Tied with pork for number three on the list of Montana’s most viable cash crops, honey is perhaps the state’s most underappreciated item of agricultural bounty. Furthermore, there are approximately 200 registered beekeepers in Montana, with 86 of those classified as commercial ones.

While commercial beekeepers are certainly an eclectic bunch, perhaps none of them is as ardent or passionate about apiary work or agricultural self-determination as Sean Kochel.

“I don’t understand why here in Montana we can’t be self-sustaining enough to have our own grocery supply and produce it on a year-round basis,” says Kochel, of Shelby, MT.

“Why should we depend on other markets? We have the technology and the know-how. We should increase our own quality of life first, and take care of ourselves the best we can, and then export to other markets. I’d like to see Montana be more independent.”

Ten years ago, Sean and his dad, Larry, had their first conversation about starting a beekeeping operation together. Maybe we could just do it as a hobby, they thought.

The idea stagnated until 2004, when Sean, who had been working six months out of the year as an Alaskan oil rig worker, decided he wanted a change of pace in his life.

“After working in Alaska for five years,” says Sean, “for two weeks on, two off, I was done. I didn’t want to go back. I figured that we could do it as a commercial business, and, you know, have fun, be out in nature, and not have anybody to boss us around.”

After Sean bought a few small bee businesses and did the research required to be able to understand the physical and constitutional characteristics of bees, Kochel Apiaries was formed.

“I started out with a beekeeping suit and a smoker, and second-hand holding tanks and processing equipment.”

Since then, for Sean, life has been up and down, top-notch and woeful. Larry Kochel died in 2004, at age 63, of a brain tumor, leaving his son dispirited by the indiscriminate tragedy. Nonetheless, Sean is still invigorated by the fond memories of the time he shared with his dad.

“Dad was really a great man,” says Sean. “He said something, and he kept his word. When he said something, he really meant it. There were no contradictions with him. That’s how I want to be.”

Sean owns property in Potomac, and he has expanded his business to include everything from woodworking products and beeswax candles, to cigar-box guitars and lip balms.

“I don’t want to go back to the bad jobs,” says Sean, “so I put my heart into my work. And if I’m going to put my heart into something, then it’s going to be to make my own dreams come true.”

These days, Sean splits time between Shelby and Potomac, and he finds the Missoula’s Farmer’s Market to be a valuable marketplace to sell his merchandise. He also finds the art of beekeeping for honey a tactful one.

Most beekeepers in Montana are migratory. There are about 36 of them who travel to California, Oregon, Washington, and elsewhere, to provide pollination services to almond, pear, peach, orange, and apple crop farms. But, Sean has little or no interest in such activity. Raw honey is where his heart is at.

“Honey,” says Kochel, “to most beekeepers, is a real big pain in the butt. Here’s how the beekeeping industry in the state works: the majority take their beehives to pollinate somewhere else. Eighty percent of all fruit seeds and vegetable crops in the United States are pollinated by bees, so there’s money to be made in beekeeping, as part of the migratory pollination.

“But I’m more interested in raw honey, though. Since 1941 the number of beekeepers has dropped. I guess I have a fondness for nostalgic things.”

Now some basics about the unique endowment of bees: In the course of her lifetime, a worker bee produces 1/12th of a teaspoon of honey. To make one pound of honey, workers in a hive fly 55,000 miles and tap two million flowers. A single hive contains approximately 40-45,000 bees. Honeybees are social insects living in large colonies, which can range from 20,000 to 80,000 in number. The average Montana hive, on a good year, will produce about 85-100 pounds of honey. At peak, 30,000-50,000 bees swarm your ordinary Montana hive.

Sean says that most of the honey that is bought and sold in chain grocery stores has nearly no health benefit because it isn’t raw. Most store bought honey is heated somewhere along the line, killing the enzymes that help food digestion and rendering ineffectual the pollens naturally suspended within. Similar to broccoli and garlic, raw honey is a food to be marveled over.

“Raw honey does the body good,” says Sean. “It’s loaded with antioxidants. It’s the only food on earth that has all the nutrients to sustain life, including water. You could live purely off of honey if you needed to.

“Raw is a whole lot better than refined sugar coming from a container imported from China, that’s only one percent honey, and the rest corn syrup. It’s a night and day difference.”

In the state of Montana, it’s hard to get sole or exclusive control of any given beekeeping area, says Sean. That’s because state law dictates where one can start an operation; in some cases, a three mile separation is mandated to ensure privacy and safety.

“Some bee lands are passed down from generation to generation. In order to have a beekeeping area, you need to have water and food sources, and it needs to be accessible. It’s taken me years of strategic placing to create a boundary to protect the good spots up in Toole and Liberty counties.”

Honey production starts early in the day, and warm weather in the mornings is most conducive to strong output. At higher elevations, bees tend to perform better and work more efficiently in shorter periods.

“They say for a good honey production or crop,” says Sean, “that the bees need to work six hours a day.”

Bee harvesting season starts in March, and, as the circle of life would have it, the insects need ample amounts of their own produce to survive through the surly winter months.

“I winter my bees in Montana,” says Sean. “I don’t migrate them to California. I might have extra honey, but I can’t use it because the bees need to winter on it. I need to save, per colony, about one hundred pounds of honey.”

Off season and down time allow Sean to dabble in other tasks, including the building of cigar box fiddles, a jocular throwback to Civil War times.

“I’ve always wanted to build guitars,” says Sean. “I built a four-string tenor guitar and got a couple of chords out of it. But I was too embarrassed to sell them. My mom and sister went to the market, and they did it for me. Mom sold one and said ‘I’d make more if I were you.’

“They are cheesy, but people seem to like them. People say to me all the time, ‘what an original idea.’ It’s really not an original idea. It’s an old idea being updated.”

In fact, the earliest proof of a cigar box instrument comes from an engraved image of two soldiers at a campsite. Some blues guitarists will still pick up the cigar box guitar when they want to imitate Delta Blues in its purest, most primal sounding form.

This is Sean’s first year as a permanent vendor at the Missoula Farmer’s Market. Not surprisingly, the weekly revenue he generates in densely peopled Missoula consistently outnumbers his sparse Hi-Line sales of seasons past.

“I see more people in a day in Missoula then I do the whole season in the markets up there. In Shelby, you may have 12 booths and 50 people strolling through on a weekend, if you’re lucky.”

Whether he is working at harvesting wheat in Shelby or just schmoozing as a retailer at Missoula’s hip Saturday emporium, Sean no longer takes his life experiences for granted.

“I used to be embarrassed of being from Montana,” says Sean. “When I went away I realized how good things are here. Montana should be prouder of what it has and what it is.”

For more information, visit www. kochelapiaries.com.