By Neil Moran
For Adam and Lacey Ingrao, raising honey bees is not only good for the planet but a form of therapy. The couple owns Bee Wise Farms LLC in Newberry, which is also the headquarters for Heroes to Hives, a program connecting veterans to the therapeutic benefits of beekeeping.
Located on M-28 just east of Newberry, the couple raise bees for the honey and to offer frames of bees called “nucs” to other beekeepers. They have about 70 hives on their property which includes a retail store for bee products like honey, beeswax and candles.
“We sell a ton of nucs,” admits Adam Ingrao. “But what we pride ourselves on is the health of the bees.”
Raising honeybees this far north can be a challenge but Adam, who graduated from Michigan State University with a Ph.D. in Entomology, has shown that it can be done on a fairly large scale. It has everything to do with the health of the bees going into winter.
“Our overwintering losses have been well below 10 percent annually, so we’ve really been able to establish our apiary,” says Adam. From this number of hives, they’re producing over 100 nucs they can sell in the spring to present and future beekeepers.
The couple shares their knowledge with other beekeepers in the surrounding area and beyond. They offer an online training course about the seasons of beekeeping to teach beekeepers every aspect of this fascinating hobby. Special emphasis is placed on disease control and wintering over the bees. They also offer hands-on workshops at the Waishkey Bay Farm in Brimley.
Beekeeping as Therapy
What really drew Adam to beekeeping was its inherent therapeutic value. In 2004, he was discharged from the U.S. Army as a service-connected disabled veteran after serving as a patriot missile fire controller in Iraq and Afghanistan.
“Like a lot of service people I struggled with the transitional process, especially coming to terms with my disability and leaving my battle buddies,” Adam says.
He discovered beekeeping while working on an undergraduate degree at California Polytechnic State University in San Luis Obispo.
“I took an elective on beekeeping and I became completely focused on honey bees,” he said. “I could support the most important managed pollinator on the planet and there was also a therapeutic value to what I was doing: being in the bee yard allowed me to focus on the present and be mindful of what I was doing.”
While at Cal Poly, Adam was awarded a Plant Science Fellowship to Michigan State University, where he would complete his Ph.D. In 2014, he and Lacey started a farm and small apiary near Lansing, the birthplace of Beewise Farms. However, the couple wouldn’t stay in the Lansing area for long. In the years that followed, Adam traveled with family to the Upper Peninsula where he fell in love with the area. So in 2018, the couple packed their bags, loaded up their ten hives and moved to their present location.
Helping Veterans
It was the transformation that Adam’s wife saw in the veteran gunner that started them on their next mission: to help other veterans suffering from the harrowing effects of combat in a war zone.
“Going from someone who is looking for that next mission to really being focused on honey bees,” reflect Adam. “We not only saw the career path that I was on but also the therapeutic aspects of beekeeping.”
As a result, Adam co-founded Heroes to Hives with Lacey who is a transformational psychologist specializing in nature-based therapy. The Ingraos initially started with five local veterans. The first year their living room became a lecture hall and their garage and bee yard served as a lab. By the end of the first season of working with local veterans, they were discussing what happens in combat and having difficult discussions.
“We saw veterans having the same experience I had when they were in the bee yard,” says Adam, “They were feeling a lot of the joys and acceptance from the community.”
Offered free of charge to veterans and their dependents, Heroes to Hives quickly took off. It has connected over 11,000 veterans with beekeeping and the therapeutic aspects it embodies, including the camaraderie of being with fellow veterans sharing combat experiences.
“It really became therapeutic and I remember a harvesting session at the end of the first year when one of the participants came up to my wife and said, ‘I really don’t know where I would be without this,’” Adam recalls.
Likewise, Adam doesn’t wouldn’t know where the Heroes to Hives program or the apiary would be without the support of his wife.
“Lacey runs Bee Wise Farm and all of the therapeutic aspects of Heroes to Hives,” says Adam. “She has her hands in all of these aspects and nothing could happen without her.”
With their passion for bees and their commitment to veterans, the Ingraos have cultivated a thriving apiary while sowing seeds of hope and recovery for those who need it most. The story of Bee Wise Farms and Heroes to Hives is a testament to the transformative power of nature, community and the resilience of the human spirit.
Learn more about Heroes to Hives at beewisefarms.com.