Jeremy Bemis
Bemis Honeybee Farm & Bemis Tree Farm

Bemis Family Farms is a family-owned and operated holding company for three Bemis Family businesses. In 1992, Tracey and Donna Bemis purchased a tree farm and established Bemis Tree Farm with their two sons, Nathan and Jeremy The tree farm specializes in a variety of residential and commercial shade trees, evergreen trees, ornamental trees and shrubs. In 2012, the family business expanded into professional stump removal with the purchase of Stump Busters which then became known as Bemis Stump Busters.

What started as five hives and a means to pollinate their family's existing commercial tree farm, Jeremy and his wife Emily quickly realized there were no beekeeping suppliers in their area and very little sources for information. Not wanting other new beekeepers to have the same difficult experience in getting started, Jeremy and his wife established the Bemis Honey Bee Farm in 2013. As the bee farm’s number of colonies began to grow, so did their business and the demand for more education. Bemis Honey Bee Farm now provides honey bees and offers a wide variety of beekeeping supplies, resources and educational classes. The informative classes are offered year round and range from beginner to queen rearing. The classes are hands-on and taught by qualified and experienced instructors.

Two admission free events are held at Bemis Honey Bee Farm each year that are geared to be educational and entertaining for all. Bee Day is held in the spring and focuses on teaching and bettering beekeeping practices. This is also the day that packaged bees are picked up. The day is filled with food, fun and information for all ages. The number of people attending the event has doubled each year. The Arkansas Honey Festival is held in the fall and focuses on products from the hive, as well as honey production. A honey contest is held and tastings are open to the public. Free classes and activities are offered along with food and information. Both events feature many live demonstrations in the bee yard.

With three generations of farmers and entrepreneurs, Bemis Family Farms looks forward to providing Arkansans with quality products, quality supplies and exceptional services. All three companies are run with the help of friendly and invaluable employees, family members and friends. We invite you to take a drive through the tree farm, visit the Bee Store to pick up a few supplies, and meet new friends in the tree and beekeeping industries.

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Listen to Learn:

• When Tracey and Donna Bemis founded their tree farm
• How the bee farm was born out of necessity
• Fascinating facts about bee reproduction, behavior, and temperament
• Beekeeping and honey harvesting tips

