(light music) (bees buzzing) - We're at my cousin's house.

We're at the homestead.

The family-stead, let me rephrase.

We got potatoes, we got carrots, we got onions, and then there's a little space right back here where we can see the bees.

(bees buzzing) My name is Thad Smith.

The name of my company is called Westside Bee Boyz with a Z. And I describe myself as I'm a beekeeper.

(light music) What led me to found Westside Bee Boyz was, I started working for a company called Sweet Beginnings and they do bees and sell honey.

I actually wanted to work for the CTA, is what the path I was gonna be on, and then I caught two felonies.

That's really what happened.

Woo!

Yeah!

There's an apiary out at O'Hare.

Went out there, I opened up a hive, fell in love.

That was in 2013.

I've been doing it ever since.

Typical day depends on if I'm doing farmer's markets or if I'm doing beekeeping.

But the main thing is, is just getting people in to come in and just do beekeeping, learn about bees.

And then when they come and talk to me about bees, then they get a whole different perspective about beekeeping and about their role on this planet.

There are five major species of honeybees.

So you're looking at Buckfast, Carniolans, Russians, Italians.

The Italians are probably the ones that most people use because they love finding honey, like they're great honey producers, but they're very gentle too.

I got Carniolans right now.

They're a little spicy.

I've never worked with them before, but they're a little bit more defensive than I'm used to.

Different species of bees act differently.

If you work with them a while, you know what those traits are gonna be.

(light music) All right, so today we are on the roof of the Culture Canvas cafe.

This gets them out of the way, gets them out of the flight path of human beings.

Bees like it up high anyway.

Normally, they're in a tree, 20 or 30 feet in the air.

So this is something that they're used to.

These are the Italians.

Normally they're pretty gentle, but also when you do beekeeping, you really want to take it slow.

Sudden movements make it seem like there's something going on.

You want to be as sure that you're as friendly as possible is I want to say.

So, we're going to slowly open this top cover up.

They're gonna get really curious about what's going on here.

This right here, if you look at the top, that's nectar, which is honey.

Slowly, I'm gonna raise it out.

Slowly, slowly, slowly, slowly, slowly, slowly.

Okay.

So during an inspection, the most important thing is the queen lain eggs.

And those are gonna be, when a frame is like this, the larva is usually gonna be on the outside.

The first job that a bee has is to clean cell out when it's born.

So when these open up, the first thing it's gonna do is to clean itself.

And as it progresses through its jobs, the last job a bee will ever have is a forger.

And a forger goes out and brings back nectar and honey and propolis and the things that the hive needs in order to survive.

A bee lives about six weeks.

A bee doesn't usually die.

A just literally works itself to death.

(bees buzzing) Oh my God.

Oh my God.

Guess what?

You got lucky, bro.

Right there, queen.

That's the queen right there.

Her abdomen is much longer than all the other bees.

So these are workers.

That's the queen.

You got lucky, my man.

You got lucky.

All hail the queen, baby!

For me, it's really not about the honey, it's about educating people about why not only the honey bee is important, the mason bee is important.

leafcutter bee is important.

The carpenter bee is important.

The sweat bee is important.

There's 20,000 species of bees on the planet and most of those species of bees on the planet do much better pollination than the honeybee.

Honeybees are great.

They produce honey.

We are more concerned about the other bees that do the real pollination on the planet.

(bees buzzing) - [Interviewer] Do you like bees?

- I've never really been asked that question before.

I like working with bees.

I like the fact that bees give me the opportunity to literally do what I want to do.

Yes, I do like bees.

Yes.

(light music)