Oxford Bee Festival brought community together despite rain

Despite the rainy weather, the Oxford Bee Festival brought out dozens of locals, students and vendors alike. The festival kicked off Saturday, April 18, with the O.A.T.S. & Honey 5k/10k in the morning and vendors and inflatables setting up along High Street in the afternoon.

This was the second annual Bee Festival, brought together by the city of Oxford and other local government offices. A couple of years ago, Seth Cropenbaker, an economic development specialist for the city of Oxford, and other officials began considering the possibility of hosting more festivals.

“Two years ago, when Oxford was on the path of the total solar eclipse, we had [the] Total Eclipse of the Parks [festival],” Cropenbaker said. “[It was] a big event, 5K/10K race, as well as our park event. That was like our big kickoff to [doing] spring events.”

The team began brainstorming and after some time, they landed on the idea of celebrating bees.

“Oxford has this not super well-known history of bees and beekeeping,” Cropenbaker said. “So that was our theme. We landed on that, cultivated it and built that theme up into last year, the first of the festival, which was a smashing success, and we’re going to continue to do that on into the future.”

The main festival featured a variety of local businesses, food trucks, crafts, live music, demonstrations and activities. A few of the food trucks at the festival included: Loaded Goat Cafe, Ramblin Roast, Minton’s Ducking Good BBQ and more.

Near the bee mural created by Joe Prescher, there was a flower arch photo op, along with plants customers could take home.

Some of the vendors selling homemade honey products had displays of live bees. Additionally, local beekeepers held a demonstration in which they created a beard made of bees on a man in the center of the festival.

The festival created the perfect opportunity for local business owners to come and sell their creations. Rachel Tidmore and her mother, Tracy Tidmore, came to the festival to sell crafts. Rachel Tidmore made bee-themed items, including jewelry and pottery, specifically for the event.

“I started [the business] when I was 12, and I am 16 now,” Rachel Tidmore said. “I started very small, and my motivation was actually to go to a concert, and that’s what really kicked it off.”

Her mom came out to the festival to help her run the booth.

Right beside the Tidmores’ booth, Coleen Krueger and her husband, Eric Hissa, set up a booth to show their new invention: the Hobby Honey Extractor. As the name implies, the contraption extracts honey from the frames of a beehive, making it an easier and cleaner process than extracting the honey by hand.

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“[My husband] made it for me out of, like, a desire for my birthday,” Krueger said about the extractor’s invention. “I had bought this little dinky one that was supposed to be a board that went over a bucket, but it fell over, and then I had honey everywhere, so he made it for me.”

Along with local businesses, there were a few informational booths. Preston Lawson came with the Three Valley Conservation Trust, which aims to preserve natural habitats in Southwestern Ohio.

“One of our initiatives is our seed libraries,” Lawson said. “It is to promote native wildflower species, which is what drew our interest to the festival.”

It is their first year at the Oxford Bee Festival, but they have been in the Oxford community for 31 years.

As the festival waned on, community members continued to walk up to the different booths, chat with the vendors and embrace what Oxford has to offer.

“I think our sense of community is one of the things that is greatest about Oxford,” Cropenbaker said. “We can bring people into that and celebrate everything that Oxford is with these events.”

chaffele@miamioh.edu

pedenae@miamioh.edu