Podcast Links

Bee Day 2023

Bemis Honeybee Farm

Bemis Tree Farm

Transcript 

EPISODE 240
[INTRODUCTION]
[0:00:08] GM:
Welcome to Up in Your Business with Kerry McCoy, a production of
fl
agandbanner.com. Through storytelling and conversational interviews, this weekly biography
show and podcast offers listeners and insider's view into the commonalities of successful people
and the ups and downs of risk-taking. Connect with Kerry through her candid, funny,
informative, and always encouraging weekly blog. Now it's time for Kerry McCoy to get all up in
your business.
[INTERVIEW]
[0:00:33]
KM:
Thank you, son, Gray. My guest today is a honey bee expert, Mr. Jeremy Bemis.
With a last name like Bemis, it seems he was predestined for this type of work. His family
business, Bemis Honey Bee Farm, is the largest beekeeping supply store in Arkansas. They sell
honey bees, everything needed to keep honey bees, and offer beekeeping classes online and in
person. They also host the popular Arkansas Honey Bee Festival and Bee Day, which is coming
up soon. We'll tell you all about it.
It was over 30 years ago that father, Tracey Bemis, purchased the Southeast Little Rock Land
and founded Bemis Tree Farm. Jeremy still works and lives on his father's tree farm land, but in
true entrepreneurial spirit, he and his wife, Emily, have expanded the operation. By in 2013, they
founded Bemis Honey Bee Farm, complete with a honey bee retail store. It is my great pleasure
to welcome to the table honey bee a
fi
cionado, tree farmer, and stump grinder and entrepreneur,
Mr. Jeremy Bemis. Hey, Jeremy.
[0:01:48]
JB:
Hey. How's it going?
[0:01:49]
KM:
Y'all, he's 6-feet, 5. I know this is radio. You got to know, he's 6-feet, 5.
[0:01:54]
GM:
He's leaning down to the microphone.
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UIYB 240 Transcript
[0:01:59]
KM:
What a lovely lifestyle, this sounds like. Tree farms, honey bees.
[0:02:03]
JB:
Well, besides the heat and the bee stings, it's not too bad.
[0:02:06]
KM:
How many bee stings have you had?
[0:02:08]
JB:
You stopped counting after a little bit. Most of the time, you get decent stats to it.
Usually, it's on your hands, wrists, behind the gloves they always get you. I've only had one time
where I got stung so many times, like I'm, I quit. I'm walking away.
[0:02:20]
KM:
Try to be hospitalized?
[0:02:21]
JB:
No, but it gets your heart running a little bit fast. You just go sit down and take a
break.
[0:02:27]
KM:
You can you can be hospitalized?
[0:02:30]
JB:
Yes, you can. You got to be careful. But most people are not allergic to honey
bees. Most people think they've been stung by a wasp, or a hornet, or something and they had
a lot of reactions, but bees are a different type of poison.
[0:02:43]
KM:
You know those little bees that are in a bush that are a little small, they're not
bumblebees, or little bitty bees and “Bzzzzz”, and they're up in your zalias and stuff in the spring
and summer. Are those honey bees?
[0:02:53]
JB:
Probably not. No.
[0:02:55]
KM:
If your dog rustles them out and takes off running, they chase them down the
street? What are those?
[0:03:00]
JB:
Those are probably – there's thousands of types of bees in Arkansas even.
There's only one type of honey bee, but there's a lot of them burrow in the ground; make their
nest in the ground. It's probably something like that. I know food crop farming is really hard. Is
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tree farming hard, too, because this all started because your daddy is a tree farmer, because he
fell in love with a woman from Arkansas. He's really from – He's a Michigan man.
[0:03:32]
JB:
Yes.
[0:03:32]
KM:
Okay. Let’s go to the very beginning and tell us how it all started.
[0:03:37]
JB:
My mom is from Greers Ferry is where she's from. There's the old soldiers’
reunion, like a fair type thing.
[0:03:44]
KM:
I thought it was in Hebrew Springs.
[0:03:46]
JB:
It is.
[0:03:46]
KM:
Didn’t you say she's from –
[0:03:47]
JB:
She's from Greers Ferry, but it's just across the lake. She went over there for that,
the old soldiers, it's like a fair type thing. They have rides and all sorts of stuff right in that. My
dad actually worked for a company in Michigan that sold the Big John Tree Transplanters.
Those are actually produced in Hebrew Springs, Arkansas, and they ship them all over the
world.
[0:04:07]
KM:
Still?
[0:04:08]
JB:
Still, yes.
[0:04:09]
KM:
Big John Tree Transplant.
[0:04:12]
JB:
Yeah. We move big trees. We can go up to 30-foot-tall trees. We've got a big
truck that goes over. It's got this big machine that folds off the back –
[0:04:18]
KM:
Up to how tall?
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UIYB 240 Transcript
[0:04:19]
JB:
Well, 30-feet is about as high as we go. Some people do bigger than that, but we
found they don't move as well.
[0:04:24]
KM:
Your dad sold not trees, but the equipment to –
[0:04:28]
JB:
He worked for the company that sold the equipment. I think he was 18 or 19. This
