Local Honey Company

26/05/2026

Let’s give these old hive boxes some new life.

21/05/2026

21/05/2026

Today’s swarm catch. Versailles, Il.

19/05/2026

The Arrow and the Bee:

The Story Behind Local Honey Company

In my twenties, I got a tattoo behind my ear, a single fine-line arrow. I was a single mom, stretched thin in every direction, living paycheck to paycheck, choosing what bills to pay first, doing my best to hold things together while quietly wondering if there would ever be a light at the end of it. I had read something once about resilience that stayed with me. That trials in life are like the tension on an arrow. The further back you’re pulled, the harder things get, but when you’re finally released, you can only move forward.

That arrow was a promise to myself. To stop looking back and trust the trajectory.

That same night, I dreamed that a bee crawled inside my right ear right where the ink was still fresh. It buzzed loud and insistent, like it had something I needed to hear. It startled me so much that I still remember it clearly, a decade later.

At the time, I didn’t think much of it. My parents kept bees and I’d even sold my their honey for them. But I never wanted anything to do with handling them.

Then my thirties came, and they came in full. I became a registered nurse. I met my husband. We had children together. I survived a near death experience. And somewhere in the middle of all of that, the fear I’d carried for years toward bees simply wasn’t there anymore. I found myself not just unafraid of them, but drawn to them. Called to them, even.

I started Local Honey Company last year— a small, treatment-free, sustainable beekeeping operation rooted in the belief that honey should be exactly what it is: local, raw, and honest. We’re just getting started, and I can’t wait to see where this journey goes.

Maybe the bee always knew.

19/05/2026

The Arrow and the Bee

The Story Behind Local Honey Company

In my twenties, I got a tattoo behind my ear — a single fine-line arrow. I was a single mom, stretched thin in every direction, living paycheck to paycheck, choosing what bills to pay first, doing my best to hold things together while quietly wondering if there would ever be a light at the end of it. I had read something once about resilience that stayed with me. That trials in life are like the tension on an arrow. The further back you’re pulled, the harder things get — but when you’re finally released, you can only move forward.

That arrow was a promise to myself. Stop looking back. Trust the trajectory.

That same night, I dreamed that a bee crawled inside my right ear — right where the ink was still fresh. It buzzed loud and insistent, like it had something to say. It startled me so much that I still remember it clearly, a decade later.

At the time, I didn’t think much of it. My parents kept bees and I’d even sold my their honey for them. But I never wanted anything to do with handling them.

Then my thirties came, and they came full. I became a registered nurse. I met my husband. We had children together. I survived a near death experience. And somewhere in the middle of all of that, the fear I’d carried for years toward bees simply wasn’t there anymore. I found myself not just unafraid of them, but drawn to them. Called to them, even.

I started Local Honey Company last year — a small, treatment-free, sustainable beekeeping operation rooted in the belief that honey should be exactly what it is: local, raw, and honest. We’re just getting started, and I can’t wait to see where this goes.

Maybe the bee always knew.

14/05/2026

Bee Update:

Two of the four queens we extracted from the tree last weekend didn’t make it. The other two queens are still alive. The green nuc with the feeder is one surviving colony and the white nuc has a frame of brood, nurse bees and a frame of honey from my strong hive that overwintered.

The swarm I caught Monday also has a feeder and still in the pronuc box I collected them in. When they are strong enough I will move them to the hive they are next to. This hive has windows so we can peek inside without opening the box. 🐝

13/05/2026

Kissed by a Bee

The swarm had been in the box for two days. Short enough that I still wasn’t sure they’d stay.

That’s the thing about a caught swarm, they’ll leave if they want to. No contract, no loyalty yet. Just bees making a decision, and you hoping you made the box worthy of it. So when dusk came I walked out with sugar water and equal parts hope and anxiety, telling myself I was just going to set the jar and maybe take a peek. Just make sure they were still there.

When I lifted the lid she came out like she’d been waiting for me. A single bee with somewhere to be, and apparently that somewhere was my face. She landed on the cupid’s bow of my upper lip and stayed there. She buzzed with a warning and fury, a sound you feel more than hear when it’s that close.

My body went completely still. My brain, less so.

You absolute idiot, it offered helpfully.
You came out here to check on them and you couldn’t manage a veil?

She buzzed and I breathed shallowly begging her not to crawl up my nostril or worse yet sting me in the face.

The seconds ticked by and I thought about how dark it was getting. How bees are cranky at dusk, clustered and warm and wanting to be left alone.

How I had walked up with sugar water and good intentions and still removed their ceiling. How if I were her, I would absolutely sting me.

And then she left.

Just lifted off and went back to her box, to her people, to her home. Clearly done with me.

I stood there for a second with my hand halfway to my face before I started laughing.

I was just kissed by a bee!

That’s what it was, in the end. Not a sting, not a crisis, just a kiss. A moment of contact between my clumsy, hopeful, completely unveiled self and something that owed me nothing and chose grace anyway.

I walked back to the house in the last of the light thinking about how much I still didn’t know about keeping bees. But I also thought about how this whole thing started with two hives and a lot of questions and how it has slowly become something else.

A practice. A philosophy, maybe. The bees keep offering me these small humiliations and small mercies in equal measure, and I keep showing up, sometimes without my veil, apparently, to receive them.

She didn’t sting me, but she left a mark all the same.

12/05/2026

Caught the easiest swarm after work and got to teach some cute little kids about bees. 🫶🏻🐝