A Sweet Job

At the state’s largest apiary, tucked away on Block Island, bees make honey that tastes of their all-wildflower diet. Sue and Chris Littlefield do nothing to get in the way.

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During the winter, Chris babies the largely dormant hives close to the house. If honey stores run short, he gives the bees honey from the previous harvest, which he says they prefer to the sugar syrup most beekeepers use. He loses at least a quarter of them each year, an average rate for hobbyist farmers since the introduction of Asian mites twenty years ago. (Migratory commercial beekeepers, whose hives have in recent years been ravaged by the enigmatic Colony Collapse Disorder, often lose far more.)

The family used to sell honey off their front porch, open every day all summer to anyone who stopped by the big yellow house. They gave tours of the hives in their meadow. “It was crazy,” Sue recalls now. But it had its upsides, such as giving the kids good people skills and an early familiarity with entrepreneurship.

After ten years, they moved to a quieter space up the road on fourteen acres, twelve of them protected by conservation easement. One bee yard is here, in a meadow out back, with a stand of trees that hosts a Cooper’s hawk beyond it. The other bee yard is in the southern part of the island, on a friend’s land.

It’s not particularly financially rewarding; profits are a supplement to the couple’s income, but neither is giving up their day jobs. And despite its pastoral image, it isn’t easy work. Each hive, made up of a bigger brood box on the bottom and what are known as honey supers on top, can weigh eighty pounds when full. “I actually have to lift weights to stay in shape for beekeeping, otherwise I’d hurt myself,” says Chris. But, he adds, it’s nowhere near as tough as the commercial clamming and lobstering he used to do.

But it does meet the same need for solitude in nature. “He’s very independent, he runs it all alone,” says Sue. “Out with the hives, it’s just him and the bees.”

As he’s checking the gray wooden Lang-stroth hives on that spring day in the meadow, Chris comments happily on one colony’s growth. He pulls up a frame that contains the hive’s queen, much smaller than I expected, rather ordinary looking in fact. The mother of thousands of daughters and the odd son, she works her way across the comb, methodically pumping eggs into little open hexagons. Spring is the time when bees increase their numbers in preparation for the first big summer bloom. At night, they fan the nectar in the combs to drive out moisture, sweetly scenting the air.

“Bees are a part of life,” Chris says. “And I just think there’s something really special about the honey here, and somebody should be producing it.” He pauses. “At some point, I hope somebody will take it over.” We watch the foraging sisters in the air around us, and he points out a yellow-rumped warbler in the sycamore maple nearby. Whatever he says, I’m guessing he’s not giving this up any time soon.

Littlefield Bee Farm honey is available at the Block Island Farmers Market, Star Department Store, Glass Onion, Scarlett Begonia, Block Island Depot and Boat Basin Store and is used by the Atlantic Inn kitchen, all on Block Island; and blockislandhoney.com.