April showers bring May flowers, but May flowers bring plenty of fuzzy, buzzing pollinators — and the busiest season of the year for the region’s crop of beekeepers.

According to the Pennsylvania Beekeepers’ Association, more than 5,300 registered beekeepers have set up colonies here in the commonwealth. Here in Southwestern Pennsylvania, bee enthusiasts abound.

Tom Taylor, who keeps bees with his wife, Shari, on their Unity Township property, said there are three types of beekeepers: hobbyists, who have a handful of hives; sideliners, who may have 20 or 25 hives and make some money off of their side gig; and the commercial beekeepers, who can have thousands of hives and make their living from selling bees, honey and other related goods.

Taylor said that most hobbyists start out with two colonies.

“In case one hive is weaker than the other one, you can actually take resources or eggs or larvae — as long as you don’t get the queen — and move it into a weaker hive, they’ll accept that right away.”

For those who have a fear of the little black-and-yellow buzzing insects, choosing to work with bees may seem like total anathema. But the region’s bee lovers expressed a number of reasons why this interest can be so addictive.

Taylor grew up with a beekeeper father and got back to his roots later in life with wife Shari by his side. “We’re flower farmers; we do fresh cut flower bouquets, so it just made sense to then add back the bees because it all kind of works together,” he said.

Steve Repasky of Dormont also grew up keeping bees with his father on a farm in Armstrong County. “I’ve been involved in keeping bees since I was 4 years old,” he said.

But the 49-year-old’s attachment to the pursuit hasn’t waned; while he’s a “sideliner,” he owns a pest control company. Most of his colonies are stationed at the Pittsburgh International Airport.

“That project was started back in 2014. … They had a swarm on a Delta jet, and I got called out to remove that swarm because it was delaying the plane,” he said.

After that, he was called back out to the airport several times to collect swarms.

“Every time I was out there, I just kept looking around and thinking, ‘Wow, this is a nice place to keep bees.’”

So after running his idea up the chain of the airport’s administration, he got permission from CEO Christina Cassotis to start keeping colonies on the grounds.

”We started off with 10 hives, and it’s grown tremendously since then. That’s one of the largest programs out there at the International Airport, in terms of a beekeeping project.”

He compared keeping bees to a video game with unlimited levels.

“There’s never an end where you win, so you just keep going and going. … There’s no cheat codes, and you certainly will never win, but you’re going to have fun doing it.”

Katie Baker of North Huntingdon started keeping bees in 2022 and is the secretary of the Westmoreland County Beekeepers Association. She sees the hobby as healing.

“They say if you’re struggling with mental health issues, get to beekeeping, because their consistent hum of a certain key … that helps you overcome those things.”

John Yakim of Monroeville has dozens of hives scattered throughout the area. He got started thanks to a fellow Boy Scout leader’s evangelism.

“If you talk to beekeepers, you’ll realize that they’re like preachers. … They’re very passionate about what they do,” he said.

Several beekeepers, including Yakim and Squirrel Hill resident Janet Waldeck, are inspired and fascinated by the group mentality of the hive.

“The cooperation of the hive, the individuals are not important,” Yakim said. “It’s the group that’s important.”

“These bees work,” Waldeck said, with some incredulity. “Each of them has a job to do, and they cooperate together.”

Waldeck started out two years ago and keeps her two hives in Donegal Township. As a former high school science teacher, she chose beekeeping as a post-retirement pastime and quickly became hooked — even after disaster befell her hives last summer in the form of a bear attack.

That’s when she discovered that — much like bees — beekeepers are cooperative and love to help each other. Members of the Westmoreland County Beekeepers Association were quick to lend a hand.

“People came out and helped me reassemble the hives, and I still have my two colonies. They were able to reestablish themselves. They were unhappy bees for a few months, but they reestablished themselves and one of them is already making honey like gangbusters,” she said. “If it hadn’t been for that club, I would’ve just given up.”

She touted the association’s welcoming nature and how excited many members are to ignite the apiary spark in newcomers. Baker backed up this sentiment, saying the WCBA even has mentorship programs that will pair “new-bees” with more experienced beekeepers to learn the ropes.

Even her neighbors have become fascinated by the hives she’s installed.

“We had a neighbor from across the street walk over to our house … and he said, ‘I’ve never had a garden produce so much.’”

Repasky agreed the meetings and clubs between beekeepers are an enjoyable and enriching aspect of the pastime. He hosts a club every month at Fern Hollow Nature Center in Sewickley.

“We brag about our bees, but it’s learning from each other. ‘What are your bees doing? What are my bees doing? Did you happen to see this in your hives? This certain bee is bringing back this color of pollen, I’ve never seen that before. What do you think it is?’ So there’s definitely a social aspect to it, which is really great.”

One of the inevitable questions that beekeepers are asked is “how frequently are you stung?”

Repasky chuckled at the query. “Less often than we get asked that question,” he said.

Answers varied from “all the time” to “almost never.” Waldeck said she keeps an EpiPen handy when she’s working in her hives, just in case. It also depends on the level of protection the keeper is wearing — including gloves — and the temperament of the bees at any given time.

Yakim said the time of year can play a big part in how cautious he is with his hives; in winter and the heat of summer, when the bees may be most “cranky,” he’s more careful. But on a beautiful day in May, when many of the bees are out doing their jobs and there’s plenty of food, he doesn’t worry as much about getting stung.

“There was once or twice where I shouldn’t have been doing what I was doing, and … I really got whacked pretty good,” he said.

The species of bee kept by beekeepers in the United States aren’t actually native to the country. The most popular species are European honeybees (and Waldeck highly recommends Italian ones specifically — she said they’re the calmest).

On the other hand, the U.S. Geological Survey reports there are more than 4,000 native bee species in the United States, and these bees are vital to agriculture. But honeybees kept by commercial operations do pollinate a large portion of U.S. crops, including almonds, apples and berries.

Beekeeping had its first major surge in popularity after 2006 reports of a phenomenon called “colony collapse” began to surface. Efforts to save the bees quickly followed.

“The unfortunate thing about ‘save the bees’ is that it wasn’t necessarily meant for honeybees. It was more of a rallying cry to save all of our native pollinators, and it kind of got twisted along the way,” Repasky said.

He noted the trend towards local produce and “slow food” became more popular, which brought beekeeping to the forefront as a natural consequence. Yakim also saw a surge in new beekeepers during the pandemic, because it’s a socially distanced hobby.

This past year has been disastrous for honeybee colonies, however — NBC News reported in April that commercial beekeepers reported a loss of up to 62% of their bees between June 2024 and February 2025. While almost all beekeepers, large and small, suffer some winter hive losses, this amount is unprecedented.

But answers are in short supply. Many of the local beekeepers pointed to the highly variable nature of bee loss as a sign the causes may not be simple to ascertain.

“It’s a super hard question because you don’t know the environment that the bees are in, you don’t know what is around them,” said Baker, who lost one of her five hives over this winter season.

Despite setbacks, Southwestern Pennsylvania’s apiarists are, if anything, set on expanding. Whether they’ve been learning and operating since the 1980s or for only a season or two, there’s always more to learn — and more bees to keep.

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