Sweet Bee Honey Company

Stacey Lieuallen and her husband run The Sweet Bee Honey Company, which produces a remarkable product. I like to say that it's a story of love because I was not a beekeeper by any means growing up. But my husband is fifth generation. His family started beekeeping in the Hollywood Hills back when they were farmland. Five generations later, he learned it as a teenager from his grandfather. He fell in love with the business side as well. Later we met and we fell in love. I learned to love the bees. I was A little bit afraid, of course, like many people. I was a career teacher. Then this last year, I full-time joined him in beekeeping. But I'm developing the retail side. So he does the commercial beekeeping, moving hives, pollinating, producing honey. I'm starting to do the direct to consumer retailing. So we are now truly a family of beekeepers. Many honeys are actually a blend of many different floral sources, though they may list one single floral source. What's unique about our honey? We keep a single source vatetal honey, so those honeys can vary anywhere from very light colored with a light bright citrus flavor all the way to an almost espresso, chocolate color and flavor when we do like buckwheat. So we have multiple single source varietals that we are producing. And that's what makes us pretty unique, is that we don't blend floral sources. We keep those separate when we extract the honey from the hives. How many hives do you have? On average? About six thousand working hives. Delivered to Orchards throughout the West Coast and Montana.