Hive to Jar, The Sweet Story of Adee Honey Farms

After years of primarily selling to the wholesale market, Adee Honey Farms is exploding with ideas as it expands its retail line to meet the needs and wants of consumers. And boy, do we want them.

But to get to this exciting point in their operation, the Adee family has endured loss and challenges much like many agricultural businesses. In this week’s episode of Funeral Potatoes & Wool Mittens, Marla Hoyer, founder Richard Adee’s daughter, and Sarah Hauge, Richard’s granddaughter, join me to share their story. His sons Bret and Kelvin are also part of the family business.

So that we get the full picture, we go way back even before Richard and his brother Stanley purchased the Bruce, South Dakota honey operation of about 1,000 honeybee colonies in 1957.

As times were lean in the 1930s, their father, Vernon, and his brothers discovered the beekeeping business as an income supplement to their school teaching careers in Kansas.

As the family celebrates 66 years of growth, Adee now cares for close to 100,000 honeybee colonies across South Dakota, Minnesota, North Dakota, Mississippi, Texas and Louisiana.

These mighty workers put on a lot of miles because they also journey to pollinate almonds in California and apple orchards in Washington.

Listen to this podcast episode wherever you get your shows, or listen in the Spotify player below.

Podcast Episode 31

Marla and Sarah jam-packed this episode with topics like Bruce Honey Days, how the color of your honey affects the flavor of the dish you are making, and tips for substituting the bee bounty for sugar, maple syrup and corn syrups.

Sarah shares about the company’s rebranding project with Lawrence & Schiller and adding new merch like hats, totes, hoodies, stickers and T-shirts. Purchase it all on AdeeHoneyFarms.com. This hat is my favorite.

Plus, if you haven’t heard about honey sticks, candy, and creamed honey, here’s your chance.

And their new squeeze pouch…brilliant. I use it all the time because it’s easy to squeeze into my iced latte, drizzle on peanut butter and banana toast, and as Sarah shares—on her pepperoni pizza. If you need a really, really big fix, get their newly available 5-gallon pails of liquid gold.

Additionally, you’ll learn why you should add honey to your first aid kit to sooth burns, and why you want to turn the bottles upside down and watch how the bubble flows through it. 

We also cover a few health benefits and the healing power of honey, especially raw (which you can purchase at Adee), tips to enhancing your baking, and how to be a smart consumer when it comes to fraudulent honey. 

Recipes

Marla and Sarah wrap up the episode with a few recipes:

• Mojito mocktails using a simple syrup made of honey
• Sought-after fudge sauce. Sarah Hauge says, “This is an Adee Family favorite. But it’s not just the family that loves this recipe – it’s an entire community! In fact, we serve it every year during Honey Days (a local celebration in Bruce, SD during the last weekend in July) with some South Dakota State University vanilla ice cream. It is a crowd favorite!” If you really want to go old school, check out my dad’s homemade ice cream recipe.
• Marla is so kind to share her grandma Mae Adee’s delicious apple crisp recipe.

After talking with Sarah and Marla, I want to play around with my Special K bar recipe and my tangled caramel peanut butter corn chips. And if Marla finds that banana bread recipe, I’ll be sure to add it here.

You might be interested in this post and episode about Bruce Honey Days. Mary and Russ Bjerke and Christianne Beringer also share a few recipes.

Finally, tune in next week to episode 32, which is the season 1 finale. Funeral Potatoes & Wool Mittens is available on Apple, Spotify, Pandora, Audible, Google Podcasts, iHeart, TuneIn Radio, and Amazon Music.

Sweet wishes,