Longtime Hampshire beekeeper dies at 90

Lucille Eberly, longtime Hampshire resident and proprietor of Eberly's Honey Hill, a beekeeping business she ran with her late husband Irvin, died Friday at the age of 90.

A native of Park Ridge and a 1942 graduate of Maine South High School, Eberly and her husband didn't intend to become beekeepers when they moved to Hampshire nearly 70 years ago. But the home they bought - which sat on a couple of acres - came with 12 beehives which Irvin Eberly agreed to purchase, said their son, Gary Eberly.

The couple's accidental hobby became a side-business for the former tool-and-die maker and his homemaker wife, who Gary Eberly says sold their honey at a little shop on their property.

In the nearly 70 years his parents ran their mom-and-pop business, Lucille - who was severely allergic to bee stings - got stung only about a dozen times, Gary Eberly said.

"She didn't have to go to the hospital, but they did have to cut her rings off a couple of times," said the younger Eberly of his mother, a top-notch seamstress and avid crafter.

For decades, Irvin Eberly - who died in March three weeks shy of his 93rd birthday - marketed the honey commercially throughout the Chicago area, Eberly said. But by the early 1980s, he and Lucille mostly sold their honey at their store.

Prairie View Garden Center and Farm Market in Hampshire and Klein's Farm Market in Burlington also carry the product, Gary Eberly said.

About five years ago, Gary, the only one of his six siblings to follow in his parents' beekeeping tradition, sold his commercial beekeeping business in Wisconsin and returned to Hampshire to care for his parents and run the business.

Semiretired himself, Eberly promised his folks he'd continue to serve the community.

"I told them I'd keep my hives in the area to supply honey for the local people," said Eberly, adding he will maintain the business for a while at least. "That was my promise to them."