Traveling Beekeeper to Pollinate Lewis County This Summer

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Bryan Castro cares a lot about bees and, for years, he has worked to save them. Today, he takes his hives all across the Western U.S. as part of his business, “Bryan’s Bees.”

“I love the stupid little things,” Castro said.

Castro studied entomology (the study of insects) and ecology at California State University, Channel Islands. He began his career in the bee business working for a beekeeper just outside of Los Angeles, making $15 per hour.

“My take-home every month was about $1,600 to $2,000 and rent for the worst apartment in the worst part of town was right around $1,600,” Castro said. “So I was working full time and basically homeless. I ended up getting frustrated, left the beekeeping company and got a couple hives of my own.”

Those five hives Castro first bought in 2012 later grew into Bryan’s Bees. At the time, though, Castro was also working in pest control, where he cleaned up after rats and only made slightly more money.

“It was a horrible, horrible, horrible job,” Castro said. “I was sitting there — homeless — working sometimes 50 or 60 hours a week. I said, ‘You know what, if I am going to be homeless, why not do it full time?’”

Castro also wasn’t crazy about killing bees. He believed the better option was to keep them alive, and remove them. He took his five hives, all the money he had left and bought 20 more hives to grow his business.

Castro has locations for Bryan’s Bees across the Western U.S., including Portland and Seattle. Last summer, though, he brought his business to Lewis County. He calls it “Bryan’s Bees North West.” The business provides live bee removal, honey products and beekeeping services. 

Depending on the season, the bees live in different parts of the country.

While the bees are in town for the warmer months, Bryan’s Bees North West has honey and wax. When it’s cold outside, the company focuses more on live bee removal in Lewis County (also available year round).

While the bees won’t return to Lewis County until May or June, they are currently enjoying the California almond season.

“If you have a strong beehive, and you have a lot of bees, they are in California for that February bloom,” Castro said. “Then when they come off that, usually, in most of the northern part of the country, it’s still too cold until May or June. So we do avocado pollination right after that.”



The bees will remain in Washington until around October, before returning to California.

“Especially in terms of farming, you are going to have a big bloom of acres, and acres and acres of flowers, and then as soon as that bloom ends — because it’s usually one plant — you are going to go from a near-limitless supply of food to no food for the bees,” Castro said.

While the bees are currently enjoying the almond bloom, it is about to end. Once the trees no longer hold flowers for the bees to pollinate, it’s onto the next bloom.

“You have to bring the bees from bloom to bloom to bloom,” Castro said.

What brought Castro to Lewis County was a deal in Idaho that eventually fell through. Castro turned his gaze West.

“I was frustrated and I was like, ‘well, I’ve heard stuff toward the coast is nice,’” said Castro, noting there are harsh bee regulations in Montana, Wyoming and Minnesota. “I just decided I was going to drive straight West until I found where it was green and pretty and other side of the Cascades was not — that was dirt. So we just kept driving until we got to (this side) of the Cascades. We went North and South looking for where we thought had the most flowers and was going to be the best for the bees. That was right here.”

Last year, Castro brought 500 hives to Lewis County, which were placed over 10 different yards.

“When we keep the bees, we want to put a couple on a bunch of different spots,” Castro said. “You don’t want to put 1,000 beehives in one spot because that would be too many and they would all starve. They would eat up all the food and that’s no good for anybody. So you are going to put somewhere between 25 and 50 all over the county.”

More information

Bryan’s Bees North West Owner: Bryan Castro

Contact: (206) 330-0099

Website: https://bryansbeesnw.com