Our Story

We (Chris and Carrie) created the The Wooden Bee in 2017 as a way to decompress after working long nights as nurses in a pediatric cardiovascular critical care unit at a local hospital. We both like to work with our hands and since we had a lot of land, we thought raising honey bees would be a great side gig. And since Chris has a great love for wood working, it made sense to combine our two loves and create The Wooden Bee!

Chris has always had fond memories of his great-grandfather raising honey bees in the 1950-1970's. He knew the love and joy that it brought his great-grandfather and thought raising honey bees would be a great way to honor his late great-grandfather. And together we loved the idea of giving back, by helping with bee preservation. Honey bees support 51% of the food we eat, and with the bee population dying off, we wanted to have our hands in saving the bee population.

When we decided to start this venture, we spent a lot of time educating ourselves, not only on raising honey bees, but doing so in the Upper Midwest, where we experience freezing temperatures for 4-5 months out of the year. We both took classes through our local bee clubs and the University of Minnesota; we read books and watched videos (pretty much anything we could get our hands on).

Once we learned the basics, we started getting our land ready. We knew raising honey bees took a lot of hard work, but we were up for the challenge. In our first year we planted 50 different species of bee-specific wildflowers over 4.5 acres. Today we maintain 15 acres of wildflowers for our bees. It is not just a joy to see the beauty of the flowers but also getting to see the honey bees collect pollen and nectar.

Our first year we started with 2 hives and obtained 23 pounds of honey. We loved it! We couldn't wait to add to our apiary (a collection of bee hives)! In our second year we grew our apiary to 6 hives and obtained 126 pounds of honey. Not too shabby for some amateur beekeepers. Our 3rd year we more than doubled our apiary, going to 20 hives which produced 600 pounds of delicious honey. This past year, we oversaw 30 hives that generated 1,191 pounds of honey. For now, we plan to stay at 30 hives as Chris wants to incorporate more of his woodworking into the business, and the two use up plenty of our time.

As any good apiarist knows, there is more to beekeeping than just harvesting honey at the end of the summer. It is important to maintain the bee population, wildflower growth, replenishing hives that may have died due to disease or weather, or buying a new queen to keep the honey bees productive. We love the work it takes and there is a lot of joy in seeing the beauty of the flowers and watching the honey bees collect pollen and nectar.