Today we’d like to introduce you to Lewis Johnson and Jeremiah Johnson.
Hi Lewis and Jeremiah, it’s an honor to have you on the platform. Thanks for taking the time to share your story with us – to start maybe you can share some of your backstory with our readers.
My father, Lewis Johnson, first began to learn about beekeeping in 1964 from his older brother, Rick, who was working for local beekeepers around their hometown of Huntsville, UT. The two honey farmers he worked for were the Lewis Family and Peter Jensen, affectionately referred to as “Honey Pete.”
My father was 8 years old. His older brother Rick told him that he could have his honeybees when he joined the Navy. These hives from his brother, many of which were hand-me-downs from Honey Pete, gave my father his start in beekeeping. Beekeeping has become a tradition in my family. It continues with my dad, has been passed on to my siblings and me, and will be something we will pass on to our kids in the coming years.
My father and his younger brother Tony kept bees all through their childhood and high school years. When Dad joined the Navy in 1979, Tony was left to tend the bees. After completing his enlistment in the US Navy in 1985, Dad returned to beekeeping.
In addition to their hives, Dad and his brother also assisted with the local Church sponsored apiary. President Barnes, a local Church leader, started the Church apiary in the early 1980s as the honey supplier for the Church’s welfare program. The honey was not sold but instead was given to those who needed temporary food assistance.
Dad and Uncle Tony continued working their small apiary and adding hives along the way. They built their boxes and frames from scrap alder pieces from Anderson Lumber, where Dad worked before he started his 30-year career as a math teacher. Many of those boxes, and Honey Pete’s boxes, are still being used today, some are nearly 100 years old.
In the early years, honey harvesting took a lot of heartfelt down-home effort. Frames were collected from our yard as soon as the sun came up. Then work commenced uncapping the frames by hand and spinning out the fresh honey in a homemade, two-frame, hand crank extractor. The whole process was housed in a small shed in the backyard. Over the years, the operation was incrementally improved through trial and error.
I fondly remember these primitive days in that hot shed: bees flying everywhere, sticky floors, wax being melted and cleaned on one end, while honey was being put into bottles at the other. I remember family all around in that small space enjoying bottling the freshly harvested honey in re-used mason jars of all sizes, sampling the product as we worked.
Early on, Mom incorporated one of the beehives into her old-fashioned country flower garden, naming it “Bee Haven.” As a small girl, my older sister, Lani, would pull her little red wagon through the neighborhood with jars of honey for sale. On one of these trips Mom, wishing her little girl luck, referred to Lani as “Miss Bee Haven,” and the name stuck.
My younger sister, Maranda, says some of her favorite memories of our beekeeping, were watching dad and me check hives from the kitchen window. She recalls a lot of duct tape in those days, used to make patches on torn bee suits and custom tailor a suit for my small size at the time.
We still have a few suits that need duct tape patches these days, but we are no longer using a hand-cranked extractor in the small shed out back. With many more hives, more suitable equipment to handle large volumes of product, and by teaming up with other local beekeepers, we have greatly increased our capabilities and services.
This year’s honey harvest will be much more efficient in our newly built honey house, extraction room, hot room, wax rending stations, and our upstairs bottling and prep kitchen. The new Miss Bee Haven honey house in Huntsville Utah has been a dream and goal of ours for as long as we can remember. Dad, my older brother Jake and I will now be able to handle larger volumes of product and will be able to help many more beekeepers harvest their honey.
We are still a family-run and owned business, with over 70 years of beekeeping knowledge between my dad and myself. We love working hard to create the best honeybee products and healthy bees and helping others do the same.
I’m sure it wasn’t obstacle-free, but would you say the journey has been relatively smooth so far?
Because of where we live and the climate, trying to keep bees through the winter in the past years has been a lose-lose effort.
Losing large numbers of hives in the winter makes each spring a scramble to split and strengthen hives to get back to the same numbers as the summer before. That can make our level of beekeeping difficult to be profitable. But each year we always seem to be blessed with enough bees to carry on.
Another struggle we have faced has been the ability to expand with our small facilities, but that is a struggle because of our new honey house.
Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your business?
We are a small family-owned business that keeps everything as simple as possible. We use old-school beekeeping methods that are healthier and better for the bees.
Our honey is 100% all-natural, raw, nothing added or taken away and we don’t over-harvest. We also don’t feed our bees year-round to create fake honey flows to increase honey production. That process creates diluted sugar-filled honey.
Because of our standards, our Utah honey is classified as dry mountain honey, due to its naturally low water content. Services/Products. Besides harvesting our honey, we also offer honey-extracting services for other local backyard beekeepers and some larger operations. We sell honey, CBD honey, pollen, and wax (candles and raw).
Are there any important lessons you’ve learned that you can share with us?
Every beekeeper’s experience is unique, and you’d do well to listen to what they have learned.
Contact Info:
- Website: missbeehaven.us
- Instagram: @miss_bee_haven_apiary
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MissBeeHavenApiary2020
Image Credits
Madison Roisum (@roisum_photography)
