The Story of Huckleberry Hives
Hello! My name is Jodi and I am the beekeeper (and owner-operator) of Huckleberry Hives. Together, the bees and I bring you the sweetest beehive gold, with love. Caring for the bees in ethical, bee-centric ways comes first, and harvesting the hives’ bounties to produce quality, earth-friendly raw honey and hive products comes naturally!
The story of how I ended up here begins in early childhood. I lived in the countryside of Gads Hill, galivanting around in the outdoors and growing up watching my parents run Ellice Electric together as a husband-wife team. I also observed many of my aunts, uncles and grandparents running businesses too!
Fast forward to early adulthood, and I began helping my brother and his wife at Nith Valley Apiaries between my years studying psychology (and for a bit I also studied studio art!) at University of Guelph. As customers asked me questions about honey and bees, I began researching so that I would know the answers next time. This lead me into the wonderful world of bees, and as I learned I grew more and more fascinated, continuing in the honey industry after leaving university with a general degree. I began working with the bees, not just the honey and honey consumers.
I took several beekeeping classes and became interested in queen rearing and bee breeding. This led me to starting my business in 2017! My parents have been generous in allowing me to rent some of their farm property as the home of Huckleberry Hives, and I'm truly fortunate and thankful for that.
With my focus on queen rearing and bee breeding, I joined the Ontario Resistant Honey Bee Selection (ORHBS) program, testing my bees’ for hygienic qualities each year. I have since discontinued the program because I’ve scaled back on the breeding and production I originally wanted to do – I learned that I don’t enjoy the process (mainly the stress of the sales side of it!) of nuc production as much as I thought I would, although I do still enjoy producing queen cells and rearing queens, and I plan to continue selling queens, queen cells and small numbers of nucs.
After a few years of running myself full-tilt with 100+ hives to care for, I have chosen to scale back and presently I care for 20 to 50 bee hives, all located in Perth County, Ontario, mostly on my parents' farm.
I produce small batches of raw, cold-extracted honey, beeswax candles, and hive products. I also offer seasonal bee-hive tours as my time permits (generally these are June/July events). My products are all available online, and I also attend some local markets and festivals. I welcome folks to connect with me by email to make appointments for farm-gate shopping too if desired!
At Apimondia 2019 in Montreal, I attended a workshop where I learned how to make propolis tinctures. As I continue to learn about ethically harvesting and preparing hive products I hope to expand my product line to include a variety of honey and hive products, all produced with care and offering the best from the bees and their bounty.
My mission within Huckleberry Hives is to create honey, beeswax candles and hive products in an earth-friendly manner so that my customers know that their choice supports Earth now and for future generations to come. Not only do the bees deserve the best of care, but so does mother Earth and mother nature. This means bringing honey and hive products from the bees to you, with love. What does love mean in this context? To me, it means being ethical and sustainable in my beekeeping: Caring for the bees and their environment, and harvesting less if weather or other conditions dictate. In addition, choosing other product ingredients carefully and using packaging that is compostable, recyclable or reusable is a key part of my decision making as I design products, ship orders across Canada, and attend local markets and events. As my business has evolved my desire to make my products and business have a small footprint has grown, and I’ll continue to strive towards this goal over and over again with each new decision that comes along.
I continue to be inspired by my family, who are all running their own businesses and thus are great support people for my own little business! Our family's ventures include Ellice Electric (now passed on to Lino Okot, who started out with Ellice Electric as an apprentice) and Nith Valley Apiaries as linked above. My older brother and his wife run Roth Farm Service, and my younger sister and her husband run Silver Creek Nursery, where I work part-time in addition to my beekeeping work. In recent years my mom has started her own quilting business, Momma Bear's Quilts, designing, piecing and free-motion long-arm quilting beautiful home decor and cozy quilts. Yes, this is fully a shout-out to my family! After all, what would small businesses be without the support of the families behind the owners, and the communities who access their services?!
I hope that you savour delicious raw honey in your food and drink or enjoy adding the simple luxury of a softly honey-scented pure beeswax candle (and its warming glow when lit) to the atmosphere of your home!
Stay buzzy and bee well!
Jodi
