Reid Hinkle, a seventh-grade biology teacher at Guntersville Middle School, sold honey from his hive in Cullman at the GMS parking on Wednesday. While it’s the second year for Hinkle to sell his straight-from-the-comb honey, this is the first time he has brought it to Guntersville.
Hinkle Farms in Cullman County began as a family endeavor, which is “more of a hobby than anything else,” according to Hinkle. The farm was made up of fruit trees, gardens and a vineyard, until a friend from Arkansas mentioned what a game-changer honeybees are. Hinkle’s mother said she would purchase everything to get started, if he would do all the work.
It seemed like a no-brainer to the science teacher, who figured – correctly – that he might have a leg up on the industry with his professional background. Once everything was bought and ready to go, though, Covid hit a week later. The pandemic actually worked in Hinkle’s favor, as he was able to devote an entire spring and summer to learning as much as he could about the beekeeping process. Now, he and his twin sister largely run the hives together, although the entire Hinkle family pitches in to help.
“We try to make it a family affair,” Hinkle said. “We get all the kids involved and everything.”
This season, Hinkle pulled honey from 10 of his 11 hives, two of which were really strong. The family ended up extracting just under 500 pounds of honey to sell, up from 136 last year, which sold out in 36 hours.
Hinkle Farms honey is raw and comes straight from the honeycomb, through a filter and into two-pound bottles, which Hinkle sold for $20 each on Wednesday, lining up with the current going rate for raw honey, around $10 per pound.
Hinkle said he plans to harvest more honey next year. Now that he knows more about the business and with the help of a master beekeeper he knows in Cullman, he hopes to be able to bring an observation hive into his 7th grade biology class this year; something he has been trying to accomplish the last two years.
“Something like that will really hold the kids’ interest and get them involved,” he said.
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