The Schulzes East Dallas backyard has space to play and space to work. The work is for the bees.
"I had a client who messaged me and said, 'Hey, Costco has got these hive kits for sale," Amanda Schulz said. "And that's how it started."
Amanda and her husband, Jon Schulz, have been backyard beekeeping since 2018.
"I just became fascinated with how the hive operates, how each bee knows what job to take," Jon Schulz said. "There are undertaker bees!"
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Their hobby turned into a passion project to save the bees, rescuing unwanted hives across North Texas that might have otherwise been exterminated.
"We thought it was important to save the pollinators that we could in order to help build up that population of bees," Jon said.
The honeybee population has declined, due in part to climate change. They are an integral part of the food chain. One in every three bites of food we eat is thanks to a pollinator, like bees.
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"They're absolutely a necessity to help provide the food that we all consume," Jon said.
"As the climate changes, we have more extreme weather and more frequency of extreme weather," Jon said. "Which really affects the pollinators and their ability to collect resources."
That is why the Shultzes turned part of their yard into a native plant pollinator garden.
"Then you're starting to help the whole ecological system and really, at least on your own footprint, have some sort of effect on climate change," Amanda said, pointing out that anyone with a yard can plant one. "It'd be a great world!"
Schulz said it's important to teach the next generation about the importance of bees and their role in our ecosystem.
"When you start young with people," Amanda said. "They grow up having respect for that. You're not having to teach old dogs new tricks."
The Schulzes started with one hive. They now have 30 hives in apiaries in Dallas County and Navarro County. This year the couple started a business called Blackland Bees, rescuing bees and providing hives to help pollinate crops.
