CRESTON – The year is off to a roaring start for Kootenay beekeepers Amanda Goodman Lee and Jeff Lee.
Facing stiff competition at the prestigious American Beekeeping Federation’s (APF’s) 2024 American Honey Show in New Orleans in January, their honey took home top prize in several categories including Best of Show.
A week earlier, one of their creamed honeys placed first in its category at the highly competitive North American Honey Bee Expo’s Honey Show in Louisville, Kentucky.
“We had a really good January. It was a great way to start the year, that’s for sure,” says Goodman Lee, whose Best of Show honey went on to fetch more than $800 per jar at an auction to benefit APF programming. A jar of that honey normally sells for closer to $15.
The couple has come a long way since first taking up beekeeping as a hobby while living in New Westminster. It wasn’t long before they realized they wanted more from beekeeping than a casual way to spend their leisure time and they started Honey Bee Zen Apiaries in 2012.
“Making the choice to get into beekeeping started as a lifestyle choice and ended up as a business opportunity,” says Lee.
By 2017, the business had outgrown its New Westminster location and when the opportunity arrived to purchase Swan Valley Honey in Creston, they leapt at it.
“We came over and looked at it for a few hours and literally fell in love with the place,” Lee says.
Swan Valley Honey had several things going for it: an established roster of commercial clients, an extensive network of established bee yards and a relatively efficient honey house for processing.
“It had the three legs that were necessary to make the business work and we bought it outright,” Lee says. “And then immediately we went through some downturns.”
Early setbacks
There were issues surrounding production facilities and breakdowns, but by far the biggest challenge came in 2018 when an infestation of varroa mites resulted in the couple losing close to 90% of the 400 colonies they had at the time.
“That just about finished us. We had to rebuild with about 40 colonies and we had to buy a bunch of packages,” Lee says, referring to the small, specially built boxes of bees used to start new hives. “It took a lot of money to do that.”
Six years down the road, he can be philosophical about those early challenges.
“The reality is, when we talk about the problems beekeepers have, about winter mortality, it has everything to do with a complex relationship of beekeeper behaviour, weather patterns, these mites and diseases,“ Lee says.
Some other challenges the growing business faced are enviable, including the times when they haven’t been able to produce enough honey to meet high demand. When that happens, they bring in honey from other producers they know and trust, changing the labels on their jars to clearly reflect this.
“We say to our commercial customers, if you don’t want to buy this honey because you’d rather wait for our [own] to come back into season, we understand,” Lee says. “The reason why our company is doing really well is because we have a level of integrity and transparency that’s key. We believe that you don’t lie to your customers. You don’t try to fool them.”
Because Swan Valley Honey has been in the kitchens of Kootenay residents for more than 50 years, the Lees decided to keep that branding for their liquid honey line. Every other honey they produce, including their creamed and varietal honeys, are marketed under the Honey Bee Zen brand.
“Swan Valley Honey had such a deep penetration and support amongst Kootenay residents that it made no sense for us to change the name to Honey Bee Zen,” Lee says.
With time has come success.
During the first year of production at their Creston location, Honey Bee Zen Apiaries generated four barrels of honey totaling 2,500 pounds. Now they produce between 40 and 80 barrels (25,000 to 50,000 pounds) annually of their Kootenay wildflower honey alone, while maintaining 300 to 500 large production colonies and about 400 smaller nucleus colonies that they use to replace overwintering losses in their production hives and sell to customers.
“Our goal over the next two years is to move to 1,000 production hives,” Lee says.
The severe freeze in January didn’t significantly impact their larger production hives but it did hit their smaller nucleus colonies hard.
“I think they were probably just too small,” Goodman Lee says. “When you have such a long period of cold, the bees can’t generate enough heat to fill that box and keep it warm.”
In addition to honey, the company produces salves, lip balms, beeswax candles and tinctures that use a resin-like compound called propolis that’s collected from its hives.
“We try to use as many products from the hive as we can,” Goodman Lee says. “It’s a great add-on to our business.”
While January and February are typically quiet months for the company, the recent award wins and ensuing media coverage have had a major impact on business.
“I’m doing deliveries and I’m going in and the shelves are empty [of our products]. That’s a wonderful problem to have and we’re like hamsters on a wheel running to catch up with ourselves,” says Goodman Lee. “We even had to upgrade our website because it couldn’t handle the volume of traffic going to it.”
Honey Bee Zen Apiaries sells honey on site, at farmers markets and through its website but its business model focuses on supplying commercial clients, and the recent attention has drawn inquiries from across Canada.
Because their honey house has been certified by the Canadian Food Inspection Agency, the Lees can ship their honey across Canada and internationally.
Whether or not the recent surge in interest translates into ongoing demand is an open question.
“Is it going to taper off and we’ll go back to a normal level of sales or is this escalating our business?” Goodman Lee wonders. “It’s a hard position to be in as a small business.”
Lee agrees.
“We aren’t afraid to hire people and we’re not afraid to take calculated risks because I don’t think you can grow a farm business without understanding what the risks are and being willing to take it on,” he says.
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