Photo courtesy of John Chandler.
Nora Chandler
Nora Chandler of Trussville took up beekeeping as a hobby about five years ago. She now keeps an average of three hives and call the fruits of the labor “Chandler’s Honey from Our Backyard Bees.”
Nora Chandler’s love affair with honey bees began with fear.
As a little girl, she was swinging from a tree branch when her hand plunged into a wasp nest. She was stung about 20 times — an experience that left her terrified of anything that buzzed.
The fear passed.
“My mother would say, ‘Look at this, this is a bumblebee,’” Chandler said. “Honeybees would be in our clover and we would watch them. They were very non-aggressive. And I started getting pretty fascinated and not afraid of them at all anymore — although I’ve been stung about a million times in my life.”
Today, Chandler lives in Trussville on five acres — prime territory for pollinators. By day, she is the director of client and community engagement at a Birmingham law firm.
Beekeeping adds balance to her life. And as the weather warms up, so does bee season.
“When I decided to get hives of my own, it was not for the honey,” Chandler said. “It was because I really like bees, and I’m aware that we need bees desperately.”
What started in 2019 as a search for local bee associations turned into an unconventional date night with her husband, John. The couple suited up in bee jackets and visited a beekeeper’s hives at Samford University. Chandler was hooked. By early 2020, she had her first two nucleus or “nuc” hives — five-frame starter colonies.
But the path wasn’t always simple or easy.
“I somehow ended up with a hive that was very aggressive,” Chandler said with a laugh. “Every time I’d go out there, it was just me against the bees. I would go give them a good stern talking to and they would give me a good stern talking back. I was having fantasies about coming out there with a blowtorch. I said, ‘I don’t have to keep you. We’ve got to come to an understanding.’”
And somehow, with patience and persistence, they all did.
Chandler typically extracts between five and eight gallons of honey each year, keeping enough for herself and friends.
“I don’t ever sell my honey,” Chandler said. “I feel like, if I sell it, it’s not a hobby anymore.”
Beekeeping continues to grow across Alabama, thanks in part to the state’s climate and engaged local communities.
“Alabama has a rich history of beekeeping, mainly because of the temperate and warm climate,” said Mike Soike, president of the Jefferson County Beekeepers’ Association. “We’re able to keep a pretty healthy supply of bees all year round.”
Travis Ulbrich, known locally as the “Yappy Beeman,” said the hobby has wide appeal.
“There’s no real one type of person that gets into beekeeping,” said Ulbrich, a bee educator and bee remover. “It’s a personal desire that somebody feels that bees can make their life better, and they want to assist in making bees’ lives better.”
For Chandler, the reward is quieter. On many afternoons, she pulls up a chair near her hives and simply watches.
“It’s kind of peaceful,” she said. “If you watch them, you can really start to see that they know what they’re doing, they have a plan and the whole hive is like one big social group that [gets] along and [works] together. Miraculously.”
