OUR STORY
honey with a history
SINCE 1860
beekeeping has been our family’s way of life.
Based in Milton-Freewater, Oregon, we produce honey
and other amazing products from our family hives.
We specialize in producing unique, raw, varietal honey
from our regional apiaries.
“Love is Sweet”
Ryan and Stacie
Ryan Lieuallen was a born entrepreneur. When he was a teenager, his grandfather Edmund (A retired lifetime beekeeper himself) introduced Ryan to the art of beekeeping. Ryan’s sense of adventure, and entrepreneurialism set the future of Sweet Bee Honey Company in motion. His college plans to get an entomology degree was interrupted when the program got cut in his freshman year. Ever adaptive, he sidestepped and got a business degree and worked closely with the WSU entomology department to further his education on his first love, the bees.
After college, living out of a two bedroom shack and subsidizing his one employee with free housing, Ryan met his other love, Stacie. A career teacher, Stacie brought a new angle and passion to Sweetbee Honey Company. Her values are all about stewardship and educating people to live better lives. After 12 years as a health and PE teacher, with Ryan and their two daughters encouragement she took the leap to diversify SBHC and provide retail honey produced and packed on their family farm. With this, SBHC evolved to be more than a honey company, they dedicated themselves to ensuring the future of bees and providing better honey that better for the environment.
We are passionate about the health of our bees and the products they produce.
We provide honey that is raw and local. This means it has not been processed, filtered, or heated above hive temperature so that you can benefit from the natural pollens, enzymes, phytonutrients, and antioxidant properties that raw honey possesses.
The honey our bees produce is extracted and packed on-site at the farm, reducing the carbon footprint of transporting the honey from producer to packer and back to consumer. Additionally, we use only glass jars that are beautiful & reusable. This glass jar allows you to re-liquify your raw honey safely without the risk of leaching chemicals into it as can happen with plastic honey containers.
We use sustainable, future-minded management practices
with the bees to increase hive longevity, and health.
This includes selecting apiaries with forage that is minimally/not affected by pesticides, herbicides and fungicides; providing proper pest management and supplemental nutrition when needed; and maining nuclei colonies to supplement weak colonies, while making splits to maintain colony numbers and prevent swarming.
Feel free to ask us more about our honey products and bees, we love to share our passion for honey bees!
We produce honey that is from our family’s bees in a sustainable, future-minded manner.
When you choose our honey, you are supporting a local family apiary whose goal is to ensure the healthy future of bees.
Sustainable practices:
Use glass reusable, dishwasher safe jars.
Extract, pack, and distribute honey in one location. No shipping/reheating.
Honey packed straight from the hive: no reheating (bad for the honey) or shipping cost.
Solar water heat in our extraction and hot room facilities.
Automated auto off lighting in warehouse.
Increase hive longevity: proper pest management (cold storage, treatment), nutrition (pollen patties, syrup), provide minimal pesticide/herbicide/fungicide use forage (apiaries that are remote from monoculture style agriculture), rear queens and nuclei hives to replace breeding stock, split hives and super to prevent swarming.
5% of honey profit goes to future of bees.