Our Story

I started keeping bees as a hobby in 1980 out behind our home in the Puyallup Valley. We had terrific fruit trees and wanted them to be better pollinated, so I took a class from the local bee keeping expert in our town. I was waiting at the mailbox when our first hive, a three pound package of hungry and hot bees was swiftly handed over by the grateful mailman.

That first year we had one hive, then three hives, and by the end of five years we owned seven hives. We joined the bee club and got involved with their activities to improve our bee keeping skills. I kept having babies over the course of the next ten years and since the hives were very heavy and it was a physically taxing hobby, my husband became more involved in caring for the bees. We kept expanding, with 10, then 20, then 40, then 80 and finally we owned 120 beehives. We had some hives scattered in the back yard, others near a tulip farm in Puyallup and the rest in an apple orchard on the Olympic Peninsula. Around the 4th of July every year the whole family would suit up and move the hives up to the mountains to allow the bees to make the fireweed and wildflower honey.

With an excess of honey and not enough friends to take it off our hands, we found that the local Farmer’s Market was ideal for marketing our liquid gold. Every summer all five kids could be found at the market, passing out samples of fireweed, huckleberry, blackberry or wildflower honey. Everyone was involved, even the youngest. At eight years old he confidently managed the cashiering, making change for a hundred dollar bill with enthusiastic aplomb. Five times a week we could be found anywhere from the Puyallup Farmer’s Market clear up to the University District Market in Seattle. We were always trying to find new things to complement our honey, making molded beeswax candles, homemade honey soap, pollen, and fruited honey. Then the Bee Bar was born.

In 1994 my husband’s real job was working in a tooling shop at Boeing. A co-worker who had extremely cracked and bleeding hands became a willing guinea pig for our new Bee Bar lotion. He had tried all kinds of lotions with no success and was desperate for some relief. After numerous attempts we finally found the perfect combination of beeswax, oil and emollients that would actually work. He was ecstatic. Finally there was a product that would not only soothe, but heal his hopelessly suffering hands. The Bee Bar.

We sold the original Bee Bar for several years at the farmer’s market along with our other honey products. Because the Bee Bar itself became such a popular product, we made the decision in 2001 to promote the Bee Bar exclusively. As our children have grown and departed on their own paths we have a new family of friends/employees who produce, package and promote our Bee Bar products. We ship to all fifty states and as far away as England and Guam. Now, although we no longer keep honey bees, the Honey House still emanates the sweet and warm scent of the hive. It has become our own hive of activity in the production of our much-loved Bee Bar.

the honey house
7704 - 48th Street East
Fife, WA 98424
Tel. (253) 926-8193

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