is back before all the licenses. You could drive a big truck and be a kid.
[0:04:37]
KM:
Oh, the good old days.
[0:04:40]
JB:
He would come down and pick up the machine from Big John and then drive it to
whoever bought it, and then he'd teach them how to run the machine. He met my mom while he
was here waiting for the machine to be ready –
[0:04:51]
KM:
At the old soldiers’ reunion in Hebrew Springs.
[0:04:53]
JB:
Yeah. That's how they met and they just kept in contact.
[0:04:57]
KM:
Moves her to Michigan?
[0:04:58]
JB:
They actually did move to Michigan. She made it a couple of years and the story I
was told that my older brother was born in Michigan and it was a really bad winter and she
dropped him and he went sliding through the snow. He was
fi
ne. Nothing happened to him.
[0:05:14]
GM:
But that was the last straw for her.
[0:05:16]
JB:
She picked him up and said, “I’ll move to Arkansas. You can come with me if you
want or not. I'm leaving.”
[0:05:20]
GM:
Oh, my God.
[0:05:21]
JB:
I don’t blame her. As soon as I moved here, he's like, “Well, all I've ever done is
run these tree-spade trucks.” He looked in the paper, or phone book or whatever for tree-spade
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UIYB 240 Transcript
trucks and there was one in Arkansas and he called him up. He said, “Do you need somebody
to work for?” He said, yes.
[0:05:37]
KM:
Tree-spade trucks.
[0:05:38]
JB:
That Big John Tree Transplanter.
[0:05:40]
KM:
He didn't move to Arkansas and worked for Big John. Why didn't he just work for
Big John here in Arkansas?
[0:05:45]
JB:
Well, so they were building them. That was a different type of work than what –
He was actually using the tree-spade. He was teaching people how to run them and how to dig
trees and how to actually operate the tree-spades. There, they just built them. Long story short,
they had dealers back then, so –
[0:06:00]
KM:
Oh, I see.
[0:06:01]
JB:
- you worked for that dealer.
[0:06:02]
KM:
Oh, I see.
[0:06:02]
JB:
That dealer was responsible for moving them.
[0:06:05]
KM:
Oh, I see.
[0:06:05]
JB:
They've done away with the dealers now, so they're doing it differently now.
[0:06:10]
KM:
He got a job on a tree farm. Is it happened to be the same tree farm he owned
now?
[0:06:14]
JB:
It is, yes.
[0:06:15]
KM:
Oh, cute.
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UIYB 240 Transcript
[0:06:16]
JB:
The guy had just planted the farm, so it was not that old. He had just bought the
tree-spade truck to move the trees and my dad was really the only person that ever ran that
truck. It was actually an ’85 model truck and that was the
fi
rst big truck I learned how to drive. I
actually ran the truck for a couple of years.
[0:06:32]
KM:
How old were you?
[0:06:33]
JB:
I was an ’87 model. That's what my dad said.
[0:06:35]
KM:
How old were you? Oh, you were. How old were you?
[0:06:38]
JB:
I was 20, I think, when I started driving the truck to –
[0:06:40]
KM:
You grew up on this farm that you're living on now.
[0:06:44]
JB:
I was
fi
ve when we bought it.
[0:06:46]
KM:
Did your mom home – did you go to school, or do you home school back then?
[0:06:49]
JB:
No, we went to school. There was school just, I don't know, 10 minutes down the
road.
[0:06:53]
KM:
Because your farm's actually in the city limits, isn't it?
[0:06:56]
JB:
We're outside the city limits, but we're in the planning district, whatever they call
that. We're actually in a Little Rock address, but we are outside the city limits.
[0:07:05]
KM:
What does a tree farm do? Christmas trees? Haul trees? Sell them to nurseries?
[0:07:10]
JB:
We're about half wholesale, half retail. It's mainly landscape trees. Oaks, maples,
red buds, things like that. We actually come out and plant them in your yard. We're one of the
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UIYB 240 Transcript
few places that you can actually come and pick the tree that you want that's in the ground. We
will dig it up and come put it in the ground at your house.
[0:07:28]
GM:
How about that.
[0:07:31]
KM:
Service is a dying, dying industry.
[0:07:36]
JB:
What's different about the trees is our oldest tree, our biggest tree we sell is about
almost 30-feet tall, and it's probably 10 to 12-years-old. We planted it 12 years before that.
[0:07:46]
KM:
That’s a slow crop.
[0:07:49]
JB:
It is.
[0:07:52]
KM:
Do you harvest every year though, something?
[0:07:55]
JB:
Yeah, we always plant. I mean, we're, like I said –
[0:07:56]
KM:
You’re planting and harvesting all the time.
[0:07:58]
JB:
Yeah. We have not done a very good job since COVID, just everything's been so
crazy. We are behind that –
[0:08:04]
KM:
On planting, or harvesting?
[0:08:06]
JB:
On planting trees in the
fi
elds.
[0:08:07]
KM:
Why would COVID make you behind?
[0:08:11]
JB:
It just, everything just went crazy.
[0:08:13]
KM:
Couldn't get employees?
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UIYB 240 Transcript
[0:08:15]
JB:
It was that.
[0:08:16]
KM:
How many employees do you need an acre?
[0:08:19]
JB:
Oh, we've got right now total, there's seven or eight of us. That's including the
family.
[0:08:24]
KM:
I didn't mean to interrupt you. Why did COVID slow you down?
[0:08:29]
JB:
Just equipment was hard to get and baskets and liners were hard to get, and the
people started doing a lot more stuff at home themselves. Everything just shifted around. It was
weird. When COVID started, we had three businesses where we still do. We have the bees, we
have the trees and then stumps. The tree farm died. Soon as they announced COVID, the tree
farm went dead. We had very little work to do. The stump grinding went through the roof.
Everybody, I guess, was cleaning up their yards. We moved people from tree planting to
grinding stumps.
Then the bee store, our bee sales went down, but the volume of the sale went up, so the cost of
sales went up. Basically, we couldn't have classes. We had a lot of classes every year, so we
teach people how to put the equipment together and how to paint it and what to do with it. They
couldn't come out to classes. Instead of buying a broke down kit that they would take home and
put together themselves, they wanted it all painted and assembled and completely ready to use.
We had less sales, but these sales were bigger. We had to put a lot more stuff together for
people. Everything,
fl
owed
fi
ne. After the bee season stopped, then the tree farm got real busy.
[0:09:47]
KM:
What an entrepreneur.
[0:09:48]
GM:
Did people get really into bees during COVID? Like they did gardening and all
the other stuff?
[0:09:53]
JB:
It didn't seem to – We've had a steady growth. I mean, people have been
interested in the bees all along. There's been a growth.
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UIYB 240 Transcript
[0:10:00]
GM:
Cool.
[0:10:01]
JB:
It wasn't as much COVID as it was. We had that huge
fl
ood. Select that and then
followed by the winter, the horrible winter. If you remember, there's that little slough that went
through Arkansas, that got down to like, I don't remember what it was, 2 degrees, or 0 degrees.
[0:10:17]
GM:
Oh, this last December?
[0:10:18]
JB:
Well, it was two years ago.
[0:10:19]
GM:
Oh, okay.
[0:10:19]
JB:
Two winters ago.
[0:10:20]
KM:
Oh, it happened two years in a row. I forgot that.
[0:10:24]
JB:
Well, it was the one that had the huge snow.
[0:10:26]
GM:
That blizzard. Yeah.
[0:10:27]
KM:
Oh, that was February. That was a February.
[0:10:29]
GM:
February 21.
[0:10:30]
JB:
We were in the little slough. We actually had over 2 feet of snow at the farm and it
was just freezing. It killed a bunch of stuff.
[0:10:37]
KM:
I bet.
[0:10:38]
JB:
We had a lot of young plants that died.
[0:10:40]
KM:
I bet.
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UIYB 240 Transcript
[0:10:40]
JB:
It just stayed too cold too long. That, the
fl
ood and then followed with that, that,
that killed as many trees as anything. Trying to regroup from that and then with COVID, it was –
[0:10:51]
KM:
How did you keep the bees alive?
[0:10:52]
JB:
They do a pretty good job of maintaining themselves. We did lose some, because
of the cold, but if you have a strong hive, they'll maintain.
[0:11:00]
KM:
Strong hive. That's not something you say every day. Best tree farm in Arkansas.
The only thing better than the quality is the unmatched service. I love that statement on your
website, because I think that we're going to see everybody move back to service-oriented and
pay for it. Just like you exactly said, you put these kits together, because they wanted to serve
us and you charged more and people were willing to pay it. I think you are exactly right. The
cheap price is really nice, until you have to assemble that IKEA stuff. Then you're like, “Why did
I buy this IKEA stuff?”
[0:11:44]
GM:
Maybe I should have just bought the fully assembled piece of furniture. Right.
Yeah.
[0:11:48]
JB:
We've had a few people buy, so I could put it all together. No problem. They'll go
come back a few days later and say, “I need to change this.” It's not hard to put together, but it
does take time.
[0:11:58]
KM:
Yeah. All right. This is a great place to take a break. When we come back, we'll
continue our conversation with Mr. Jeremy Bemis, founder along with his wife, Emily, of Bemis
Honey Bee Farm in Little Rock, Arkansas. Still to come, the life of a bee farmer. Are you
interested in being a bee hobbyist? Are murder hornets a threat to Arkansas bee population?
Why are bees important? Yes, there is an Arkansas Honey Bee Festival and Bee Day. We'll
fi
nd
out more when we come back.
[0:12:28]
GM:
You're listening to Up in Your Business with Kerry McCoy, a production of
fl
agandbanner.com. Over 40 years ago, with only $400, Kerry founded Arkansas Flag and
Banner. During the last four decades, the business has grown and changed, along with Kerry's
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UIYB 240 Transcript
experience and leadership knowledge. In 1995, she embraced the Internet and rebranded her
company as simply
fl
