On a recent Saturday morning, Raine Owens embarked on what he called “bee reconnaissance,” checking on three apiaries belonging to clients in Pine Plains, Ancram, and Ghent.
Owens reached into a beehive at Rigor Hill Farm in Ghent with his bare hands. He slowly removed one of the frames. What had once been a crude wooden rectangle was now home to thousands of honeybees, with an intricate mosaic of hexagonal cells dripping with fresh honey. The bees spilled from the hive and swirled around him as he lifted the frame into the sunlight.
Owens lives in Pine Plains, and founded the Vagrant Bee Company in 2023. Since then, he’s been buzzing around the Hudson Valley on apian business. Part of his work involves responding to bee emergencies, when unpredictable swarms take refuge in hard-to-reach corners of homes. In those situations, bees are a nuisance to his clients. But most of his work comes from people who welcome bees onto their farms and gardens, where they play a vital role in healthy ecosystems.
“It’s great because I always have something to snack on,” Owens said as he bit off a chunk of honeycomb, making sure not to ingest the bees still scurrying across it. Standing among 10 hive boxes without a veil, Owens held a frame inches from his face and peered into the comb’s tessellated pattern.
“They look like tiny grains of rice,” he said, pointing out the eggs developing in a section of the hive known as the brood, a pale, waxy section, usually found in the central, warmest part of the hive. Around him, mildly agitated bees darted around his unprotected face.
“A lot of beekeepers are impressed that I don’t use a bee suit,” said Owens, who has learned to move slowly and respectfully around the insects’ fragile homes. During the entire excursion, he was stung only twice — a regular workday for Owens.
When inspecting a hive, Owens looks for a range of indicators, including population size, queen activity, and comb production. If one colony appears weak, he may combine it with another. If bees are not building comb quickly enough, he may supplement their diet with sugar water, sending them into overdrive. If a new queen emerges in a colony that already has one, he will quickly remove her to avoid a full-scale civil war among the bees.
After working with honeybees for a decade, Owens is able to gauge a colony’s mood from the pitch of its buzzing, assess hive health by observing movement patterns, and identify nectar sources from the flavor of the honey. He can even use scent to attract bees. “The queen pheromone smells like lemongrass,” Owens said. “You can make a lure using lemongrass that mimics the smell of a queen — you can use that to catch swarms.”
His second stop was Taking Care Farm in Ancramdale, a native plant sanctuary overflowing with wildflowers and grasses. Its loosely managed landscape gave the property a deliberately untamed appearance. A single hive there produced honey that was dark in color with a rich, molasses-like flavor.
In 2016, Owens began beekeeping on his aunt’s farm in Ancram, though he did not immediately see it as a career. “I was both afraid of getting stung and thought that I was going to kill the bees,” he said.
It wasn’t until he worked at an apiary in California that he found the mentorship he needed. He later returned to the Hudson Valley, managing hives for Hearty Roots Farm and Wally Farms before building his own client base of honeybee owners entirely through word of mouth. Yet despite finding a passion for beekeeping, Owens has developed a complex relationship with honeybees.
Owens has seen first hand how honeybees, which are not native to North America, compete with the Hudson Valley’s native pollinators, including bumblebees and mason bees for limited nectar and pollen. In some cases, honeybees may also be detrimental to an ecosystem, spreading diseases and favoring invasive plants over native flowers.
Owens suspects that their honey is an all-too-sweet distraction from the health of both native bee and plant populations, and that humans have a responsibility to keep the balance of the ecosystem intact.
“There are huge amounts of land that are just useless for any native creature,” he said, gesturing toward stretches of farmland and new development while driving between clients’ properties. At the same time, he sees signs of progress. “A lot of landscapers are doing native landscaping around here,” Owens said while admiring the abundance of plant life at Taking Care Farm.
For Owens, beekeeping is inseparable from native plant conservation. His advocacy has made him part beekeeper, part educator. He talks with clients, neighbors, and local government about the connections between pollinators and plants, and about maintaining the health of both. What’s required, he believes, is a radical, collective shift in perspective — one that can begin in a person’s own backyard.
For a bee, a well-manicured lawn is a barren wasteland. “That’s all land that could be flowering plants,” said Owens. “If every single person stopped mowing their lawn, that would bring back a huge amount of native plant and bee population.”
“If we were able to think about things differently, we could have everything we want,” Owens said. “We could have all the honey we want while also helping the native population.”
The final stop of the day was a private residence in Pine Plains. One hive had recently been stolen by a bear, so the remaining boxes were strapped down tightly. The honey produced there was light, floral and delicate.
Despite the recent bear encounter, the bees remained remarkably calm. They circled Owens with curiosity more than hostility — a reflection of the bond he has formed with the industrious and clever insects.
His goal is to urge us all not just to tap into their hives, but into their wisdom.