beekeeper
Americannoun
-
beekeepers
plural
noun
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Nouns
Etymology
Origin of beekeeper
Explanation
A beekeeper is someone who manages bee hives and extracts honey. If you see a person wearing a white jumpsuit and a hat with a veil — and they're covered in buzzing insects — it's probably a beekeeper. If you want to get really fancy, you can call a beekeeper an apiarist. Beekeepers manage apiaries, or networks of honey bee hives. They care for the hives, making sure they are an ideal environment for the bees to live and make honey. It's also the beekeeper's job to carefully extract honeycomb without harming the bees. Many people keep bees as a hobby, yielding just a little bit of honey each year.
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
A Riverside County beekeeper lost millions of bees in last week’s Verona fire and warns that the effects of the devastation will be widespread.
From Los Angeles Times ● May 29, 2026
Funkhouser, a veteran commercial beekeeper, should have around 1,200 hives under his care.
From Barron's ● May 19, 2026
There are even bees and a beekeeper, who harvests honey for employees to take home.
From Barron's ● Nov. 15, 2025
Teddy, a hobbyist beekeeper, opens the film alarmed that now the bees have disappeared, too.
From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 23, 2025
She still knows more about bees than anyone who isn’t an actual beekeeper because she got so into her sixth-grade science fair project.
From "Keeping Pace" by Laurie Morrison
"We had more than 40,000 beehives and more than 450 beekeepers" before the war, he told AFP from the rooftop in Gaza City's Tel al-Hawa neighbourhood.
From Barron's ● Aug. 7, 2026
Brandon Teller, one of the county’s most prominent beekeepers, saw a Watch Duty fire notification on May 19 and headed straight to his apiary.
From Los Angeles Times ● May 29, 2026
In a lot behind a disused West Virginia gas station at the foot of the Appalachian Mountains, Roy Funkhouser is surrounded by about a dozen beekeepers and countless buzzing bees.
From Barron's ● May 19, 2026
With honey, Majtán says, "the best way is just to buy from local beekeepers".
From BBC ● Feb. 9, 2026
Among them were suits brought by beekeepers in several areas of New York State.
From "Silent Spring" by Rachel Carson
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
