Beekeeper Spotlight: Hilary Kearney of Girl Next Door Honey
Photography by © Eric Tourneret. Excerpted from Heart of the Hive © by Hilary Kearney. Used with permission from Storey Publishing.
In 2012, Hilary Kearney founded a unique beekeeping business, Girl Next Door Honey, in San Diego, California. Her goal was to diverge from traditional beekeeping business models by not depending on the sale of bee products or pollination services. Instead, Girl Next Door Honey uses a bee-centric approach to offer educational programs, hive management, presentations, and live bee removals. Hilary is also the author of the popular beekeeping blog Beekeeping Like a Girl, and three acclaimed books: The Little Book Of Bees: An Illustrated Guide to the Extraordinary Lives of Bees, QueenSpotting: Meet the Remarkable Queen Bee and Discover the Drama at the Heart of the Hive, and Heart of the Hive: Inside the Mind of the Honey Bee and the Incredible Life Force of the Colony. Additionally, she dedicates much of her time to honey bee education through her well-known Instagram platform.
Get ready to dive into the fascinating world of honey bees with Hilary Kearney's latest book, Heart of the Hive. We had the pleasure of catching up with Hilary virtually and joining the excitement surrounding this highly anticipated release. Did you know that honey bees have five eyes, can taste with their feet, and possess brains capable of both short and long-term memory? Heart of the Hive combines these intriguing facts with Hilary's personal anecdotes, presenting the information in a way that’s both informative and accessible to all. Our conversation revealed the captivating details of her new book and the inspiring journey that led her to this moment.
What is Hilary’s background in? How did she become interested in bees and beekeeping?
While attending UC Santa Cruz, where she majored in art and minored in creative writing, Hilary Kearney met her boyfriend (and later husband!), who was an Environmental Science major. His selling point was that he had an eccentric bucket list displayed on his wall that included goals such as: getting goats, biking across the country, becoming a firefighter, and getting bees.
When she saw "get bees" on his list, she was surprised, "Bees? I thought no one actually kept bees anymore—that it was something people did in the 1800s." This sparked her curiosity, and she bought him Kim Flottum’s The Backyard Beekeeper. Her husband may have read it, but ultimately Hilary stole it from his bedside table. As she read more about bees, their societal structure, and their intelligence, she became a bit obsessed. During her final year at school, bees began to dominate her creative output—her writing became about bees, and her art projects followed suit.
Photography by © Eric Tourneret. Excerpted from Heart of the Hive © by Hilary Kearney. Used with permission from Storey Publishing.
In 2010 after graduation, she moved back to San Diego and struggled to find a job in art. Stuck in an eventual office job she hated, she needed something to save her soul. Living with her dad, she asked, "Can I get bees in the backyard? Would that be cool?"
As she recalled, "I didn’t even know you could buy bees! Why would I buy bees when I could just catch a swarm?!" Her dad built her a top bar hive, and she started rescuing bees. Hilary posted an ad on Craigslist offering to collect swarms, despite not even owning a bee suit! Her dad helped out, and they’d wrap towels around their heads, with him often donning a welding mask—“We looked crazy!”
Finally, she got a proper bee suit, and things snowballed in a good way from there. Requests started pouring in—people asked her to visit schools, put bees in their backyards, and perform bee removals. "There’s an endless amount of bee removal work to do. I can get 10 calls a day for about 7 months out of the year. People are just interested in bees!" she described.
She realized that her various interests—teaching, talking, communicating, designing, creating art, and being outdoors—could all be pursued under the theme of bees. "It’s really fun for me since I’m a Gemini with no attention span. I can do a bee removal, create art, work on my website, write, or visit a school. It’s different every day," she explained.
Aside from bee removals, what other activities and services are central to Hilary’s business?
Locally, Hilary engages with her community in a way similar to Buddha Bee Apiary’s Host-a-Hive program. She even used to call her program “Host-a-Hive,” but eventually changed the name to “Backyard Hives” after realizing she wanted people to be more invested in the process. Too often, participants simply wanted her to place bees on their property without being truly involved. She now requires customers to purchase all the equipment and bees themselves—they own it, and she just acts as the caretaker. She has 35 different locations throughout San Diego county where she has around 90 hives under her care.
