I stumbled into beekeeping by accident. The YouTube urban gardening algorithm fed me a video one day and I couldn’t look away. We tend to think of farming as something that needs vast rural land, rows of crops stretching toward the horizon. But here was a whole world of agriculture happening inside city limits: hives, tucked onto rooftops and into backyards. It convinced me urban agriculture has no real limits beyond what you’re willing to imagine. I had no idea it would take me on a journey of self-discovery I couldn’t have predicted.
At first, beekeeping was just mine. I shared it with close friends and had zero interest in being known as “a beekeeper.” But the more I talked about it with neighbors and community members, folks who’d never thought twice about a bee, the more I noticed the look on their faces.
Instant awe.
That told me I was sitting on something special, so I locked in. Five seasons later, what I’ve learned has gone far beyond the hive itself. Beekeeping taught me patience. It taught me how to actually observe something instead of just looking at it, and it gave me an appreciation for land conservation and sustainable practices I didn’t walk in with. The bees brought me to the work. The self-discovery is what kept me there.
Somewhere in all that, I started thinking about representation, about who gets seen doing this work and who gets to be the example. I didn’t have many people who looked like me to point to when I started. So I went back to my roots and Diaspora Honey was born. My family’s roots run through the Caribbean and the African diaspora, and so does my relationship with working the land. Honey is one of the oldest foods humans have cultivated, and I wanted in on that lineage, built into something that means something to the people who look like me.
That’s part of why teaching at The Well at Oxon Run matters so much. It’s not just a park. It’s Ward 8, Southeast D.C., a community with real agricultural history sitting right next to real food access challenges. Bringing a beehive there isn’t a novelty. It’s a way into a bigger conversation about what it looks like when Black communities are producers and stewards, not just consumers.
None of this happens without DC Greens. They work at the intersection of food, health, and justice in D.C., and The Well at Oxon Run is one of their community spaces. Picture a community farm and wellness hub in Southeast D.C. That’s the environment I get to teach in, and I’m glad to be part of it.
People don’t always realize how much beekeeping is a scientific practice. It’s constant observation, reading the data the hive hands you, interpreting what the environment is telling you. Bees don’t lie. If the ecosystem around them is struggling — not enough blooms, too much pesticide pressure, degraded soil — the hive shows you. With folks who are new to this, I start simple: what’s blooming on your block? What’s growing in that empty lot down the street? When’s the last time you actually saw a bee? Those questions turn the hive into a mirror for the neighborhood, and once people see that connection, they start noticing their environment differently.
These workshops are open to anyone curious enough to show up. But if I’m honest about who I most hope walks through that gate, it’s people from the east side of the river who’ve never thought of themselves as having a relationship with agriculture or ecology. Young people curious about where food actually comes from. Neighbors who care about their block and want a new way to look at it.
Honey bees are where I started, but they’re not the whole story. Land stewardship isn’t only about growing food. It’s about preserving habitat and building sustainable spaces for every species that depends on this land, not just the ones that make something we can jar and sell. That means caring about native plants as much as managed colonies. It means recognizing that a bundle of hollow stems or a patch of bare, undisturbed soil can matter just as much as a beehive, because most native bees are solitary and need exactly that kind of shelter to survive.
Whether it’s beekeeping, planting natives, or installing habitat for a solitary bee that will never produce an ounce of honey, it’s all the same work. It’s work I believe we owe to the natural world around us.
What I want people to leave my sessions with isn’t facts about bees. It’s the sense that this knowledge, and this duty, belongs to them, too. You don’t need acres of land or a hive of your own to take part. You just need to start paying attention to the living systems around you, and ask what they need from you in return.
Register for the 2026 “Meet the Bees” series for free at https://dcg.news/meet-the-bees. Open to ages 8+.
Maurice “Moe, the Beekeeper” Richardson is the founder of Diaspora Honey. Diaspora Honey is a Black-owned, veteran-led urban beekeeping and sustainability studio based in Temple Hills, MD. They manage healthy honey bee colonies around the D.C. metro area, bottle raw hyper-local honey, and turn every hive into a curiosity lab that connects communities to pollinators, food systems, and land stewardship.
Learn more and follow » https://www.instagram.com/diasporahoney/
