‘It’s my obsession’: Dan Long’s constant pursuit of better beekeeping
Dan Long handles his beehives with care. When he needs to harvest honey or search for a queen bee, he might wear a full beekeeping suit — a “moon suit,” as he calls it — or just a veil and gloves, puffing fragrant smoke into the hives with a smoker full of smoldering pine straw. He prefers not to wear anything covering his hands, because gloves make him less agile and more likely to accidentally squish a bee.
Dan Long shows a frame full of honey and bee brood — baby bees sheltered under wax caps preparing to emerge — in one of his hives at the main yard of Tallassee Highlands Apiary on Friday, April 11, 2025. (Video/Jacqueline GaNun)
Jacqueline GaNun
Long carefully pries each frame out of the hive to examine it. Some of the flat surfaces patterned with honeycombs are nearly empty. Others are enveloped with wriggling bees dancing around each other over cells full of honey, wax caps sheltering larvae, and bee bread — clumps of fermented pollen from which the honeybees get their nutrition.
This is the main bee yard of Tallassee Highlands Apiary, tucked away near the border of Jackson and Clarke counties, surrounded by forest. Long began keeping bees in 1996 and promptly fell in love.
“People ask me, is it my hobby?” Long said. “And I say, no, it’s my obsession.”
Some of the more difficult aspects of keeping bees — losing 10% to 20% of colonies even in a normal year, hauling 50-pound boxes of honey, fighting pests and parasites — are enough to scare most people off. For Long, though, these challenges are not a deterrent but a draw. He likes getting the minute details right, overcoming threats to his hives and innovating new ways to sustain his bee business.
“I thrive on challenge,” Long said.
Queen machines
Long started Tallassee Highlands in 2011, and it now consists of about 50 beehives in three yards spread across a range of just under two miles.
The apiary sells hundreds of pounds of honey each year, Long said. He sells directly to customers and stocks the Sandy Creek Nature Center, the State Botanical Garden of Georgia and the shop Community in downtown Athens.
“It’s delicious. I’ve gifted it for my mom,” Anita Wagner, a salesperson at Community, said. “It’s a really good-selling product.”
Dan Long shows a drone bee from one of his beehives on Friday, April 11, 2025. (Photo/Jacqueline GaNun)Jacqueline GaNun
Long also sells bees. Queen bees are the only ones in a hive that can reproduce, making them crucial for the hive’s survival, according to Pennsylvania State University. Raising good queens can be tricky, requiring good nutrition and mating, Long said.
He previously used a system without a cage to safely hold the queen. Long remembered a friend introducing him to 3D printing, and thought that might be the answer to his problem. Instead of simply downloading an existing design, he created his own cage, going through iteration after iteration before coming up with a product that was just right.
“I’m definitely a tinkerer,” Long said.
He kept fiddling with the printers, loving how quickly he could go from an idea to a prototype, and eventually the project grew into an entire line of beekeeping and queen-rearing equipment called EZPZ.
Long’s products have been sold in 12 countries, according to the EZPZ website. He credits his success with the same entrepreneurial instinct that drove him to make his hives profitable. He thinks he got some of that from his father and grandfather, who both started their own businesses.
“Where I’m really lucky or clever is that I make something nobody else makes,” Long said. “I somehow keep thinking of new things, and beekeepers will ask me if I can make something for a particular need.”
Alana Rosen is the grower at Brushwood Nursery, which Long also owns and operates. She spends her time with clematis plants, not bees, but often hears Long excitedly discussing his latest EZPZ project.
“He likes new and different things,” Rosen said. “This was a challenge, and it still kind of is a challenge. … and I think he really likes that.”
‘It’s not easy keeping bees’
Bee Culture magazine recently described a “staggering” and “catastrophic” loss of 1.6 million honeybee colonies from June 2024 to March 2025.
“This past year was devastating,” Long said. “Some commercial beekeepers are reporting losses up to 80%.”
Losing bees is one of the most frustrating parts of the business for Long, who wasn’t spared from last year’s trend. In the fall, he lost nearly all of his nucs — small hives meant to grow into a new colony.
“The weather was a contributing factor, but I could have mitigated the problem and I didn’t,” Long said. “That kind of frustration can cause you to pause and say, ‘Do I really want to keep doing this?’”
Varroa destructor, a parasitic mite, is another persistent problem. True to its name, the pest is devastating to hives, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Varroa hit the U.S. in the 1980s and “spread like wildfire,” Long said. He said his bees have varroa-sensitive hygiene genetics. These traits make them better at removing those infested with mites from the hive, according to an article in the journal Nature. Long also chemically treats his hives to deter the mites.
There are now half as many beehives in the U.S. as there were in 1965. (Graphic/Jacqueline GaNun)Jacqueline GaNun
Between varroa, environmental stresses and losing colonies, Long said there have been days when frustration almost overwhelms him.
“If you talk to any beekeeper, they’ll tell you, it’s not easy keeping bees,” Long said. “There are a lot of people who start beekeeping and get really frustrated really quickly and drop it.”
But it’s not easy to quit an obsession, and a large dose of patience and sense of community help Long through the rough patches. Meeting other beekeepers, and knowing they’re going through the same things, puts his struggles in perspective.
“It’s good to get together with my bee people,” he said.
Still, Long thinks he might not want to lug 50-pound hives of honey for the rest of his life. He doesn’t want to hurt his back, like other beekeepers he knows, and he wants to focus more energy on making queen bees. It’s a physically lighter task, but much more intellectual, Long said.
“Anybody can make queen bees,” Long said. “But making good queens, it’s a science and an art to it, and that intrigues me.”
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