OUR STORY

For years, I had wanted to learn about beekeeping. The local beekeepers association in the county I lived in back in Virginia would advertise their bee school every year at the county fair and every year I would take their card but ultimately be unable to attend due to my work schedule. When Covid hit, my work schedule changed and Penn State began offering their beekeeping school virtually, for free! This was my perfect opportunity!

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I took Penn State's course and watched every video I could get my hands on from Barnyard bees, The Bee Store, Dirt Rooster, Bob Binnie, Canadian Beekeeper, and anything else that youtube deemed within my interests. I figured I wasn't going to get to start givin that it was aready March but I stopped into my local beekeeping store, The Bee Store (Lake Ridge, VA) and asked about everything I could and I found out that it was actually possible to still get bees that year. The swarm season in Northern VA was booming that year and some beekeepers needed to get rid of swarms they caught to make room for their own apiaries' splits. I walked out of the store that day with all the equipment I needed for 2 hives and a phone number of a guy with bees for sale. 2 days later, I had my first nuc of bees. A week after that, I had my second. I continued taking all the local classes I could while working my bees that year.

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Later during the lockdowns, we decided that Northern VA was no longer a fit for our family and decided to move to GA to be closer to family. I loaded up the bees in my truck the day before our house went on the market and I drove them down to GA to a friends house, where they stayed until we found our current home in Dawsonville. Once we got there, I started expanding. More room meant more hives. Our first year in Dawsonville, we had our biggest honey harvest so far. We thought the honey was pretty good and entered the local beekeepers association blind honey tasting contest. We took first place in a very close competition. I was shocked! I then took it down to the GA national honey fair and took 6th in the Novice division. I learned that there's a lot more than just flavor that those shows are looking for. The honey was so good we sold out! We ended last year with 3 times the number of hives we started the year with. 

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With no more honey and our apiary expanding, we had to come up with a way to cover the costs. I started looking at the other byproducts of the hives and ways to use them into products. That's when we started making the lotions, body butters and lip balms using our beeswax. After a few test runs that we gave out to some of our honey customers, we locked in our recipes and began offering them for sale. It amazes me how many awesome things can be produced from our bees and I love that I get to share that with our customers!