Hilary Kearney holding a honey frame. Used with permission from Hilary Kearney.
Hilary also offers a variety of online beekeeping classes for all different ages and levels covering content on: All about Bees , Swarms and Split , Intro to Beekeeping , and a Hive Inspection Class. All of these courses are online and self-paced with lectures from Hilary, photos, videos, and accompanying activities. She also offers many of these and more classes for in-person attendees.
One of Hilary’s more in-depth offerings is an eight month Mentorship Program where participants have the opportunity to learn how to be a practical, bee-centric beekeeper. The program allows for participants from across the country, including Florida, Texas, and Chicago, among others. Although the finer details of beekeeping vary locally and are learned over time with experience, Hilary believes that much of the practice is universally applicable. For local participants, there’s also a small group that meets and works together in-person, but much of the mentorship involves online meetings, readings, and monthly office hour sessions.
Hillary’s favorite side project to beekeeping is creating things for people, especially useful things for other beekeepers. She has a passion for photography and used her photos to design educational honey bee posters. Many existing honey bee teaching materials tend to be old and of poor quality, so she created her own set of posters tailored to what she would want when she is teaching.
Girl Next Store Honey educational poster (comes in a set). Used with permission from Hilary Kearney.
In addition, she has developed a Hive Inspection Notebook, a Honey Tasting Wheel, and Bee Math cheat sheets with the lifecycles of queens, workers, and drones. She finds satisfaction in creating purposeful tools that help other beekeepers, particularly when she can incorporate drawing or design work. At times, she grapples with the idea of being an artist who uses her talents to create educational materials rather than producing art for art’s sake. However, she recognizes that her work still involves making art, just in a more practical way.
Girl Next Door Honey queen math guide. Used with permission from Hilary Kearney.
Of course, this doesn’t mean Hilary can’t make fun bee art too! She has cute cards, stickers, games, puzzles, and tees on her website shop.
Girl Next Door Honey “She’s a Keeper” stickers, designed by Hilary Kearney. Used with permission from Hilary Kearney.
How did Hilary become a well-known beekeeper with such a wide range of skills?
When Hilary was working her office job, she was beekeeping on the side. She would catch swarms or do news interviews during her lunch breaks, and even call in sick to give presentations at local schools. Everyone at the office was aware of her growing passion, but at that time there were no similar businesses across the country that she could find, or if they existed, they were too new and obscure to be on her radar. Eventually, she decided to quit her office job and focus on beekeeping, but hilariously, the month she planned to resign, she was laid off. “I took that severance pay and ran with it! Heck yeah, bye! They basically knew…go do your business!” she recounted.
Photography by © Eric Tourneret. Excerpted from Heart of the Hive © by Hilary Kearney. Used with permission from Storey Publishing.
She isn’t entirely sure how it started, but Hilary began to attract a lot of attention from local news outlets, magazines, and newspapers. “I think it’s because it was unexpected—a new kind of thing that nobody was doing yet. And it was unexpected for someone like me to be doing it, so I was getting a lot of attention for that,” Hilary explained.
Her Instagram presence also took off around 2012 when the platform was still relatively new. Instagram itself noticed her account and decided to feature it, which led her following to jump from 5,000 to 20,000 in a single afternoon! Looking back, Hilary feels her success wasn’t just random; it was a result of her commitment and willingness to put herself out there. At the time, there were very few beekeeping accounts on Instagram, and Hilary didn’t know of anyone using the platform the way she was—to educate people about bees. “I was going beyond just posting pictures with filters. I was like, ‘These are bees, and bees do this,’ typing out long paragraphs every day about different bee happenings,” Hilary recalled. From the start, she was always trying something new, a mindset she continues to embrace today.
What prompted Hilary to start writing bee books?
When asked about her decision to start writing and publishing books, Hilary admits, “That definitely was not something I ever thought I would do…” Although she took many creative writing classes in college, it was more for enjoyment than with any specific goal in mind.
