By Liz Barry

Published: March 17, 2008

Allen Blanks works a knife into an old honeycomb to scrape off excess wax. It’s mundane work, but it must get done.

Soon, Blanks will drive his truck from the Lynchburg area to Georgia to pick up three pounds of bees to repopulate his hives. (At 2,000 bees to a pound, that’s roughly 6,000 honeybees.) Later this spring, Blanks will let them loose on farms throughout Virginia to pollinate fruit and vegetable plants.

Blanks has been a beekeeper since 1948 and a preacher for almost as long. The 84-year-old intends on keeping bees for as long as he can.

“I don’t know how much longer I have to live,” he says. “But I really do get enjoyment out of it. I feel like it’s something that is useful to mankind.”

Blanks sits in the shadow of his carport, which is stacked high with crates and boxes. He wears a white jumpsuit over a collared shirt. The skin on his hands is rough and cracked.
Blanks cleans the combs methodically, with a smooth dip of his knife.

Each bee leaves a cocoon-like shell in its cell after birth. These shells add up over time, thickening the combs. But it takes years before the combs are uninhabitable.

“Bees reuse their combs until they get so dark and heavy that they can’t be used anymore,” he says.

At the height of his beekeeping career, Blanks had 500 hives. But in the 1980s, his bee populations started to dwindle. Tiny pests, varroa mites and tracheal mites, were killing off his bees.

Under normal circumstances, bee populations fluctuate throughout the year. They die off in the winter months and repopulate in the spring, reaching upwards of 60,000 bees to a hive by
summer.

The constant battle with mites forced Blanks to downsize over the years. Even today, he must take preventive measures against the mites. 

Last year’s mysterious loss of honeybee colonies, which afflicted hives throughout the country, did not affect Blanks. The cause is still unknown.

Blanks pauses from his work to check the status of one of his hives. Hands steady, he slowly pulls out a comb encased in a wooden frame.

Some of the worker bees have gobs of pollen on their legs. The tiny white eggs are visible in some of the cells. The queen bee has been busy. So far, so good.

Born in Halifax County, Blanks lives in a house off Candlers Mountain Road. Blanks bought a farm in Halifax County after he got back from serving in World War II.

“At one time, I had right many cattle,” he says.

He pauses. “Grew some tobacco. Share-croppers did most of the tobacco work.”

Blanks still owns the farm, but he rents out most of the land to a farmer, who raises cattle and grows timber.

To supplement his farm and beekeeping, Blanks sells honey from his home. He puts up a plywood sign in the yard when he’s stocked up.

Blanks has been a Baptist preacher for almost as long as he’s been keeping bees. He stopped preaching in August, but he still performs weddings, funerals and other services.

He sees his faith through his life’s work.

“When you look at creation, especially working with bees, you have to realize that there’s something there that causes all these things, a higher power,” he says.

Bees remind him of the delicate balance of nature and the intricate relationships between different organisms.

People remind him of bees, too.

“We’re sort of like bees in a way,” he says. “We group together in big cities, in big groups of people, and we interact with one another.”

Blanks hopes to pass on the bee business to one of his six children. But for now, spring pollination is what’s on his mind.