Meet the man behind Chicago's Westside Bee Boyz: 'I always wanted to be here'

CHICAGO (WBBM NEWSRADIO) — This week’s Made In Chicago highlights the man who’s been putting plenty of buzz in Chicago ever since he founded Westside Bee Boyz in 2014.

“Where I am today, I always wanted to be here,” said Thad Smith. “I just didn’t know how to get here.”

Living on the street landed Smith in trouble with the law.

“My journey, when I was done with my time, led me to beekeeping,” he said. “I didn’t turn my life around, I put the focus on something that was going to be more beneficial. That’s all I did.”

Smith said he founded Westside Bee Boyz to expose more Chicagoans to the world of bees. Seven years after he founded the company, he now has apiaries across the city.

“It wound up being that I like doing farmers markets, but I also like teaching classes,” Smith said. “That’s what I’m focused on now, teaching.”

He also hopes to be an inspiration to others.

“You don’t see a lot of beekeepers of color,” Smith said. “We kind of toil in the background. We do our beekeeping, but we do it for the love of bees. I do it because I want to teach others, and I want others to see Black beekeepers. I want people to say ‘Hey, we can do this, too.’”

Through his work, Smith said he’s also tried to show some love to more than just honeybees.

“I really want others to know that there’s more than one bee,” he said. “There’s 20,000 species of bees on the planet.”

Smith said anyone who’s craving some natural honey or an up-close and personal look at beekeeping can learn more online .

“It’s something that I truly never thought, in a million years, that I’d be involved in,” he said.

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