Gary and Tammy Rankin

Gary’s first connection to beekeeping came through his Uncle Dan. As a boy, Gary learned how to remain calm around honey bees, respect them, and pay attention to their behavior. Uncle Dan was an early inspiration and Gary’s closest family connection to the beekeeping world, but Gary did not grow up managing hives or learning beekeeping as a trade.

In May 2014, Gary and Tammy obtained their first two hives after realizing that their garden had plenty of flowers but too few pollinators to set fruit properly. Gary soon began doing bee removals and expanded from two colonies to approximately twenty during that first season. After combining weaker colonies with stronger ones, he entered the following spring with ten sound colonies and a growing understanding of how much there still was to learn.

Gary developed much of his practical beekeeping knowledge through direct fieldwork, removals, research, experimentation, mistakes, and careful observation. He supplemented that experience by attending state and regional conferences, university presentations, beekeeping-association meetings, and lectures by respected researchers and educators, including Randy Oliver, Jamie Ellis, Tom Seeley, Juliana Rangel, and Zachary Lamas, among others. Rather than relying on any single source, Gary compared what he learned with colony behavior and conditions observed throughout his own operation.

Over time, he completed more than 200 bee removals, including swarm captures, cutouts, trap-outs, and established colonies removed from trees and other structures. Much of that work occurred in South Texas, where a large percentage of the established colonies he encountered were highly defensive. Working with colonies across the full behavioral spectrum—from calm and manageable to dangerously defensive—gave Gary extensive firsthand experience recognizing when ordinary colony defense crossed into a serious threat to people, animals, workers, and surrounding communities.

The Bee Place grew from those first hives into a commercial operation. Gary learned specialized commercial skills from his friend Marcel, including loading bees for transport, preparing colonies for California almond pollination, grafting, queen production, and building the powerful cell-builder colonies required to raise quality queens. Gary and his crew eventually managed more than 1,000 colonies for honey production, agricultural pollination, queen and colony production, and beekeeper supply.

Years of colony management led Gary to emphasize gentle, productive, manageable honey bee genetics, while also pursuing improved mite resistance as a breeding objective. His experience has taught him that bees living near people, animals, workers, and communities must be manageable—and that repeated or extreme defensive behavior should never be normalized.

Gary has taught beekeeping classes and spoken to beekeeper organizations about practical colony management, beekeeper responsibility, and public safety. Following the April 9, 2026 attack on his family, that educational work expanded into Honey Bee Awareness and a broader effort to document serious incidents, improve prevention, encourage responsible genetics, and support credible long-term research into highly defensive honey bee behavior.

Tammy Rankin’s lifelong commitment to animals began professionally at the San Antonio Humane Society, where she started as a kennel worker. While there, she learned veterinary technician skills and eventually became the kennel manager.

After moving to Austin, Tammy worked as a veterinary technician at two veterinary hospitals. She later returned to animal-welfare work as the shelter manager for the Central Texas SPCA, a position she held for two and a half years.

During this period, Tammy expanded her work into dog training. She developed her knowledge through professional conferences, extensive study, hands-on experience, and individual mentoring. She earned the Certified Professional Dog Trainer–Knowledge Assessed credential, commonly known as CPDT-KA.

For eight years, Tammy taught dog-training classes for the public through the Austin Humane Society. She also established her own Austin-based training business, Laughing Dog Training, helping owners better understand, communicate with, and care for their dogs.

After returning to San Antonio, Tammy worked alongside her husband, Gary, first in his sign business and later in the bee business they built together. Although much of her professional background has centered on dogs and animal welfare, she has also been part of life at The Bee Place—including occasionally putting on a bee suit and helping Gary work with bees.

Tammy has remained active in charity dog walks and continues to advocate for shelter adoption and the importance of spaying and neutering. Events such as the annual Mighty Texas Dog Walk in Austin reflect a cause that has remained close to her heart throughout her life.

Following the devastating honey bee incident at their property on April 9, 2026, Tammy joined Gary in establishing Honey Bee Awareness. Her experience in veterinary care, animal shelters, dog training, and public education brings an essential perspective to the organization’s work. She understands both the immediate danger that a serious bee incident can present and the lasting effects it can have on people, families, and animals.

Tammy’s complete firsthand account of the April 9 incident is shared separately in Tammy’s Story.