Serving Barnwell County and it's neighbors since 1852
A beekeeper and his allergic-to-bees wife make the perfect pair. Ronald and Cassandra Moore, or Ronnie and Cassie, are growing their passion into a business.
R&C Low Country Bees was born out of Ronnie’s two-decades long interest in honeybees and all the benefits they bring to the local environment.
When he first met Cassie and told her about what he did outside of being a certified master carpenter, she knew her EpiPen and an ice pack would have to be kept within close reach. Thankfully she isn’t severely allergic, and is more attuned to handling the business side of the company rather than dealing directly with the bees themselves.
Cassie has her PhD in educational psychology and used to own a private practice. While she operated her business and grew her passion, Ronnie stood right beside her.
“When he gets excited, I get excited. He's my best friend. And he helped me with my private practice and it's only fair that I support him and his passion. So that's what I do. I support my husband 100 percent, but I don't go out to the bees!” said Cassie.
As the couple began to build their business, their home in North, S.C. caught fire and family members became ill, requiring them to put a hold on honeybees and shift focus.
They restarted on a property with a lot of pollinating trees in Kline and built up their hives again to give R&C Low Country Bees another shot.
Ronnie began growing a sustainable stock of bees, establishing hives, and continuously learning how to better care for his winged-friends; Cassie developed a website, an Etsy storefront, procured a business license, and learned to work with beeswax.
By early 2024, the couple was gearing up for the local market season to showcase their services, supplies, and a wide variety of honey products such as soap, wax tarts, candles, and of course, honey.
R&C Low Country Bees also offers honey bee removal, on-site wax dipping for bee hives, and pollination services to local farmers.
However, none of these products or services would be possible without the passion Ronnie has for seeing the honeybee population thrive in this region.
“As a beekeeper, we call the bees our friends, our girls, our compadrés, family, because we've got so much time and love invested into them,” said Ronnie.
Ronnie visits his ‘girls’ numerous times a day, rarely with a beekeeper’s suit or veil for protection from stings. He has worked with honeybees long enough to know the intricacies of their behavior, doubled with the research he has done into how they operate.
“You can tell their temperament once you open the boxes,” said Ronnie. “As a beekeeper, you don’t go at certain times of the day, you don't go in certain weather.”
Ronnie explained how sensitive bees are to barometric pressure. When the pressure drops, it means rain is near and the bees get much more aggressive.
“As you progress and mess with them over the years, you kind of learn the tricks of what and what not to do,” he said.
During two decades of beekeeping, Ronnie believes he has gotten stung “probably more times than we breathe,” but it has never deterred him from continuing to care for each and every bee in his hives.
He first got interested in beekeeping through a friend. Ronnie remembers asking him: “‘How do I get into this?’ He said, ‘Have lots of money and patience.’ So, I don't have lots of money, but I've got a lot of patience.”
Ronnie is now a certified beekeeper through the S.C. Mid-State Beekeepers Association, and the couple are both members of the South Carolina State Beekeepers Association.
They find that one of the best ways to understand the evolving world of beekeeping is to make friends within the field and always be willing to learn. Attending conferences and seminars are only some of the ways they have met with some prominent figures across the country and discussed new ways to tend to their hives.
In April 2024, 20 colonies of honeybees made the move to their new home in Kline and Ronnie got to work stabilizing and showing Cassie how to graft queens.
“Queens are the heart of the colony, and whenever you are able to graft queens and make your own queens, you become a sustainable entity,” said Ronnie.
According to Ronnie, once a beekeeper has a good stock of bees, they can graft their eggs to create more queens of the same stock.
Another aspect of R&C Low Country Bees that Ronnie and Cassie are passionate about is educating the community on the importance of honeybees.
Pollinators can be thanked for the majority of our food and sustaining a strong agricultural base in many states which leads to economic sustainability. Many consider it to be a daunting thought what humans would do without insects like honeybees.
According to Clemson Extension, the annual contribution of honeybees to U.S. food production is estimated to be $10 billion, pollinating crops like apples, blueberries, cantaloupes, watermelon, squash, and much more. In South Carolina alone, annual cash receipts for commercially grown apples, cantaloupes, cucumbers, and watermelons are estimated at $25 million.
However, maintaining honeybee populations comes with challenges far outside of their own hives.
“With society keeping the manicured lawns and the manicured highways, you're killing all of the bees' food,” said Ronnie. “So that puts back on the beekeeper to constantly feed them and give them the proteins and stuff that they normally would get from nature.”
It is a costly practice for the roughly 2,500 beekeepers in South Carolina. When beekeepers are forced to supplement food that could be provided by naturally growing wildflowers, the cost only increases.
Wild colonies of honeybees do not have beekeepers like Ronnie working to keep them fed, and are forced to rely on what nature provides. These colonies are constantly facing the plight of a manicured lawn.
Ronnie encourages up and coming beekeepers to learn their environment, seasons for different pollen, and what grows when. For example, the blooms of a red leaf maple are a large pollen and nectar source for bees.
Combining his passion for honeybees and skills as a master carpenter, Ronnie can also provide bee-removal services in the Barnwell, Allendale, Aiken, Columbia, and Augusta, Ga., areas.
With a bee-vacuum in hand, Ronnie can gently remove large colonies from attics, chimneys, and just about anywhere. As an added bonus, he can then repair any damage he left trying to access and remove the bees.
“He can make it look like nothing ever happened,” said Cassie.
Once the bees are safely removed, Ronnie brings them back to Kline under his care.
“A lot of times where I remove them is out of people's houses and old buildings,” said Ronnie. “I'll get the comb and the honey and the bees and I'll bring it back here. I'll save the comb. I'll cut it out right away so I can reuse it, and I'll put it in empty frames. I'll make the box up and I'll put them right back on their original comb, and let them start generating again.”
After each removal, R&C Low Country Bees gain a new hive and a colony of bees have a safe place to land. Often, Ronnie’s services can take the place of an exterminator when dealing with honeybee-specific issues.
Ronnie is also one of the few certified to dip hives in wax on-site. This maintains the boxes and frames much longer than any other type of treatment, and comes with a surplus of other benefits.
To learn more about the services offered by R&C Low Country Bees, visit https://randclowcountrybees.godaddysites.com/ or call (803) 604-6254.
