Our Story

Founded in 2021, Joyful Bees Honey is a family-owned and operated farm located in sunny Central Texas. We are dedicated to the production of raw Texas honey. All of our honey is unprocessed, going from the hive to the jar with minimal handling. We believe in the natural and healthy properties of raw honey and never want to remove any of them from our product. Local honey is not only loaded with antioxidants, but it is also great for the prevention of allergies and is the healthiest alternative to processed sugar. Once you try our honey, we guarantee you will come back for more!

Founder

I'm J.R., the founder of Joyful Bees Honey. I'm a native of the Midwest and spent my childhood growing up on a dairy farm in Illinois. I earned my degree in horticulture from the University of Illinois and my Master Beekeeper certification from the Dyce Laboratory for Honeybee Studies at Cornell University.

What I Love Best About Keeping Bees

Bees have so many lessons to teach us.

  • Teamwork – Bees use their bodies to make chains to measure the spaces where they are building comb.
  • Conservation – Bees let nothing go to waste. If we have a piece of comb leftover from a hive rescue, the bees will clean the honey out of the cells and then will cut the comb into tiny pieces, so they can reuse the wax!
  • Focus – Every bee has a specific job, the activity on a frame of bees is like a ballet.

And bees are natural healers. Everything bees create has healing properties. Honey has natural antibacterial properties and was used for years to treat wounds. Propolis, what we call bee glue, is a substance the bees produce to repair parts of their hive. It has been used as an anti-inflammatory. I've even read that the air from beehives (called apitherapy) is being used to treat respiratory conditions.

Bee Supportive

There are a few simple things everyone can do to support our pollinators.

  • NEVER swat a honey bee.
  • Grow plants specifically for the bees – And let other plants (like veggies) flower before you pull them for the season.
  • Help others understand honey bee behavior, so they don't spray to kill them or use chemicals (fertilizers/pesticides) that could be harmful.
  • Buy only local honey – It helps support a thriving local bee ecology which means that more food can be grown locally, creating a ripple effective of good.

See Why We're the Best

We mean it when we say we pamper our bees. We give them so much love and attention, including: