From Empty Nest to Full Hive SPOTLIGHTING THE BISHOP-COTNERS
For a retired couple, Retirement Planning Services clients Robert and Sheri Bishop-Cotner sure give “busy as a bee” new meaning. Their small business, BC Honey Hives, may have started in their backyard, but it’s taken on a life of its own — and taken them along for the ride! Robert started it all when he had a problem that many readers will be familiar with: His son left for college. Suddenly, the time spent at wrestling matches, cheering at football games, and doing pickups and drop-offs at swim meets was over, and Robert’s schedule was wide open. Robert says, “I knew we had to fill it somehow.”
about pursuing that interest in some of his newly-found free time. About that time, “I came upon an advertisement for a beekeeping class,” Sheri says. It seemed like kismet. At first, it was just two hives in the backyard. This gave Robert and Sheri a chance to get the feel for managing bees, which is as much an art as it is science. That, of course, isn’t to say science isn’t involved. Bees are hardy in some ways but vulnerable in other ways. Where the hives are located, how many flowers are nearby, air quality, and even the variety of pollen-bearing plants all play a factor in the life of the hive. But the biggest factor by far? “Climate is everything,” Robert says. “The yearly cycle of a beehive in the north is much different than one down south.” For one thing, it’s more of a cycle. Here in Colorado, a hive slows down for the winter, with a lot of seasonal die-offs. Similarly, it takes longer for a northern hive to get going in the spring. That might not be a problem if you’ve only got two hives in the backyard. But within a few years, Robert and Sheri had four hives in their backyard — and 44 more across the region! “Things just kind of took off,” they say. As it turns out, the son who left for college had restaurant connections which translated into a market for the locally sourced honey. So, they created more hives and found two other Colorado locations to sponsor them, and they’re still looking for a third. And the winter die-off? “We ship most of the bees to California during the cold months,” Robert says. “They go down there and stay warm and happy, and come back here in the spring already active — no slow starts.” It’s a win-win solution for everyone, especially the bee-intensive needs of the California almond groves. All in all, life for these two self-described “bee weirdos” is good, and they continue to expand. But they’ve also found new uses for the hive products as well. Sheri says, “We’ve got ideas for honey soap and lots of stuff.” We want to thank Robert and Sheri for letting us profile the wonderful work that keeps them busy together, and we wish them the best of luck!
That’s when Robert remembered an old episode of “Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood.” In this segment, the crew visited a honey apiary operation to see how the sweet stuff goes from hive to grocery store shelf. It had struck a chord with Robert, and now he thought
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