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West Virginia State Honey Festival buzzes back into City Park

By Candice Black 4 min read

PARKERSBURG -- This weekend, the community got an opportunity to learn more about bees and purchase local honey at the West Virginia State Honey Festival.

For about 10 years, Matt Byrd of Harrisville has been beekeeping and harvesting honey with his Byrd's & Bee's Honey business. He first got interested after attending a beginners beekeeper course put on by the WVU Ritchie County Extension Service.

"When I went to college, I competed in a business plan competition and I won the West Virginia state business plan competition for my bees and it's just been a lot of fun," Byrd said.

By attending events like the West Virginia State Honey Festival, Byrd hopes it sparks interest in beekeeping and spreads awareness about saving the bees.

"It allows the people to talk to beekeepers and to see the importance and what's going on in the bee population. One out of every three bites of food that we take is pollinated and pollination mainly occurs with honey bees. Without the honey bees, we wouldn't have all the fruits and vegetables that we see in the grocery store," Byrd said.

Several locals stopped at the local honey booths during the festival. What Byrd hopes people will learn is that bees are not as dangerous as they are believed to be.

"A lot of people think that they're vicious creatures, but honeybees are a lot more calm and if more people got into beekeeping, I think more people would enjoy it and see that it's more relaxing than it is scary. Very few times do you actually get stung by them," he said.

Dene Ryan with Ryan Farms in Doddridge County said her main goal in coming to festivals is to reach out to children and get them interested in beekeeping.

"We especially like to get to the kids, because we need the younger generation to step in. Our club has several members of the younger generation, (we) have five that are 17 and down. The youngest is 5 and she loves getting in the bees," Ryan said.

Live bees were on display and Ryan said kids were having a blast trying to find the queen. Once they spotted her, they got a sticker that read "I found the queen."

"That has been fantastic, they love finding the queen," Ryan said.

Apart from the honey aspect of the festival, the event had live music, local food and craft vendors, inflatables and a petting zoo.

Of course, no festival would be complete without crowning royalty and Saturday morning, Reese Wilson was crowned West Virginia State Honey Festival princess, Leilani Navarro won West Virginia State Honey Festival Teen and Shyanne Conley took home the crown for West Virginia State Honey Festival Little Miss.

This was the first year planning the festival for Andy Hartleben with Wood County Recreation Commission and he feels it was a success.

The West Virginia State Honey Festival and the Harvest Moon Festival in the fall are planned by the recreation commission which offers youth programs like tennis, small fry basketball, track and volleyball.

All proceeds for the festival benefit the recreation commission.

"It's our job to plan those and make sure everybody has fun. My favorite part about the whole festival is the attractions for the kids, the petting zoo, the train ride and the inflatables," Hartleben said.

Live music was a popular event for the festival and Harleben said it was laid out a little bit differently this year.

"That's one of the things we tweaked a little bit, in the past we had entertainment in a tent (but) I wanted to open it up so I paid to have it on the stage and I think that was a hit," he said.

Candice Black can be reached at cblack@newsandsentinel.com.

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