It’s been an honor to have played a part in Vermont’s beekeeping history. Becoming the proud winners of the International Black Jar Honey Contest’s Grand Prize for the Best Tasting Honey in the World in 2022 was a delight. 50 years of commercial scale apiary work for Rick. 35 years running as many as 700 hives and doing old school orchard pollination on his own, before 15 years of running a much smaller-scale apiary together, focussing on old world, true raw honey and hive medicines alongside garden-sourced natural care products we sold from our farm and the Capitol City Farmer’s Market in Montpelier, Vt. and shipped nationwide. We extend our hearty thanks to the Center for Honeybee Research in Asheville, N.C. for their annual international honey contest, their work addressing the plight of honeybees and their celebration of the unique and beautiful flavors that can only be found in real raw honey, and to all the customers and helpers who made it possible to peddle the golden good stuff for half a century with a righteous pirate bent and a love of stings.

Bee Haven was Rick’s life creation. Hailing from Detroit, MI, he performed with the Wayne State Children’s Theater, was a roadie for the MC5 and ran a small trucking business hauling bulk foods for early food coops in those days. He left soon after the riots to bike the west coast north to south. After cooking and diving for abalone in California for awhile, he left as a merchant marine and washed ashore in the Canadian Maritimes for a spell, before heading south to join up with Detroit friends in the Rutland, Vt. area in the early ‘70’s. It was in Vermont he first learned to keep bees from an old time neighbor. He ended up with them on the roof of his Summer St. apt. in Montpelier’s Meadow’s neighborhood. He went on to serve as the first full-time Vermont State Apiarist for almost a decade, inspecting hives with his dog Max, trained to sniff out foul brood in hives. He eventually moved into the old Norton dairy farm in Worcester, giving him the space and room he needed to create a real working bee farm and to do it his way. A beekeeper forever, and a sailor, diver and nature lover, he’ll be roaming the woods and playing in the waters.

Gen grew up in a rural southwestern Minnesota when big Ag and globalization were killing small towns and landscapes all over America, in the territory along the Minnesota River, originally the tribal lands of the Mdewakanton and Wahpekute bands of the Dakota peoples. 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 places. Seeing a lot of different worlds when she was young left her with a strong case of the how’s and why’s. 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 in Vermont, she worked as a traveling family therapist before opening a group psychotherapy practice with other like-minded's that’s still around today. An obsessive gardener, tender and sauna maven, she lived in an old farmhouse up a dirt road in Worcester before meeting Rick in 2005 and eventually joining them full time. Very much a hygienic bee, you’ll find her fussing over the hive, tending plants, the seasons and a grief well for these times.

Bee Haven Honey Farm remains 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 are a part of the Wabanaki Confederacy, which involved Passamaquoddy, Malecite, and Micmac communities. We recognize the original native people’s sovereignty and their superior stewardship of these lands, as well as the sovereignty of the land and waters themselves. The Wabanahkik lived on these lands of the Dawn for over 10,000 years without causing the harm and desecration our contemporary culture created in under 100 years. 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.