Anthony's bee business swarming....
Thousands of bees hummed quietly on the cool humid morning outside of Anthony Schwager’s family residence, while he sat at the dining room table with his siblings stuffing clear packages with honey sticks and applying "Anthony's Beehive" labels to honey lip balm.
Thursday morning meant a little more work for the recent Lawrence High School graduate, who had to make deliveries of his home-grown honey to several retailers later that day, but that was just fine with him.
“Anthony started out doing bees as a hobby because he saw a video at school…we put him off for a while, but he was really insistent so we got him a couple beehives,” said Tony Schwager, Anthony’s father.
“He's 19 now and he has some developmental disabilities that prevent him from having a lot of different career choices. He's kind of latched onto this and he's doing real well,” he added.
To some, honey is nothing but a natural sweetener. But more and more, people are discovering its beneficial and medicinal alter-egos—and demand is going through the roof.
The most popular use, many say, is for the alleviation of allergies. Since honey is created from the pollens of flowers, some believe regular consumption of local honey conditions the body for the flowering season against allergens, like an all-natural vaccine.
Charla Welch, 25, of Lawrence, uses a tablespoon with tea a day, and the results, she says have really paid off.
“I bought the generic version of Claritin D, but that was still around $30 a month,” she said. “I tried a regular antihistimine, one without Sudafed, and it finally works…a month supply for around $10.”
“With a bottle of honey that lasts almost 2 months, it's still less than half compared to what I spent on Sudafed,” she said. (Anthony’s costs $3).
Tony says while selling his honey bears at the Lawrence Farmer’s Market, many people have mentioned using honey for medicinal purposes.
“People are a lot more educated about honey than you think,” he said. “There are a lot of claims that are not proven because the folks with the money and the means to prove them are usually the drug companies, and they don't want to prove that something else can work.”
While the honey bears are still their best sellers, the Schwagers many other products are getting the most attention as the bee market continues to swarm. Beeswax lip balm, spicy-honey beef jerky, and multi-flavored honey straws to name a few.
Tony said Anthony’s products are now being sold in over 60 stores including Walgreens, Checkers, Miller-Mart and Zarco, and 40 other stores have signed on including the University Book Shop, KU Bookstores, and Hyvee.
With all that business, Tony says, they can hardly keep up.
“The amount of hives we have hovers around 60,” he said. “Sometimes you find a hive that died. Or you might combine two hives, or split two hives, or you might catch a swarm. The goal is to get a lot more. To keep expanding what we're doing.”
Still, while Anthony’s products are buzzing in some of Lawrence’s largest retail stores, he prefers the smaller local Farmer’s Market.
“His favorite thing seems to be dealing with the customers at market,” Tony said. “He really likes to go to market, dealing with the other vendors, and dealing with the customers. He's really important to the market.”
“He's about famous in Lawrence, we go to a restaurant and people go, ‘Oh hey you're the honey guy!’ or ‘Hey, you’re Anthony!’” added his father, smiling at him.
While they say the business is still new, the Schwager family, which includes Anthony, his father Tony and mother Teri, brothers Adam and Brandon and sister Mariah, produces approximately 3,000 pounds of honey a year. With about 60 hives, each containing about 50,000 European/Italian bees, Anthony expects to harvest 100 pounds from each of them “on a good year.”
Honey is harvested once a year, Tony says, usually starting after the fourth of July and finishing up before Labor Day.
“The bears I make now are really light in color,” Tony said. “Honey tends to get a little darker when it sits, especially when it sits in plastic. We like to have nice light fresh honey.”
“Anthony's disability is just not going to allow him to do some stuff, so he's got a deal here all set up where he can do something he really enjoys, make a good living, have some dignity and be important,” said Tony.
Last year, Anthony was one of the National Foundation of Teaching’s Entrepreneurs of the Year, which won both him and his parents a trip to New York.
“Also,” his father added, “he always has the best honey at the fair.”