agandbanner.com. In 2004, she became an early blogger. Since then, she
has founded the non-pro
fi
t Friends of Dreamland Ballroom, began publishing her magazine,
Brave. In 2016, branched out into this very radio show, YouTube channel, and podcast. In 2020,
Kerry McCoy Enterprises acquired ourcornermarket.com. Telling American-made stories, selling
American-made
fl
ags, the
fl
agandbanner.com. Back to you, Kerry.
[0:13:16]
KM:
You're listening to Up in Your Business with me, Kerry McCoy, and I'm speaking
today with Mr. Jeremy Bemis, second generation tree farmer and founder of Bemis Honey Bee
Farm. How did the idea for a bee farm come about?
[0:13:29]
JB:
When we bought that property behind us, well, we've always wanted to do
Christmas trees. It’s like, well, we’ll do, choose and cut Christmas trees. We're trying to
fi
gure
out how to lay it out. We actually started remodeling the hanger for the store for the Christmas
trees. It's like, well, if you're going to do Christmas trees, we need to round off the season and
we'll do pumpkins, so we'll have a pumpkin patch. Just the whole agritourism thing. That was
really getting big then. We were going for that.
We planted some pumpkins, and there's something in the ground that made little bumps on the
pumpkins. It's a fungus, or something. I don't even remember what it was called. We're trying to
fi
gure out with that. Can you guess what the number one reason why pumpkins don't grow?
[0:14:09]
KM:
They don't have bees.
[0:14:10]
JB:
They don't have bees. They need pollinators.
[0:14:12]
KM:
Oh, my gosh.
[0:14:13]
JB:
Pumpkins and a lot of those types of crop, gourd crops, they produce very little
nectar and pollen. Bees do everything on a grading scale. They want the best and most proli
fi
c
nectar and pollen sources that they can
fi
nd. To get pumpkins to be pollinated, you have to just
basically
fl
ood the area with bees. Honey bees are the only insect that we can really manage
like that, much less getting a food from, so honey.
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UIYB 240 Transcript
I looked around trying to
fi
gure out, well, who could I get to bring out bees? Apparently, that's a
thing. You can actually hire people to bring out bees. I looked around, couldn't
fi
nd anybody.
Looked at all of it, and I'm just going to buy some bees and do it myself. Tried
fi
nding
equipment, and there wasn't anybody real close to us. I ended up ordering stuff online, like most
people do and tried and tried to get some education. I found a class. I took that and got some
bees. Somebody said, well, you should just sell the equipment yourself. You can just sell it in the
store. I was like, “Well, okay. Sure.”
I made a few calls, got some bees ordered and it’s like, “If we're going to sell equipment, we're
going to have to teach people to keep bees,” because that was a hard – there's a learning curve
that you have to get past. That was a hard thing we were having ourselves to
fi
gure out how to
keep them alive. It's like, well, we'll do some classes. I found somebody that helped teach some
classes and –
[0:15:36]
KM:
Were they in Arkansas?
[0:15:37]
JB:
They’re in Arkansas.
[0:15:38]
KM:
Well, there you go.
[0:15:39]
JB:
Actually, it's Richard Underhill. He still comes out and teaches classes with us.
One thing led to another. Never could get the dang pumpkins to grow. Had a hard time with the
Christmas trees. The ground I was trying to put them in was too wet. We were having trouble
with the fungus, with all the water. By the time –
[0:15:59]
KM:
Farming is hard.
[0:16:00]
JB:
It is. It was new ground, so we'd never had trees planted on it. We were working
on drainage and all that. The whole time, we're just steadily having more classes and more bees
and more equipment. We
fi
nally got ready to actually sell some pumpkins. We did it one year
and decided like, we don't know what to do with our bee customers while we're trying to deal
with the pumpkins and the Christmas trees. We just scrapped it with the bees.
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UIYB 240 Transcript
[0:16:26]
KM:
What do you do with that land now?
[0:16:27]
JB:
I'm actually wanting to plant pecan trees on it, so for a different direction all
together.
[0:16:33]
KM:
For your children.
[0:16:34]
JB:
Yeah. Hopefully, it'll be my retirement project.
[0:16:36]
KM:
Because yeah, that takes a long time to grow a pecan tree.
[0:16:39]
JB:
It takes about 30 years to get them in production.
[0:16:42]
KM:
Wow.
[0:16:43]
JB:
We started planting a few, but we're working on – we're still trying to clean up
some of the land. We've started doing –
[0:16:49]
GM:
They deal with
fl
ooding better though, right? Pecans.
[0:16:52]
JB:
Do what?
[0:16:52]
GM:
Don't they deal with
fl
ooding better?
[0:16:54]
JB:
Yeah. But we don't really
fl
ood a whole lot. It's just our ground's heavy, so it just
holds the water.
[0:16:57]
GM:
Oh, I see. Okay.
[0:17:00]
JB:
It's actually just getting out there to –
[0:17:00]
GM:
Got you.
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