Saving the Honeybee
Most people would flee from a dark cloud of honeybees buzzing around them. Scott Derrick relishes the frenetic buzz—at least when he’s dressed in a full-body protective suit.
The 39-year-old Blythewood, South Carolina, man is a beekeeper and a businessman. Derrick spent 18 years creating flavors for Lance foods and fragrances for Yankee Candle and Bath & Body Works before trading his corporate job for more time at home with his family and working on his new hobby of beekeeping.
“My grandfathers kept honeybees when I was younger, and it always intrigued me. But I never got to do much with them because I was so young. And that memory always sat in the back of my mind. So I just started one day,” Derrick says.
In 2004, Derrick started a honeybee removal service called Blythewood Bee Co. Since then, he’s climbed into attics, up trees, and into other uncomfortable spaces to remove buzzing hives plaguing residents.
Around this time, Derrick also translated
