Healing River Beekeepers Rescues Swarms, Shares Knowledge Of Bees

BRADENTON, FL — One of David Blinn’s least favorite chores as a child in Indiana was helping his father care for the bee colonies on their family farm.

“My father raised Hannaford bees during World War II because they didn’t have sugar back then,” he said.

His father would hand him a hammer and other tools and put him to work building hives and other bee equipment.

“When you’re 6 years old, that’s a chore,” Blinn said. “I spent all of my formative years on the farm with those bees.”

As a young adult, he joined the U.S. Air Force, serving overseas during the Vietnam War. He went on to attend college, earning a graduate degree, and enjoyed a long career as a chemist.

He forgot all about beekeeping. Then, he retired about 14 years ago, moving to Bradenton.

Healing River Beekeepers gets its start

“Almost immediately, a neighbor came to me all excited and upset because bees were getting into his house,” Blinn said. “He didn’t know what to do about it, but I knew exactly what to do.”

It had been nearly 50 years since he’d last worked with bees, but everything he’d learned growing up quickly came back to him.

After relocating that first colony, he became known in his neighborhood for his skills with bees. Word spread and people began calling him regularly for assistance with bee removal. Eventually, he decided to give his efforts a formal name: Healing River Beekeepers.

What was once a chore for him as a child, is now a passion, he said. “I would have never dreamt in a million years I’d be doing this in my retirement. I seem to have the natural abilities for it, and you should do what you enjoy, especially later in life.”

To date, Blinn has collected more than 200 colonies that he’s rescued and removed from various properties — homes, businesses, even the Bradenton Police Department headquarters — throughout Manatee County.

Many local farmers and others who own large properties, mostly around the Robinson Preserve in Bradenton, have offered Blinn space to keep his bees.

“In return, I give them some honey,” he said. “Some of these guys are doctors and lawyers and they care about the environment and enjoy having something different to do, so they’re happy to give me some land to put my bees on. Sometimes, they buy their own bee suits and come out and help me out.”

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Healing River Beekeepers gets called to handle bee infestations two to three times a week, said Mark Polstein, who works closely with Blinn.

During swarm season, which usually runs between spring and early summer, “it could be two to three times a day,” he added. “We get a lot of swarms along the Manatee River.”

Polstein, a retired Nassau County police detective, began working with Blinn about three years ago. They met at an event at a local farm and, naturally, started talking about bees.

“He was in his bee suit,” Polstein said. “It was something I’d always had an interest in. I’m a gardener and we put a couple of hives in my yard. Then, I started going out with him on bee adventures.”

He learned the hard way that he’s deathly allergic to the insects, though. He was stung during his first outing with Blinn and had to rush to the hospital as hives broke out and he swelled up.

“It was pretty scary,” he said. “They took me right in. They didn’t even ask me my name. My head was swollen out to here. I almost went into anaphylaxis.”

The environmental impact of bees

Polstein loves bees almost as much as he loves gardening, so he keeps working with Blinn, despite his severe allergy. He’s even studying to receive his master beekeeping certification through the University of Florida.

“I just find bees super fascinating,” Polstein said.

He’s drawn to bees because of their roles as pollinators and all the good they do for local ecosystems.

“Honeybees generally fly as much as two to three miles to collect nectar. My bees are pollinating the vegetables someone is growing a mile from here, two miles from here,” he said.

Bees have been dying off at an alarming rate over the last two decades, Polstein said. There are two major causes of this: homeowners growing fewer natural flowers in their yards and lawns and the use of pesticides.

“People use a tremendous amount of pesticides and those sorts of things. The bees collect it and bring it back to the hive and it causes all sorts of problems,” he said.

The bee shortage affects crops across the country, he added. In California, especially, the almond crops are dependent on bees for pollination.

“Beekeepers from all over the country have to send their bees to these almond crops in California,” Polstein said. “You have these 18-wheel trucks loaded with a couple hundred hives traveling across the country.”

He added, “It’s so sad that the bee, who’s thrived here for so long, is dying off. Over the last 20 years, it’s become a huge problem. So, we do what we can, and I think that’s probably why the majority of beekeepers are in it. They’re concerned about the environment and they’re trying to do their little part. And you get some honey out of it.”

On-call swarm rescue and bee removal

Healing River Beekeepers is available to remove bees from any property. Fees vary based on the job because each scenario is different, Polstein said. “Swarms and hives can be found in the eaves of a house or the branch of a tree. Swarms might even settle on a floor.”

They try to remove and relocate the bees “in the most natural, nonforceful way possible,” he added. “There’s a lot of creativity that goes into the jobs.”

Blinn even built a vacuum system that sucks the bees – gently, so they don’t get hurt – into a hive box attached to it. Polstein added an extension to the system, so that it can be used to vacuum bees from swarms higher off the ground.

Polstein also stressed that swarms are, by nature, temporary. They form when a queen takes half the bees from her old hive and they fly off in search of a new hive location.”

“A swarm usually only hangs out anywhere from one to 10 days at one location,” he said. “They’re only there for a period of time until they find a place to establish a new hive.”

It might be tempting to use pesticides to kill bees and remove swarms or hives, but this could cause bigger problems, Polstein warned.

If an insecticide is used to kill bees that have built a hive within the walls of a home, for instance, “you’ll have 20 or 30 pounds of dead bees in your wall,” he said. “They’ll deteriorate and smell horrible, and that will attract other critters. We highly discourage people taking it on their own to try to poison the bees. It might seem like a simple solution to solve a complex problem, but you’re creating a much bigger and much worse problem.”

In addition to bee removal jobs, Blinn tends to his more than 200 colonies daily.

“David’s out there literally every day it’s not raining at 6 a.m.,” Polstein said. “It’s a non-stop, 24/7 kind of job.”

Healing River Beekeepers also bottles and sells honey direct to consumers through farmer’s markets and Facebook. Any money made through these sales is used to fund rescuing and caring for the bees.

What's next for Healing River Beekeepers

Since the start of the pandemic, Blinn has been using Zoom to train Kenyans on building hives and raising bees.

“It’s a very poor country and well-meaning people here send them money or do a project, but then the money runs out,” he said. “I want to teach them the modern ways of beekeeping. It’s self-sustaining and an income stream for them.”

He plans to travel to Kenya in July to teach them in person. Blinn is currently raising funds through a Christian men’s group he meets with every Friday morning, as well as his church, Emmanuel United Methodist Church in Bradenton.

Eventually, they’d like to register Healing River Beekeepers as a nonprofit organization, Polstein said. “So, we’re also looking for people who are like-minded and have some free time and want to help with David’s vision or help us get that nonprofit status.”

In the meantime, they continue to engage the community through social media, sharing videos from their bee rescues and news about their work. Follow Healing River Beekeepers on Facebook here.