When mine companies are finished extracting coal from
mountaintop removal sites, they have to reclaim the land. Usually, the company
ends up planting various kinds of vegetation in an effort to recreate the
biodiversity the mountain once had.
And recreating that type of habitat is key to Tammy Horn’s quest to cultivate honeybees there. Horn is an English professor-turned
beekeeper at Eastern Kentucky University.
“What we’re trying to do is set up long-term economic
development on these surface mine sites,” she said.
What Horn’s envisioning is much larger than the 53 beehives
she’s currently got on the ground—and her next step is expanding into West
Virginia.
She sees Coal Country Beeworks as the answer to a lot of Appalachia’s
problems. If it turns out like she hopes, her bee yards will provide people
with marketable skills and an income from selling products like honey and
beeswax. Plus, the bees will do their part to pollinate plants in the
mountains.
But this won’t happen overnight. It requires planning and
cooperation on the part of the coal companies.
“In order for that to happen, we have to have the land
planted with the same botanical diversity that existed prior to mining,” Horn
said. “So that we get the under canopy, we get the blackberries, the
raspberries, the fringe trees, like the sourwood. We need that in place.”
Typically, reclamation sites don’t have trees like the Appalachian native
sourwood. They’re considered “trash trees” by
the timber industry, but honey made from their nectar is prized.
So far, the project has been successful on a handful of
reclamation sites in Kentucky,
several of which are owned by the West Virginia-based International Coal Group.
Don Gibson is the director of permitting and regulatory
affairs for ICG.
“Actually, it turned out that it was pretty simple for us to
make the sites bee yard ready,” Gibson said. “We were already planting a
variety of grasses and tree species. ICG is a participant in the Appalachian
Regional Reforestation Initiative, so we were already putting a lot of native
hardwood species out on the ground.”
Horn says the coal company’s involvement is minimal once the sites are
reclaimed so they can support bees. So far, ICG has maintained roads to the bee
yard, as well as put up fences to protect the bees from wildlife.
As far as Gibson and ICG are concerned, the bee yards don’t
cost the company anything. But they do provide free publicity.
“You know, it opens a lot of doors as far as people coming
and seeing what we’re doing,” he said. “I couldn’t pay people to drive five
minutes to come and see the good work that we’re doing, but folks will come
from 1000 miles away to see what Tammy’s doing with the honeybees. So it’s a PR
plus for us.”
And the coal industry needs good PR after a year of fighting
increased federal scrutiny and environmental activists over the practice of
mountaintop mining.
Horn says reclaiming and utilizing mountaintop removal sites
doesn’t endorse the controversial practice. She says it’s not her job to
regulate mining, but she doesn’t see a downside to finding a productive use for
the approximately 1.5 million acres of land that have been strip mined
throughout Appalachia.
“I don’t think that reclaiming the surface mines with more
botanical diversity is a bad thing,” Horn said. “We have to have it. If we’re
going to be able to assure that our people in this region eat, we have to take
care of our pollinators. And the way that this plan is working is addressing
that very real energy crisis.”
Right now, Horn is the beekeeper—or as the students she brings to the sites
call her, “the bee lady.” But if she expands the project as much as she would
like, she’ll need some help. And she says perfect candidates for the job would
be laid-off coal miners.
“It doesn’t really benefit anybody for coal companies to pay
unemployment,” she said. “I mean, if a coal company has to pay unemployment,
why not pay that person to learn some skills, like beekeeping? And that person,
that beekeeper, then can go on and have a supplemental income that is
independent of the coal company.”
She says the products produced by the beehives will also
fill a gap in the U.S.
market. Right now, most U.S.
companies have to import honey, beeswax and queen bees.
And that, Horn says, is “insane. And I think that all three
of those things could be produced in this region, be very high-quality, meet
current demands, and establish either primary or supplemental income for our
people in the region.”
Horn isn’t the only one who sees beekeeping as a potential economic development
engine. Jeff Wood is an energy development specialist with the West Virginia
Division of Energy. He’s facilitating discussions about moving Horn’s project
into West Virginia.
“Our hope is to get her started there, and then potentially
looking at training opportunities for local folks to get involved,” Wood said.
“Trying
to, at some point in time, get them to work with folks like Mountain Made and
Tamarack and different folks that sell West Virginia-based products and to get
them acclimated into West Virginia
and welcome them with open arms.”
Though Wood says there’s no timeline yet, Coal Country Beeworks’ first West
Virginia site will probably be at the Birch
River mine in Webster
County.