Business Spotlight: Sweet Bee Honey Company

Quotes and Photos Courtesy of Stacie Lieuallen

Back in the 1860’s, when the Hollywood Hills were home to sprawling orange groves, Ransom Varney started what would become a familial beekeeping empire with outposts in farms all over the Western United States. Today, Ransom Varney’s great-great-great-great-great grandson, Ryan Lieuallen and his wife Stacie, carry on the family legacy with their two darling children in tow. From almonds and oranges in Texas to a base of operations in Montana, Sweet Bee Honey Company’s economic footprint stretches from the Mexican border clear up to Canada.

Going back to the beginning, Ryan and Stacie were both born and raised in the Pacific Northwest. From a very young age, Ryan was mentored by his grandfather and father, George Lieuallen, in the art of raising honeybees; at just 14 years old, Ryan started his own company and began keeping bees for profit. He attended Washington State University and majored in business, but stayed connected to entomology (the study of insects) and did his senior thesis on Queen Beekeeping in Argentina, bringing genetic diversity into American Honey Bees. On the other hand, Stacie grew up near the Bar M Ranch in Athena, where she graduated from Athena High School. Her passion for teaching led her to work at Mac-Hi for nine years, where she taught PE and led the Mac-Hi Track Team to excellence.

Around 2010, Stacie and Ryan’s love story kicked off. They (adorably) met through mutual friends at a barbeque, where Stacie, a dedicated Teacher and Coach, met “this young, bug kid who kept bugs for a living.” Finding their balance in the complete opposites that they were, they forged their life together and moved into a little house out on Harris Road. As time went on, Stacie and Ryan found the perfect plot of land near the Walla Walla River which would eventually be transformed into their bee farm, where they now extract and pack honey from their bees on-site; “it’s truly farm to table and stays on the farm, and in the family’s hands, all the way through the entire process.”

Ryan and Stacie found the beekeeping lifestyle to be hard on families; having to follow the bees around, Ryan spends nearly half of each year on the road, traveling with his bees. Ryan is constantly monitoring the long-term health of the hives and mitigating the environmental stressors in his honeybee populations. So, in 2021, Stacie reevaluated the situation, and decided to launch a honey tasting room and retail space out on the Sweet Bee Honey Company farm, which officially opened just this last May! In the tasting room, six local varietals are available for visitors to savor the differences in texture, flavor, and color: American Vetch, Star Thistle, Orange Blossom, Blackberry, Wildflower, and Buckwheat- which is gluten free, in case you were wondering.

True to her roots, Stacie still finds that education is her greatest purpose in this new role. As it turns out, in China, people have to hand-pollinate crops because their pollinator populations are so low. Some easy things we can do to help prevent this from happening to us include: plant pollinator-friendly flowers in or alongside your garden or lawn; spot-spray lawns for weeds and do it in the early morning or later evening when pollinators are less likely to fly; plant native flowers that bloom throughout the year so that nectar is available during all seasons; and plant flower boxes in the window if you don’t have a yard.

There are numerous health benefits to using and eating local honey versus store-bought honey. Sweet Bee Honey Company’s honey is raw and unfiltered, which means that it has never been heated to high temperatures during processing. The local pollen in the honey combats allergies, the yeasts and enzymes are still alive which promotes gut and digestive health. Honey also contains small amounts of vitamins and minerals with antibacterial and anti-inflammatory qualities, so you can put it on a wound just like Neosporin (and it works just as well, too)!

Through their work, the Lieuallen family continues to live and practice a sacred way of life that goes back literally generations. They want to grow deep roots in this valley, and make sustainable beekeeping accessible to us all.

For more information, visit their website

Get in touch by emailing [email protected], or calling (541) 310-9115