A passion for bees inspires isle big rig driver’s side gig

For the last 40 years or so, Ken Harmeyer’s brain has been abuzz with thoughts of one of nature’s most remarkable creations.

It started, more or less, when he realized that bees are the only insects that make something humans would care to consume.

Over the years, Harmeyer, a professional driver, has collected a hive’s host of facts and observations about genus Apis.

Were you aware, for example, that it takes a bee 10,000 trips from flower to hive to produce a teaspoon of honey?

Did you know that the bee’s weight and dimensions would make it aerodynamically unfit for flight were it not for the insect’s unusually rapid, choppy wing-strokes?

“They can actually fly for up to 5 miles,” Harmeyer said.

These days, however, Harmeyer is mostly concerned with collecting the bees themselves.

When he’s not driving his big rig, Harmeyer devotes much of his time to helping island residents safely remove unwelcome colonies of bees from their properties.

Harmeyer is not an exterminator. Far from it. Rather, he specializes in removing live honeybee colonies, helping them establish a new hive, then re-establishing them in a safer area.

“Bees are an essential part of the environment,” Harmeyer said. “We can’t bring bees into Hawaii, so what we have here is all we have. Once they’re gone, they’re gone.”

Harmeyer uses either a stethoscope or an infrared sensor to locate the bees, then covers the surrounding area in plastic, cuts a foot-wide hole in the wall and removes the bees, hive and comb. Once the bees are safely retrieved, he fills the hole with expanding foam, applies a light repellent and replaces the wall piece. The process takes three or four hours.

Harmeyer, who previously lived in Los Angeles and the Bay Area, had long been interested in beekeeping, but it wasn’t until he moved to Hawaii with his wife and kids in 2000 that he was able to try it for himself.

Under the tutelage of local beekeeper Howard McGinnis, Harmeyer bought hives and collected his first swarms.

He and his wife, Penny, established a side gig collecting honey from their 15 hives — “The bees make the honey; we don’t,” Harmeyer clarified. “That’s a beekeeper’s joke!” — until an infestation of varroa mites in 2007 wiped out much of their bees. The colonies are gradually recovering.

Harmeyer’s no-kill removal service started when an acquaintance asked him for help in removing a colony. In the years since, Harmeyer has safely and humanely removed untold numbers of colonies.

“Our thing is conservation,” Harmeyer said. “We’re losing bees at a prodigious rate. We’re trying to prevent that and to preserve the genetic diversity they need to survive long term.”