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Bike Friendly South Dallas Has Bees in its Walls. That’s Actually Great News.

As the saying goes, when life gives you bees, make honey, turn a profit, and support your thin-margined organization.
By Shawn Shinneman |
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Photography by Susanne Schulz, via iStock

A lot was going right last month for Bike Friendly South Dallas, the joy-and transportation-spreading South Dallas bike shop that uses an earn-a-bike model. The organization had scored sponsorship from The Real Estate Council’s Associate Leadership Council that brought around a quarter of a million dollars worth of renovations to its first-ever bike shop, located near Ervay and Al Lipscomb. The shop opened this month.

What could derail such momentum? Perhaps a beehive in the cinder block walls, which is what founder Stan Hart recently discovered.

As it turns out, though, Bike Friendly has fallen into an opportunity. Rather than spend hundreds of dollars to remove it, Hart has teamed with an organization that will be taking the bees out for free this Saturday and putting about 10 hives on the roof so that they can produce honey—and revenue—for Bike Friendly South Dallas. The hive in the wall will be taken off site, and then those bees will be “rehabbed”—somewhere remote in California, I assume—and brought back onto the roof, as well.

The organization in question is the Austin-based American Honey Bees Protection Agency, headed up by the Bee Czar himself Walter Schumacher. The AHBPA has a deal with Central Market. It has bees on the grocer’s Dallas roof as well as the roof, believe it or not, of the downtown Omni hotel. Central Market buys all the honey AHBPA is willing to pass off and shelves it with “Rooftop Honey” branding.

The best part: with the money Bike Friendly will make selling the honey—simply using its existing rooftop real estate–it could potentially cover its monthly building and operational expenses, excluding salary. That’s what Hart says he’s estimating after talks with AHBPA.

The bees will be removed—and the others placed—this Saturday, when Dallas will finally get its first joint bike repair shop-honey producer. You should really visit.

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