VIDOR - When Robert Williamson wagered his air-conditioned hotel management world on a shot at the often stressful, painful life of beekeeping, he knew about the risks.

The weather must be just right. Bees need to be happy. Certain plants need to bloom at certain times. And even if everything works right, there's no guarantee the honey will flow.

"Beekeeping. It's all about the timing," Williamson said. "We're just an eccentric
bunch, though. We're a little bit different."

For now, the gamble appears to have been a good one. The 29-year-old Vidor man is breaking even. His Web site is picking up new business daily. He has, of course, all the honey a man could ever want. But most importantly, honey prices have been better than ever.

"We've gotten lucky a couple of times," Williamson said. "Had prices not gone up when they did, I might have had to find different work."

For the past two seasons, beekeepers in Southeast Texas and the rest of the country have seen honey prices soar to the highest levels the industry has seen. Some experts, though, wonder how long that can last.

For years honey prices hovered at about 50 cents a pound. The average market price for U.S. honey last year, however, was $1.29 a pound, up from about 70 cents in 2001, according to the Department of Agriculture. This year, the price climbed as high as $1.75.

The high prices, though, signal problems in other areas, experts warn. Foreign competition is on the march. Farmers are going out of business. And to many, the recent prices hardly make up for years of barely getting by.

"It took me last year to pay off 10 years of debt," David Ellingson, vice president of the American Beekeeping Federation, said in a telephone interview from Minnesota. "Had we not seen the prices rise, there would have been a lot more people out of the business."

Poor crops, a factor that has contributed to the higher honey prices, broke many farmers, said Joe Graham, editor of American Bee Journal in Hamilton, Ill.

"Even though honey prices are going up, many beekeepers aren't doing what you would call great," he said in a telephone interview.

Cheaper foreign honey also drives prices down for American beekeepers. Although tariffs are in place to limit the amount of imported honey, China and Argentina still are able to export competitive quantities, Graham said.

"It's coming in cheaper than what we can produce it."

Despite the competition, Texas is a big player in the honey business. In 2002, Texas ranked seventh in honey-producing states by turning out more than 7.6 million gallons of honey. North Dakota produced the most with 24 million.

Texas honey prices averaged $1.24 a pound last month, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture's National Honey Report.

By Texas standards, Williamson is a rookie. Working as an assistant hotel manager nearly 10 years ago, he wanted outdoors.

"Actually I responded to an ad for a farm hand," he said. "That sounded interesting. I had never been stung or anything. I didn't have a clue what I was doing."

After working for a large area honey company, Williamson decided to go into business for himself. He started his Southeast Texas Honey Company with $300 in the bank, 25 hives and used equipment.

One recent afternoon, a smoker on the back of Williamson's flat-bed truck sent clouds of burning pine into the still air outside his Vidor home. The smoker is used to calm the bees while Williamson checks his hives.

Down the street, Williamson used a hatchet to chop more wood. He then took the smoker to one of his hives. As he bent down to clear weeds, bees swarmed around his unprotected head.

"My bees are pretty nice," he said, sweat beading on his forehead and soaking through his T-shirt.

He then removed a hive's top, puffed smoke and pulled out a sleeve to check his bees.

"I've been stung everywhere. And I mean everywhere."

Southeast Texas is typically good for beekeepers because winters are so mild. Williamson usually harvests 150 pounds of honey in each of his hives.

Although he made about 17,000 pounds of honey last year, his biggest seller is the beeswax he sells on his Web site, www.texasdrone.com . Honey is hard to sell retail over the Internet because it's so heavy.

Williamson doesn't sell products out of his home, but Beaumont Farm and Ranch sells a small portion of his honey. Sales goals aren't an enormous priority, though, Williamson said.

"Every day is a Saturday for me. I don't look at this as a job. Once I got into it, I couldn't imagine doing anything else."

Although he hopes honey prices continue to make his career decision a safe one, experts disagree on what the market will do in the next few years.

With darker honey prices already starting to drop, Ellingson, of the American Beekeeping Federation, believes overall honey prices will fall by as much as 25 percent next year.

American Honey Producers Association President Lyle Johnston, however, predicts prices will be steady

"We're doing quite well," he said. "I think we'll be pretty good for at least another three to five years."

Still others think honey money is as good as it's going to get.

"If you're wanting to get rich quick, beekeeping isn't what you'd want to get into," Graham said "There are a lot of attractions to it, but you won't find too many millionaire beekeepers, let's put it that way."

Because of a recent injury, Ellingson said he'll leave beekeeping soon. That's the plan anyway. Because of his background, new work shouldn't be hard to find, he predicted.