Why Utah is doing honey right

Nathan, Sam, and Ben Huntzinger
Bees Brothers
North Logan, Utah

We can’t grow food without bees. It’s more than a little bit alarming, then, that they’ve been mysteriously dying off in droves over recent years. In the Beehive State, three teenage brothers — Nathan, 15; Sam, 14; and Ben, 11 — are setting up beehives across their community and harvesting the honey to sell.

Why we chose these bees:

The three super-teens have installed about 20 hives across their area. “Most of the time people come to us and ask if we can put bees in their yards,” says Nathan. “We usually give them a little bit of honey at the end of the year, but they just want the bees so they can have their plants pollinated.” Nathan also notes that his neighbors have become interested in preserving bee populations: “With all the colony collapse disorder and all of the bees dying off, a lot of people want to help.”

It’s not all about the bee-njamins:

The Huntzingers first started keeping honeybees in their yard when Nathan was 8 and Ben was 6, for strictly educational purposes. “We weren’t originally planning on running a business,” says Ben. “We just had a whole bunch of extra honey at the end of the year, and decided to do something with it.” Now, they’re saving the proceeds for their college tuition.