Oct. 14, 2022

By Libby Hopkins

Some couples may go to dinner for their anniversary or give their spouse expensive jewelry as an anniversary gift, but very rarely do they give the gift of a beekeeping class as an anniversary gift. This was not the case with Ashley and Steve Messer.

“In 2018, I bought Steve the beekeeping class at the USF Botanical Gardens as an anniversary gift since ‘Fruit and Flowers’ was the traditional gift for four years of marriage,” Ashley said. “He loved it and got our first hive a few months in. He was successful and got a pretty good amount of honey and thus, Heights Honey was born.”

The couple owns Heights Honey in Seminole Heights.

“Steve and I have absolutely no background in agriculture,” Ashley said. “I grew up in South Tampa and remember my aunt and grandmother both being very interested in gardening, but that was about it. Steve grew up in Lake Wales in Polk County where citrus and cattle farming were driving economic forces. So while he wasn’t involved in either of those agricultural industries, he was exposed to them. Steve was introduced to beekeeping by his uncle, who was a hobbyist beekeeper and his dad kept bees when he was young.”

The couple bought their home in 2015 and were very excited to start gardening but didn’t really know what they were doing.

“We had a couple of fruit trees and a raised garden bed, but that was about it,” Ashley said. “In 2020, we had our backyard completely overhauled and have three large gardens beds where we grow herbs and vegetables, and Steve is even trying his hand at growing tobacco. We also have fruit trees and plenty of bee-friendly plants. This year, after a couple of years of ‘apprenticing’ under Steve, I’ve signed up for the beekeeping class and look forward to having my first hive in the spring of 2022.”

"When most people think of beekeeping, they think of someone in a funny costume working in the field. Rarely do they imagine bees being kept on the rooftops of apartment and office buildings. But spanning several continents, the last few decades have seen an increase in the number of people engaged in urban beekeeping.

"In many ways, the emerging interest in urban beekeeping has grown for the same reasons it has in rural settings. The last few decades have seen an alarming decrease in pollinators. Colony collapse disorder occurs when, without apparent reason, most of the bees in a hive suddenly disappear. Reports of these incidents have caused concern worldwide, as bees have a major impact on the planet’s food supply.

"When you are surrounded by buildings so tall you cannot even properly interpret their height, you can start to feel boxed in. Urban beekeeping brings a slice of nature to people living in cities, which reduces stress and gets people to leave their heads for a few hours" (quoted from "Why Urban Beeking Is So Popular" on Pretty Progressive).

“To say that we are a small producer may be an overstatement,” Ashley said. “I think we are more of a micro producer. At most, we have had three hives at a time and what makes us different is that we don’t sell our honey. We just enjoy the process of keeping bees, harvesting honey, and best of all, sharing honey and our knowledge of bees with our friends and neighbors. Maybe we will get to the point where we can sell our honey after I finish the class and we can manage more hives, but that will be a couple of years down the line.”

The couple loves everything about beekeeping.

“The thing we like the most about Heights Honey is sharing the ‘spoils’ of our hives,” Ashley said. “Not just the honey, but also awareness of how fascinating and complex bees are and how essential they are to humans and the environment. People are pretty shocked when they hear that bees are responsible for one out of every three bites of food humans eat, and that’s just the tip of the iceberg. It’s crucial that people understand the importance of farming and agriculture, but it’s equally important for people to understand how essential honeybees and other pollinators are to our food supply. Any little bit we can do to further that awareness is not only helpful but gratifying as well.”

Keeping things local is extremely important to the couple as well.

“Supporting local is important enough to us that we’ve decided to start a scholarship at the USF Botanical Gardens to pay for at least one student each year to take the beekeeping class there,” Ashley said. “Folks often ask if they can give us money for our honey, and we always decline, but now anyone who wants to give back in exchange for a jar of honey can do so by making a gift to the scholarship through the USF Foundation. Our goal is to increase the number of beekeepers in the Tampa Bay area as our small way to help grow bee populations here and provide new beekeepers the opportunity to enjoy sharing their knowledge and honey with others as we have. We are in the final stages of creating the scholarship, and it should be up and running in the coming months. We look forward to meeting our first scholarship recipient next year.”

Learn more about Heights Honey on their Instagram page @heightshoneytampa.

This story originally appeared in the Dec. 2021 issue of In the Field magazine.