Jeanna Duerscherl | The Roanoke Times

Ron Hanawalt removes a queen bee from the case she is mailed in so that he can mark her.

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Name: Ronald Hanawalt
Business: Indian Run Apiary
Product: Honey
Location: 2615 Northridge Road, Hardy

Ron Hanawalt, a 69-year-old retired ecology professor, had no intention of ever keeping bees.

“I had no idea why anyone would want to have anything to do with a stinging insect,” he said.

Then, one day in 1976, a neighbor asked him along for a ride to purchase a couple of honeybee hives.

On a whim, Hanawalt came home with two hives of his own, including one “very mean” hive he couldn’t get out of the station wagon for four days. It was the challenge that stung him. Now, his Franklin County property is dotted with more than 200 hives housed in multicolored boxes.

Hanawalt says he is driven by fascination for the creatures and a great appreciation for what they do for humankind.

Two-thirds of Hanawalt’s beekeeping income comes from honey — including a gourmet sourwood honey — but the rest comes from renting out his hives to strawberry farms, apple orchards and other fruit producers for pollination.

But there is cause for concern: Colony Collapse Disorder, a phenomenon with no known cause, is causing honeybees to disappear across the country. So far, the condition, which is threatening pollination and honey production, does not seem to have affected Hanawalt’s hives.

Hanawalt, who is so fond of his pastime that he used to have a “BEEMAN” license plate, can talk up all the benefits of local honey. Those include its allergy-reducing powers, its use as a healing salve and its wine-like variances in flavor.

If a barrel of the stuff in Hanawalt’s honey house doesn’t taste as good as he thinks it should, that’s where it stays.

“I take an awful lot of care,” he said, “to make sure it’s good.”