About a year ago Jennifer Berry did a story on these pages about Blue Ridge Honey Company, run by Bob and Suzette Binnie. For the most part that article focused on the beekeeping aspect of this operation. But Bob and Suzette handle a lot of honey in their operation . . . a lot of honey . . . and Jennifer, being the good beekeeper that she is, didn’t delve much into that aspect of this business.
But I got a chance to visit Bob and Suzette this year, and as fascinating as running 500 colonies this year and increasing to 700 next year is, and producing 1000 nucs this coming spring both to sell and to increase honey production can be, I was more fascinated to see how this very small operation handles nearly 300 drums of honey a year they both produce and buy from beekeepers across the eastern part of the U.S.
Bob got his start in beekeeping out west, and for a time ran a 500 colony operation in Oregon. That’s where he learned the fundamentals…both the biology of the bees and the business of beekeeping. You need both to survive.
He moved east for what was to be another career that didn’t quite pan out as expected, and in 1995 bought a few colonies, just because, and in only a couple of years was working 80 - 100 hour weeks to get his beekeeping business up and running. Early on he was primarily a honey producer and needed enough honey all year long to keep product on customer’s shelves. And as he increased customers he increased colonies. It’s a familiar story.
But then about 10 years ago there was a crop failure. There wasn’t enough honey in all of his hives to fulfill all of his obligations, so he had to choose . . . let down his customers and lose that market share to another beekeeper that could fill those shelves, or buy honey from local beekeepers and keep his business. He chose to keep his customers.
Though it started slow, buying honey from beekeepers he knows and trusts has steadily increased since then. He pays his suppliers more than larger packers generally do . . . from a nickel to a dime more usually…but he pays over time so that his cash flow stays steady. His suppliers know this going in and because of the higher price it’s a good relationship for everyone. You can see that there is a lot of trust involved here . . . on both sides. The suppliers have to provide the product they say they will . . . color, moisture, quality, flavor, variety…and Bob has to be financially reliable so his suppliers stay in business. Over time this has worked to everyone’s advantage.
With as many colonies as Bob has now – he’s heading toward 700 next season – his own production certainly adds to the total amount he has to sell. Sourwood certainly is a premium product and purity of that product is paramount for his reputation and integrity. Sumac blooms before sourwood where he is so he makes a sumac crop early. But he’ll leave the last of the sumac supers on when the sourwood begins to bloom so there’s some overlap before he removes the sumac supers and puts on the sourwood supers to make certain his sourwood crop is pure and not mixed with the darker and stronger flavored sumac. It’s all about the color. Generally he’ll make 30 - 35 drums of this premium product in a season, but with the disagreeable weather last year it was only 12 - 15 barrels, and this past Summer’s downright awful weather produced only six barrels of the good stuff. It’s going to be a lean year for that label.
Bob buys as much local honey as he can but 70% or so of Georgia’s crop is gallberry so he sells a lot of that, but to diversify he needed additional varieties, so now he has orange blossom, sourwood, tupelo, tulip poplar, catalpa, blackberry and of course wild flower. Occasionally other varieties are available and he’ll use them as a varietal or to blend with his wildflower crops for flavor or color enhancement.
As a 200,000-or-so-pounds-per-year packer he doesn’t nearly match the scope of, say, Sioux Honey or Golden Heritage Foods, but when you add 500 and going-on-seven hundred colonies for honey production, and making up 1000 nucs next Spring you need way more hours in a day or you need some help. So to make all this work Bob has working with him his wife Suzette, who manages a lot of the business end of the show . . . invoices, paying bills and the like, and all the internet business, which makes up nearly 5% of their income and growing.
His son Chris works full time delivering honey in the Atlanta area to a host of outlets, including the 30 some Wal-Mart stores they take care of. Chris also warehouses all of the honey he delivers right at his home, but there’s a commercial produce company that buys and resells their honey too right in Atlanta.
