30 years ago our owner Kirk Jones bought 2 hives of bees from a local beekeeper with the idea of making some honey for his family. He was inspired by a childhood memory of finding a log full of honeybees in the wilds of Louisiana and fascinated with the pleasant hum of busy bees gathering nectar with no apparent regard for the onlookers.

Well, those first two hives were so much fun, that the beekeeping turned into a full time endeavor within a few years. The garage became the first honeyhouse, and they pulled the back seat out of the car so he and Sharon Jones could deliver the honey to Traverse City, Michigan. Oryana Food Co-op became the first customer and they had to expand the beehives just to meet the demand. The new venture was named Jones Bee Yards.

By 1990, the hives were humming along pretty good, but started to have more problems with bee mites that were imported from Asia. To give them a break, the Jones decided to take the hives to Florida for the winter.

The warmer weather encouraged the queen bees to lay lots of eggs and the hives became so full of bees they could take some bees out of the hives and put them into new boxes, put in a new queen bee, and voila! ….a new hive of bees. That really helped to keep up hive numbers up and to increase the hive count if needed.

At about the same time, another beekeeper, Dave Nesky from Bingham, Michigan joined the team and the business was renamed as Sleeping Bear Farms/ Sleeping Bear Apiaries. With the help of new local help, the business expanded hives and increased pollination services to local farms.

In 2002, Sleeping Bear Farms found a nice 40 acre farm in the panhandle of Florida. Times were good with honey prices and the bee farm moved the Florida operation from the Orlando area to the “sticks” of Florida.

The first few years were tough as the team learned how to manage bees in a different climate with different floral sources. By 2006 they had found ”GOLD” … liquid gold that is. The new hives were in the middle of the best Tupelo honey producing area in the world. They had lots of help from the local beekeepers who took us under their wings.

In 2004 they started shipping bees to California as the demand for honeybees grew to pollinate almond trees. Sleeping Bear never dreamed that they would be sending out almost all of our bees for the winter. Traditionally, they would feed the bees in the fall and “cross their fingers” that they would be alive in the spring after a long cold winter.

Now the bees take a short rest after making star thistle honey in Michigan, and then depart to California or Florida in January for a nice break in the winter. Life is good!