top of page
STONER BEE HISTORY
It is thought that Samuel D. Stoner (1856-1946) started keeping bees on the Stoner family farm in Ladoga, Indiana around 1900. At least three of his eight children continued with beekeeping. One son, Edward Norris Stoner (1891-1971), left Ladoga for Tipton to become principal of the High School and later Personnel Director for Perfect Circle Company and kept a few beehives in his garden just west of Tipton. A younger son, John Edgar Stoner (1902-1988), also left Ladoga and eventually ended up in Bloomington, Indiana where he was a Professor at Indiana University from 1938-1972. Edgar would regularly travel the 70 miles from Bloomington to Ladoga on weekends to look after the bees on the farm, helping brother Paul Deardorff Stoner (1898-1989), who stayed and managed the Ladoga farm.
Edgar's daughter, Rebecca Stoner Marks, remembers being enticed into beekeeping at at young age to "turn the crank" and spin the extractor to remove honey from the comb. Since travel was severely restricted during World War II, Rebecca recalls that he father packed up the bees hives in Ladoga and moved them to his backyard in Bloomington. After the war, he moved the bees hives back to Ladoga and resumed his regular visits until he was in his 80's. The most memorable of the visits was for the annual honey harvest around Labor Day. Several siblings and their children would help remove honey from the hives and extract it. Edgar would take his honey back to Blooming where his wife Margaret bottled the honey with their daughter Rebecca.
These brothers, Norris, Paul and Edgar, learned their beekeeping skills as boys on their father Samuel’s farm in Ladoga and started the Stoner Honey legacy that continues today. Yours truly, Hannibal Trout.
The Stoner Honey of today is inspired by Edward Norris Stoner (or E.N as he is generally called). When E.N. retired as Personnel Director of Perfect Circle Corporation in 1956, he decided to expand the few hives he kept in a garden just outside of Tipton, Indiana into a full-fledged beekeeping operation. In partnership with Willard Burton, they formed Buck Creek Apiary and started with 35 hives formerly owned by R.S. Martin. Within ten years, they had expanded Buck Creek Apiary to over 100 hives situated on ten farms around Tipton, Indiana. The honey from the apiary was sold in family-run grocery stores and to individual customers. Some comb honey was sold by the pound, but most was carefully strained and sold in one-pound glass jars, sometimes containing a piece of comb.
Buck Creek Apiary closed in the late 1960’s, but the two oldest sons of E.N. Stoner, Norris Eugene Stoner and Richard Burkett Stoner, continued their father E.N.’s beekeeping avocation. Eugene first had several hives in his backyard in Arlington, Virginia, but found that that location was not very suitable, and he eventually found a working farm in Fairfax County Virginia, just past Tyson’s Corner that provided good flora for his bees. His bees prospered out in Fairfax County and he gradually expanded the number of hives that he kept. Eugene’s brother Richard similarly kept a couple of hives in his backyard in Columbus, Indiana and later at a couple of other nearby locations including his property (Stoners Lonesome) in Brown County. However, Richard never expanded beyond a small hobbyist operation.
The current generation of Stoner beekeepers includes at six of E.N. Stoner’s grandchildren and one great-grandchild. Four of Richard Stoner’s children are beekeepers: Rick Stoner, Ben Stoner, Janet Stoner and Becky Kirts. Rick and Ben learned beekeeping as boys from father Richard, and from their Grandpa E.N. Stoner. As boys, they used to enjoy going up to Tipton to help Grandpa E.N. Stoner work in his garden, and they especially enjoyed looking after the honeybees, and of course, "cranking" the honey extractor.
Below:
Rick and Ben are helping their Grandpa E.N.Stoner inspect hives in the Buck Creek Apiary in the summer of 1959.
Rick and Ben continued to keep bees when and where they could. Rick had three hives of bees that he tended while living in Huddersfield, England. To the delight of his family and friends he reputedly produced some delicious heather honey in those days! After college, Ben went off to the Peace Corps in Nepal, where he introduced modern box hives and beekeeping practices to local farmers. There they raised an Indian honeybee (Apis Cerana) which is smaller, less aggressive, and produces less honey than the European (Apis Melifera) honeybees used in the U.S. There is a home movie taken by Rick of Ben cutting and climbing trees in the jungle to capture wild honeybees that is included in this website in the Blog section. Perhaps climbing 100-foot trees was a bit risky, but it was nothing nearly as risky as the Gurung mountain men in northern Nepal climbing 1,000-foot cliffs on homemade ropes to harvest honey from the large and fierce rock honeybees (Apis Dorsata). There is also a Blog that links to a Nat Geo documentary on this.
Upon returning to Northern Virginia in 1999 after working overseas with USAID for 23 years, Ben took up beekeeping once again and later started the Stoner Honey collective. He helped his sister Becky Kirts restart her apiary in Shelbyville, Kentucky to produce lovely Kentucky bluegrass honey. Then in 2021, Becky moved her hives from Kentucky to her new home at Stoners Lonesome in Brown County, Indiana, thus re-establishing the beekeeping tradition at Stoners Lonesome. In 2018, Ben helped three other Stoner beekeepers start their operations.
In Sanibel, Florida (Rick) established an apiary with several hives that eventually included some Buckfast bees that proved to be very productive. At least until September 28, 2022 when Hurricane Ian sent a ten foot surge over Sanibel Island and carried away his hives. Regardless of the pain, he has restarted his apiary and is producing again that delicious Sanibel Black Mangrove honey!
In the Maryland suburbs of Washington, DC., Dan Stoner (another of E.N. Stoners grandsons) launched into beekeeping with his wife Rosemary Trent and their son Jacob. The apiary is at their home in Bethesda, Maryland. Dan and Rosemary are aided by their son Jacob, who has learned excellent beekeeping skills from his job managing hives for Best Bees.
Ben’s sister-in-law Robin Daly and her husband Matt Nau started their apiary in Garrett Park, Marlyand. Although plagued by high winter losses due to parasites and pesticides, they have produced high quality honey and continue to expand their hive management expertise.
In 2019, Ben helped the newest member and next generation of Stoner Honey, his daughter Marie Stoner, start her apiary in Durham, NC with a friend Amy Handler. However, they both moved to the west coast later that year and Ben returned that hive to Falls Church. However, Marie remains interested in beekeeping and has joined a club in Oakland California, where she now lives, in hope of getting a hive soon.
In 2021, one other of the Richard Stoner family also started an apiary. That is Janet Stoner and her husband Bob Abrams who started a hive at their new home on Lake Moss, near Shelby, North Carolina. Their hive has done well and they are enjoying introducing their grandchildren to beekeeping and "cranking" the extractor.
The other grandchildren of E.N. Stoner who take care of bees are Julie Stoner Nowak and Kimberly Stoner. Julie’s apiary is located on property that she and her husband Steve own on Lake Michigan in Door County, Wisconsin. Julie started three new hives in 2020 and continues to produce beautiful light honey. Kimberly doesn’t have her own apiary, but starting in 1987 she conducted research on honeybees as part of her work as Associate Scientist in the Entomology Department at the Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station (CAES). Kimberly’s work collecting samples of pollen and nectar and measuring pesticide residues has helped us better understand the impacts that pesticides are having on our honeybees. She also has undertaken a project comparing numbers and diversity of bees on different plants grown on diversified vegetable farms – herbs, cut flowers, ornamental plants, cover crops, wildflowers, and weeds, as well as long-term monitoring of bee diversity in several sites around Connecticut.
November 13, 1993: Comb honey harvest at Stoners Lonesome by Richard Stoner Jr. and Richard Stoner Sr.
bottom of page