Another full time employee works part time delivering honey to some of the outlets not in Atlanta, and the rest of his time working with Bob on the bees, which is why Bob is able to expand his operation this year. Another part time employee works a few days a week bottling honey.
Who does Blue Ridge Honey Company sell all that honey too? Start with those 32 Wal-Mart Stores just mentioned, with his own label on the jars, no less. There’s a mountain of paper work just tracking all those accounts that Suzette handles. Delivery is done by Bob’s son who delivers to all those Wal-Mart stores and stocks and cleans their Direct Store Display shelves in person. This started because Wal-Mart has a 'local supplier' program, and then one of the store managers took an interest in Bob, and finally one of the corporate people helped out. It took a year to get everything in place, so you can see patience has a great deal to do with this business. They charge more so they can cover the cost of the person making the deliveries and taking care of the shelves.
But they also sell to a variety of produce stands, several smaller grocery chains, many gift stores, once in awhile a whole barrel to someone, and lots of pails to other beekeepers . . . something like 600 – 1000 pounds a week just in pails. Of course there’s the produce company that sells his honey all over the southeast.
The logistics of storage and distribution can be a headache when you have lots of customers and many places to deliver. The Binnie homestead is part of the operation, but it is located on a narrow, winding road in the mountains of northern Georgia and truck traffic is a challenge. So located about five miles away is one warehouse that is set up to receive honey and bottles and other supplies for storage and the get-ready part of the operation. These supplies are moved to the honey house as needed as there isn’t a lot of storage there. A new honey house close to home is in the works, but already Bob will tell you it’s not big enough . . . and, it seems, they never are.
The bottling operation is straight forward and well planned, but it was built to handle a smaller quantity of product. However, it is designed to accommodate a one man operation because that was, and in many ways still is how this works. Enough supers are moved from the truck or the loading dock into the extraction room to be convenient to the uncapper, and to fill the area to the point that you can still get supers out when operating the equipment. The set up is such that moving supers in, loading the uncapper, unloading the extractor and moving supers out can be done by one person. The Cowen uncapper, automatic frame mover and loader, and the parallel radial extractor setup handles 200 supers in an eight hour day with one person operating. Cappings are collected in a movable box which drains the honey into the sumps and retains the cappings wax to be rendered later. Frames are mechanically moved into the collection tray until there are enough to fill the extractor – it holds 60 – and then pushed into the radial merry-go-round extractor, spun, then loaded back into the supers. When there’s a load the supers are two-wheeled out of out the room and back to the truck. Certainly two people make this work faster than one but one can, and often does keep it running.
Honey from the uncapper and extractor goes directly to the in-floor sumps but a draw back is that the cappings collection tanks are full after six hours of this and if working alone Bob has to stop to clear those so they can handle more. During all this the honey is pumped from the sump tanks to one of four 300 gallon storage tanks, filtered with cleanable nylon filters on each tank. Humidity is always a concern in any honey house, and a dehumidifier and air conditioner are running nearly constantly. In fact, the two combined can pull 1 – 2% moisture out overnight when the room is full of supers.
Bottling is done in the same room, and the bottling operation is low key but efficient. Honey in the tanks is kept warm, right about 100° by bottom heat only, and can be fed to the bottler from any tank. The bottling machine is moveable, and can be attached to any of the tanks. Volume is pretty high . . . one person can fill between 800 and 1000 bears a day.
Filled containers are labeled, though some are sold without labels, and about half are distributed from the home location, while the other half goes to Atlanta for his son or the produce operation that wholesales his product.
Running this many colonies, making and selling nucs, buying and selling honey and wax, bottling honey, delivering honey, making sure bills are paid, and collected, and helping out at the many local bee clubs Bob is involved with keeps Bob and Suzette busy beyond measure. But one of the rules of the game that’s been learned is that it is always better to do something well even if it stays small, than to try to increase an operation past its ability to operate . . . 500 colonies run well will always out-perform 700 run poorly, and that axiom translates to making honey, making nucs, selling honey and all the rest of the operation. It is a lesson worth learning for any beekeeping business.
