It wasn’t until Joel Gibson was standing right over the skunk that he noticed it in the live trap a few feet from his beehives. He calmly placed pieces of plywood around the trap to keep the skunk from panicking. Joel had been about to extract a frame from his hives to show me a queen bee.
This was by no means the first time Joel was on the receiving end of defensive animal aggression on his honey farm. The day he received his first shipment of bees—as a complete novice at beekeeping—he said that when he opened the box 10,000 angry bees flew straight at him. And he ran straight for the pond.
Eight years later, he now handles the bees with joy, and they handle him with calm. He has 60 hives going into this winter.
Doing what comes naturally at Gibson Honey Farm: Self-taught, Joel and Marie-Ève grow their farm and family
By Scott Stevenson, Local Journalism Initiative
