Gunnar Coe: The Kid King of the Beehive
By Christopher Harris
At only 14 years old, Gunnar Coe has created a lot of buzz.
The Somerset Christian School eighth-grader has won the Somerset- Pulaski County Chamber of Commerce ' s Young Entrepreneurs Academy( YEA!) program. He ' s made headlines in the Commonwealth Journal and Kentucky Living Magazine. He ' s even been recognized by the Kentucky State Senate.
And it all started with a " Curious George " episode Coe watched when he was only 4.
That ' s where he first discovered beekeeping— a practice that would become a passion for Coe, and might just help him ultimately save the world.
" In the episode,( Curious George) helped his friend build a hive in the hopes it would attract bees. Instead of the right materials, they used the stuff they found around the Man in the Yellow Hat ' s apartment, which didn ' t go so well," said Coe. " After seeing that episode more times than I can count, it made me want a hive of bees. The honey looked good and they made it look easy."
That word " easy " came with a laugh, because Coe would soon learn beekeeping— also known as apiculture, the practice of maintaining bee colonies— was anything but. After begging his father Gerald for some bees— " When I was 5, he finally gave in and bought me two hives," said Coe— the young man embarked on a journey that was both exciting and difficult.
" It was fun to learn about them and watch the hives grow. We didn ' t exactly know what we were doing though and those first hives didn ' t make it through their first winter," said Coe. " We didn ' t do anything more due to my age other than the normal protective gear. As far as learning what to do, we were definitely burning up YouTube."
Much of the learning that Coe did had to come from firsthand experience— including that " yes, beekeepers get stung a lot," as he remarked.
" There is a basic skill set when it comes to beekeeping that you must learn. Past that, it often becomes user preference," said Coe. " If you have 10 beekeepers in a room and you give us a task to perform, we will all end up at the same place but we will probably take ten different routes to get there.
One of the most important tasks involved in apiculture involves setting up and inspecting hives, said Coe. This is done every week to 10 days to ensure the overall well-being of the colony.
" We are checking for the presence of queens, eggs, and larvae," said Coe. " Sometimes you may find a queenless hive and then you have to provide one or make sure they are equipped to make a new one.
" We are checking their food supply. If they have too much the queen may not have room to lay eggs. Too little and we have to supplement them," he continued. " We are looking for signs of disease or pests. Sick bees aren ' t happy bees so we provide the proper treatments for them. Since the bees are living in a home we gave them instead of hollowed-out tree, we may even be repairing the hives."
Then comes the part most people are probably familiar with, or at least benefit from— harvesting honey and beeswax. Coe said his beeswax is used in lip balm, branded as Sweet Lips— he sold 600 units of it last year— but it ' s the honey that helped him start his first business, Gunnar ' s Bees, after being frequently asked if he had any honey available.
" It took a few years to do my first successful harvest— a whopping three gallons," said Coe. "... I labeled the honey as ' Sweet to the Soul ' which comes from Proverbs 16:24. We didn ' t sell a lot that first year as I gave most of it away.... Some people I gave honey to insisted on giving me money, which I used to buy more bees, of course."
The following year saw a " modest " 23 gallons and the honey sales, declared Coe, " were on!" He would set up on the weekends outside my his father ' s business— Coe ' s Steakhouse in Russell Springs— and sell the product.
" I keep reinvesting in bees and equipment each year and harvested 80 gallons last year," he said. " I use social media to advertise and usually have the majority of my honey sold by fall each year."
Other beekeepers may harvest pollen, royal jelly and propolis, which Coe noted is " the sticky stuff bees use to seal up their hives."
Another beekeeper task is breeding and raising bees and queens, and using the bees to provide pollination for the immediate area. This is a key part of maintaining the food cycle, and Coe said another thing beekeepers do is help educate the public about the importance of honeybees and their crucial role in that process.
That includes known about the Varroa Destructor, a parasitic mite that causes nearly half of all hive losses globally each year. Coe said that beekeepers
JULY 2025 SEKY- Southeast Kentucky Life • 15