For many people, honey comes from the local grocery store. But for Joe Schultz, an Elk River resident, every jar starts with experience, hard work, and thousands of bees. Joe has been a beekeeper since 1967; his interest in beekeeping peaked when Schultz was working on his uncle’s farm in North Dakota, and his cousin had a hive of bees. Just one year after seeing his cousins’ bee hives, Schultz started keeping bees of his own.

“My current iteration as a bee a hobby beekeeper probably [started] about 15 years ago, but I used to be a commercial beekeeper in North Dakota, and I ran several hundred hives. At one time, I had over 600 hives, and I was a very small commercial beekeeper, and in those days I belonged to a co-op called the Sue Honey Association,” said Schultz.

Schultz is not only known as the local beekeeper, but as a family and friend to those in the community. Maria Barke, great niece of Joe Schultz, has remembered hearing about Joe’s bees all her life.

“He’s always talked about bees. He loves bees, he’s passionate about bees, bees are his best friend … we would always make little cards for his bees,” said Barke.

Schultz has been keeping bees for the better part of his life. Over the past 6 decades, Schultz has found that beekeeping is something that never ceases to change.

“Well, when you start, and you read a beginner’s book, you know, maybe 100 pages, you think you know it all. But as you keep keeping bees over the years, you come up with new situations that you never dreamed would have happened. And plus, like I say, beekeeping has changed so much since I started keeping bees,” said Schultz.

Schultz’s former sister-in-law, Dianna Anderson, remembers Schultz keeping up with the changes that have been made to beekeeping over the years.

“He reads every kind of book out there on beekeeping. Old books about beekeeping as well as more modern things,” said Anderson.

Even though the art of beekeeping is ever-changing, often creating new challenges for beekeepers like Joe Schultz, he has continued growing his skills and his passion for keeping bees.

“I like the challenge of trying to figure out how to overcome problems that you have with beekeeping…beekeeping is part physical and part intellectual…So, it’s a happy medium,” said Schultz.

For Schultz, beekeeping isn’t just about honey. It’s about a passion that’s followed him almost all his life, and that will continue to follow him over the coming years.