October 14, 1947 – July 15, 2025
Former Colorado State Beekeepers Association president and second-generation commercial beekeeper Paul Limbach of Silt departed Earth on July 15, 2025. He battled cancer for 23 years.
Born Oct. 14, 1947 to Genevieve Irene Cassidy Limbach and William Edmond Limbach in a one-room house in Grand Valley (Parachute), Colorado, he majored in entomology at Colorado State University. After college, he worked bees in Australia and Arizona and pioneered beekeeping on Forest Service land on the Flat Tops. In his spare time he grew his hair long and ski-bummed in Aspen.
He bought his dad’s 1,100-hive operation in 1976. Paul ran 2,500 colonies across Northwestern Colorado, from Silt to Craig to Steamboat to Aspen. For three years he wintered bees and raised queens out of Terlingua, Texas down on the border. Later, he sent bees to California to pollinate the almonds.
Commercial beekeeper and fishing buddy John Haefeli called him “the best damned beekeeper I ever met!” Coming from someone whose family kept bees for generations, going clear back to the old country, that’s a compliment.
Of course, John also called Paul “the best damned fly fisherman I ever met!” But that was Paul’s magic. He excelled at whatever he did. His vegetable patch was a Garden of Eden.
He served as president of the Colorado State Beekeepers Association for term after term after term, back when it was primarily a commercial beekeepers’ group. Back when Penncap M was the big pesticide issue and nobody had ever heard of neonicotinoids.
Paul and his wife, Nanci, hosted the summer beekeepers meetings in their backyard. Nanci gave tours of her wildlife rehabilitation facility. You cannot imagine a lovelier spot to sit in the shade, spit watermelon seeds and learn about apis mellifera.
By example and by inclination Paul was a teacher. At one state bee meeting he showed off honeycomb samples infected with three important honeybee diseases: chalk brood, European Foulbrood and American Foulbrood. You could hold those frames in your hands and get a good look. You can’t get that kind of education out of a book.
At one most memorable bee meeting, attendees headed up to the Flat Tops to look at Paul’s comb honey hives. Afterwards, to get back to town, Paul suggested a scenic shortcut. Several cars nearly got high-centered. Paul was a little sheepish. “I guess that road’s gotten worse since the last time I was on it,” he reflected.
He was always out there on the front line, willing to do what he could to help others, especially struggling beginning beekeepers.
A workaholic on the job, if you wanted to talk to him in the morning, you had to follow him around the honey house as he got loaded up for the day’s beekeeping adventures.
Paul lived to fish. He fished in every kind of weather. As he fought his long illness, friends remarked that he willed himself to stay alive in order to catch one more trout. And then another. Near the end, when he could barely walk, he still fished. When he could no longer walk, he’d cast from a wheelchair.
His prowess on the water was the stuff of legend. He tied flies that no one else knew about. He caught fish when no one else could. For more than 50 years he haunted his beloved Fryingpan River. At the fly shops they venerated him. He traveled to fish, too — all over the Lower 48, to the Bahamas, Belize and Alaska. He got as far as Christmas Island.
Paul Limbach leaves behind his wife, Nanci Limbach, son, Andrew Limbach, brother, Fred Limbach, cousin, Carl Limbach, and nephew, Jeb Limbach.