregon.

What do you do and how long have you been doing it?

We’re beekeepers and sell honey at our place and the growers markets in the Rogue Valley. My dad started when I was about six years old, so I’ve been doing it all my life and doing it full-time for 27 years.

Normally we do about 25 55-gallon drums a year. This year it was way down and we only got about 12 drums. We might run out of honey for the first time.

How long have you lived in the Rogue Valley?

I was born and raised here. I was gone for a couple of years while I attended school at Lane Community College in Eugene.

What inspired you to go into this line of work?

I kind of enjoyed being out and about and enjoyed the bees. I used to go as far south as Visalia, Calif., east to Farson, Wyo., and up to the Okanagon Valley on the Washington-Canada border. The distance got tiring and the main reason we went so far in the 1980s was that during the drought there wasn’t anything for the bees to work with here. I knew a Canadian beekeeper that arranged having honey yards up in the Washington mountains for fireweed honey.

What decision or action would you change if you could do it again?

Maybe I would’ve done more pollinations when I was younger, pollinating in the Willamette Valley and the seed crops in California. The farmers that have different crops pay so much per hive during the bloom — it really entails moving bees to one location and then moving them to another location. If you can get three or four pollinations back to back that creates a bigger income stream. But it requires a lot of travel.

What’s the toughest business decision you’ve made?

Probably buying new equipment, newer trucks or extracting equipment. It’s a bigger outlay and you don’t know how the next couple years will go and if you can afford to pay them off. Cutting back on travel cuts income way back. When our kids came along, we downsized. We used to run 1,500 hives. Then when the mites (destructive bee parasites) came from Europe about 15 years ago, it took about half of the beekeepers and 90 percent of the hobbyists (they have up to 300 or 400 hives) out of business.

In the fall you build up all your hives and get up to 800 or 1,000 and then in the springtime you may end up with only 400 or 500. It used to be your loss was 2 percent to 10 percent at worst. Now if you are losing a quarter of your population you’re lucky, and you can lose 90 percent. I knew a couple of beekeepers that ran 3,000 hives and by springtime, because of mites, they were down to 400.

When you have that many hives, you’re hiring employees. Then in spring all of the sudden you have no income because you’ve lost your bees, so you’re pretty much in trouble for the whole year.

Who are your competitors?

There are a few beekeepers so there are really more than enough pollination opportunities. It used to be, before mites, everyone was competitors. You might have a few friends, but you were fighting for pollination. That same mentality is still there among some older beekeepers, but most of us try to help each other out.

In the 1960s there were 4.5 million hives in the United States, since the mites came along it dropped down to 2.5 million in the 1990s. In five years there will only be about 1.75 million. It used to be fairly reasonable to get into the bee business, but now you feel the costs. If you can keep things alive, it’s very profitable. The problem is you just can’t keep things alive anymore.

How do you define success for your business?

You pay for your equipment. What it amounts to is having pollination contracts and good honey locations. The almond population has skyrocketed, so about all the beekeepers — even from Florida — in the United States go to California. There are a few from the eastern seaboard that don’t. They’ve put in so many almond orchards that they don’t have the bees to keep up with demand.

What are your goals?

To make sure we get through the year, we have two acres of strawberries. We used to do a lot of the other vegetables. But basically we’re focusing on strawberries. Maybe we’ll get into chocolate-covered strawberries, strawberry pies and juice. We also run a U-pick. Between the two, we’re able to make a living. It’s always a tight one.

The honey crop has been lower because of the colder, wetter weather in spring. We were primarily into pollination and honey before, but now we’re raising bees to sell. We’re selling nucleus boxes with five frames of bees with a new laying queen.

There’s no way to eradicate the mites, you can get them down, but you can’t get rid of them.

What training or education did you need?

If you can find a beekeeper to help you along to learn the trade, it’s best. You can read a lot of books, but going to school doesn’t teach you the job. One method works for one beekeeper and doesn’t work for another. There are a lot of fields in the industry. You can be a queen grower, sell honey, pollinate or collect pollen.

The first Monday of every month, there is a beekeepers association meeting at the OSU Extension on Hanley Road. It starts at 7:30 p.m. You can learn a lot there.

What’s your advice for budding entrepreneurs?

Work hard and keep at it. It’s a lot more rewarding to work for yourself than someone else. Just keep at it and hopefully things will work out.

To suggest an idea for this column, contact reporter Greg Stiles at 776-4463 or e-mail business@mailtribune.com