When she first started beekeeping, she wrote short stories about funny experiences she had while caring for hives, without any intention of publishing them. On Instagram, she also started a game called “Queenspotting,” where followers would try to find the queen bee in her photos. The game became popular, even among non-beekeepers, and she thought, “Wouldn’t it be fun to have a book like ‘Where’s Waldo,’ but using my Queenspotting photos? I could include my short stories and make it an informative and accessible book that teaches people how bees live while making it a fun game.”
Queenspotting came out in April 2019 and was an immediate hit! Hilary presented 48 photos (all of which she took herself!) featuring close-ups of queens hidden among their colony, challenging readers to find her amongst the chaos. Hilary noticed that many new beekeepers struggle with finding the queen, a common challenge in the field. She envisioned this book as a practical tool to help them hone their queen-spotting skills, offering valuable practice to enhance their abilities in real-life situations.
QueenSpotting, written and photographed by Hilary Kearney of Girl Next Door Honey.
What is Hilary’s purpose for Heart of the Hive?
Hilary’s newest book Heart of the Hive: Inside the Mind of the Honey Bee and the Incredible Life Force of the Colony comes out on September 3rd! She provides a unique insight into the social lives and biology of bees, complemented by stunning photos from renowned bee photographer Eric Tourneret.
Photography by © Eric Tourneret. Excerpted from Heart of the Hive © by Hilary Kearney. Used with permission from Storey Publishing.
Originally, Heart of the Hive was planned to be illustrated by Hilary, a prospect she was excited about, however, the publisher decided to switch to photos. They believed this approach would better align with nature writing similar to National Geographic, rather than a niche beekeeping book. Although Hilary was initially disappointed when her editors went with photos instead of her own illustrations, she ultimately understood the vision. She acknowledges that the high-quality photos could attract a broader audience. “The photos are absolutely gorgeous, I can’t lie!” she admits.
Despite the change in artistic form, Hilary did manage to include some of her own line drawings in multiple sections throughout the book!
Illustrations by © Hilary Kearney. Excerpted from Heart of the Hive © by Hilary Kearney. Used with permission from Storey Publishing.
Where did Hilary source the information for Heart of the Hive?
Hilary's journey began years ago when she started sharing intriguing facts on Instagram while also gradually building her expertise through experience. She drew on her personal knowledge, research, and real-life experiences to write Heart of the Hive. To uncover deeper insights, she immersed herself in biology books, research articles, and various other sources. Seeing unusual honey bee behaviors while beekeeping often sparks her curiosity. She always wants to understand why these behaviors happen, and with honey bees, there are often new mysteries to uncover!
One of the small asides in Heart of the Hive recalls a conversation Hilary had with a fellow beekeeper at a beekeeping conference. He mentioned that his mentor advised him to hang dirty laundry outside a hive entrance to familiarize the bees with his scent. In her business of live bee removal, she often takes over unmanaged hives and has definitely observed that they are initially temperamental, but often calm down with regular visits. We know that honey bees can recognize human faces, but Hilary wonders if bees react differently to familiar versus unfamiliar people.
Hilary emphasized that while she wanted her book to be both factually dense and easily accessible, she also acknowledges that “research isn’t everything; it isn’t perfect.” She believes that while studies are crucial for understanding phenomena, bees and beekeeping also involve aspects that feel magical and beyond the reach of science. This balance between science and wonder is central to her writing and everyday experiences as a beekeeper.
Photography by © Eric Tourneret. Excerpted from Heart of the Hive © by Hilary Kearney. Used with permission from Storey Publishing.
We were thrilled to connect with Hilary virtually! She’s an inspiring beekeeper and a remarkable individual who skillfully integrates her expertise into her business. Girl Next Door Honey serves as a standout business that practices non-traditional and natural beekeeping—an endeavor that Buddha Bee has long admired and attempted to bee a part of.
Thank you, Hilary!
Hilary Kearney and Girl Next Door Honey
Social Media: @girlnextdoorhoney
Website: https://girlnextdoorhoney.com/
Beekeeping Like a Girl Blog: https://beekeepinglikeagirl.com/
Order Heart of the Hive: https://girlnextdoorhoney.com/product/heart-of-the-hive/