Bee Haven Honey Farm made honey in Vermont for 50 years this 2025 year. For 35 years, Bee Haven was a larger commercial operation that delivered bulk and jarred honey to many of Vermonts core food specialty stores and coops, with apiaries north to south on the Champlain Islands and down through Vergennes, Charlotte and Hinesburg dairy farm territories, as well as at the home farm apiary in Worcester/Putnamville. For it’s last 15 years, Bee Haven was a smaller-scaled apiary that focussed on making old world-style, true raw honey along with beeswax candles, hive medicines and garden-grown, herbal natural care products that were sold only from our farm or the Capital City Farmer’s Market in the year’s we vended there or that were shipped within the U.S.

Bee Haven was Rick’s life creation. He hails from Detroit, MI, where he performed with the Wayne State Children’s Theater, was a roadie for the MC5 and ran a small trucking business that hauled bulk food products for early food coops. He left Detroit not long after the riots and biked the west coast of the U.S. from north to south, ending up in California where he cooked for a while and dove for abalone. He signed up for a stint as a merchant marine, which got him to the Canadian Maritimes, and from there, he eventually made his way south to join Detroit friends in the Rutland, Vt. area in the early ‘70’s. It was in Vt. where he first learned to keep bees from an old time neighbor. Rick moved to Montpelier, with his hives in tow, keeping them on the roof of his Summer Street apt. in Montpelier’s Meadow’s neighborhood, where the bees gathered nectar from the beautiful early spring flowering trees still so beloved in that neighborhood today. He went on to serve as the first full-time Vermont State Apiarist for almost a decade, inspecting hives with his dog Max, who was trained to sniff out foul brood in hives before moving into the old Norton dairy farm where he could really dig in and create a working bee farm. Rick loves Vermont. He’s sailed the waters of Lake Champlain in two boats that second- hand made their way to him from other loved sailors. He’s roamed and foraged so many woods, as well, and generally gotten in as much of the kind of play that makes his heart sing, whenever he wasn’t working, which was most of the time. Here’s to time and space for new explorations in forests filled with sparkly waters in the years to come.

Gen grew up in rural Minnesota in the times when family farms were being overtaken by the ascension of big Ag, in the territory along the Minnesota River in southwest Mn, the tribal lands of the Mdewakanton and Wahpekute bands of Dakota people, where her paternal immigrant relatives settled and her maternal relatives spent their playtime further north. Her father’s love of travel meant she and her siblings spent some of their childhood wearing dog tags in case they got lost in far away locations around the world. It was a combination that resulted in a strong case of the how’s and why’s for her. She went on to study Philosophy, Religious Studies and Psychology and to work with children and adolescents impacted by trauma, violence and abuse in residential and wilderness treatment settings. Once she got to Vermont she worked as a traveling family therapist and later opened a group psychotherapy practice with other like-minded therapists that’s still around today. In 2005, she began working with Rick and the bees a bit and after a few years joined up with them full time. Her loves are akin to a hygienic bee ~ tending and fussing over the hive and spending time with plants and flowers in the garden seeking their precious nectars. In her play time you can find her seeking out wild botanical wonders, clear sparkly and dark water swimming holes, and tending wholey places, inside and out for herself and others.

Bee Haven resides on the unceded territory of the Western Abenaki ~ a group of Native American Algonquian-speaking peoples, part of the larger Wabanahkik, (wah-bah-NAH-keek), the peoples of the land of the dawn, a territory that includes areas of Quebec, the Canadian Maritimes, New Hampshire and upstate New York. The Abenaki people were a part of the Wabanaki Confederacy, which involved Passamaquoddy, Malecite, and Micmac communities, as well. We recognize the original native people’s sovereignty and superior stewardship of these lands, as well as the sovereignty of the land and waters themselves. They lived in them for over 10,000 years without causing the harm and desecration it took our contemporary western culture just about 100 years to cause. We pray for, vote for and act for a future on earth when the sovereignty of the land and waters is recognized by all peoples as the most important value to uphold and when their continuance is the driving force of all we do and don’t do as humans.