It’s a bright and sunny Sunday afternoon so, naturally, I’m spending the day outside. But I’m not relaxing or tanning — today, I’m an honorary beekeeper.
I'm joining Danie White for a hive drop, where we’re moving bees from a temporary hive to a more permanent structure. White is helping Lexxus Davis, her friend and fellow beekeeper, acclimate the bees to a new hive in Davis’ garden in Cleveland's Central neighborhood.
We’re all decked out in thick, white beekeeping suits to protect ourselves from stings or bites.
This may be my first time dropping a hive, but not White. Over the last four years of beekeeping, she’s completed this process around eight times. The process is pretty simple: stack the temporary hive on top of the new hive, and allow the bees to move themselves. White and Davis use a smoker to calm the bees.
“We make sure you have smoke ready to help calm and to cover the bees’ alarm pheromone,” White explained. “But also when a hive is active, smoke makes them think that the hive is on fire, so they go to eat as much honey as possible, as if they possibly have to leave the hive, and it helps them get out of our way.”
White learned these techniques about beekeeping through the East 39th Street Community Garden. There, she found a mentor who taught her how to build beehives, care for bees and, most importantly, how bees can help sustain a garden. Now, she’s studying to become a master beekeeper.
White also started My Sistas Keeper, a collective of Black beekeepers in the Central neighborhood. Davis, a lead beekeeper for My Sistas Keeper, originally heard about beekeeping through White and thought it would be good to teach her kids about nature. She admitted that it’s an obscure hobby, and said many friends are often shocked to hear that she keeps bees in her backyard.
“The initial reaction is, ‘What?! What do you mean you keep them? Like, you put them in the house?’" Davis said. “I have to tell them, like, ‘No, we just have a beehive in our garden.’ And most people don't know that we have the bees back here until we tell them.”
Davis loves watching her bees interact with one another, even if it seems like they aren’t doing much.
“I expected it to be more hands-on, thinking it would take a lot,” Davis said. “It's more so allowing them — no pun intended — to just be.”
White said she feels a deep, almost spiritual connection when she’s beekeeping. She described the experience as sacred, and said that the practice feels more like a family tradition.
“We hang out, we talk to them,” White said. “We talk about our intentions, we pray with them, pray for them, and just really enjoy like what it feels like to hold them and ‘bee’ with them.”
Bees’ ecological role and declining populations
Bees play an essential role in our ecosystem. As a bee travels from flower to flower, it spreads pollen, which allows plants and food crops to reproduce. Honeybees pollinate more than 90% of the world’s top 107 crops, including almonds, non-citrus fruits, melons and squash. Pollinators like bees provide more than $18 billion in revenue to crop production every year, according to the Department of Agriculture. The full annual value of honeybee products totals an additional $700 million.
However, our friendly pollinating friends are facing a very grim future. Research shows that commercial beekeepers lost 62% of their bee colonies between June 2024 and March 2025, mostly due to pesticides and overdevelopment. This can have big impacts on food production and prices.
Jean Burns, a professor of biology at Case Western Reserve University, studies plant populations and community ecology. Burns said that as winters in Ohio become more unpredictable, bee populations also could have a harder time surviving through the winter.
“Warmer winters are not always better for organisms,” Burns said. “They could be harder on bees, especially if there are more freeze-thaw cycles. That's really hard on living organisms because it is hard for them to just sort of like go dormant and stay dormant, and it costs them something metabolically to wake up during the winter.”
Ohio’s fluctuating weather also makes it hard for beekeepers to winterize their hives. This year, White and Davis want to ensure their bees survive the winter and the hive remains healthy. White said she’s becoming very cautious with her current bee colony; she’s started watching weather conditions, monitoring the colony's health and is constantly repairing the hive.
“I want them to be able to build their brood and then survive the winter, because our last hive didn't survive,” White said. “Then, I want to study them and see, ‘OK, why are they surviving? What's in the area that's helping them?’ That's what I'm looking into.”
What bees teach us about community
White also wants to bring her community together through beekeeping. Through learning about bees, she discovered a new word: eusocial, which is the highest form of community known in nature. Eusocial creatures like honeybees rely on one another for nearly everything.
“They literally could not survive without one another,” White said. “They make choices for the hive together, and that's what makes a beehive so powerful. It's not just the queen, it's not just the drone, it's not just the worker bee. Ultimately, they work together.”
White wants to make her Central neighborhood more eusocial, like the bees. She wants to create a network of beekeepers, farmers, gardeners and neighbors to help her community flourish. She believes that bees can set an example for how neighbors can work together to solve any issue. White wants to form similar connections in the Central neighborhood, where neighbors can rely on one another to address issues like poverty and food insecurity.
“The most important part of the hive is that they're connected, that they are working together,” White said. “It shows how crucial that is for us to do as people, too. We truly should be working together and finding our way through.”
White will share her love of bees with anyone who will listen. White and My Sistas Keeper have partnered with Renovare, a chamber ensemble, to create documentary songs to detail their journeys and to spread awareness about declining bee populations. After the performances, there will also be a networking hour where community members can learn more about beekeeping. The next performance and networking event will be in June.
