Hello there, "bee"utiful people!

    Hey there, we’re Propps Honey Company! We wanted to start up a little blog to keep people informed on the "goings on" of our Hive!

    Just as an introduction, I'm Allison Propps, the co-owner of the company, and most importantly, the wife of the owner, Remington Propps. Beekeeping was something that I guess I married into, but I've loved it so far (as long as I have my suit😆). Remington has the real passion, and has since he was a child, helping his grandfather in Lindside, West Virginia beekeep. This hobby buzzes through his side of the family from all sorts of people, so it's no wonder it got passed down to him! And speaking of things being passed down, part of the reason we've had such a good start to beekeeping is because of Remington's great-aunt, Betty, who gave us a priceless amount of supplies from her and her husband's days of bee farming. At one point, Betty had over 100 hives! Talk about a swarming operation! As she and her husband got older, they decreased their hive numbers until they were left with two. In February of 2024, those two hives were given to Remington and I, along with all the equipment for honey extraction that you could thing of; frames, supers, suits, buckets, decrystallizer machine, wax melter, jars, and one of the most and amazing and essential pieces to the puzzle; a 20-frame extractor! Those are on the market today between $2000 and $3000, and yet we received it as a generous gift, the only payment Betty wanted was a free supply of our honey each year; a pretty sweet deal if you ask me.

Remington sitting amongst the gifted equipment.

    Remington's grandfather, John, of Lindside, West Virginia lives about half a mile from a wild bee-tree that's been around for over 10 years! There's a bush in their neighbor's yard across the road that those bees seem to always swarm to. During swarm seasons, John would get calls from the neighbors to remove the swarm and that's how he obtained his hives. He liked having a few to have some honey of his own, but shortly after Betty gave us her two hives, John also gave us two of his. Not only that, but he continued to catch swarms to make more hives for us! Those four hives of ours quickly swarmed into 8, and so did the ones John caught for us back in West Virginia. Between both locations, and after a few hives that died off, we have over a dozen hives! John is set to bring the rest of our hives over to us soon, while he will more than likely keep a few for himself.

Our first four hives

    Back in August of 2024, we had our first honey harvest from our hives here in Virginia which yielded about 11 gallons of honey, then in September we had our second harvest with the hives in West Virginia which yielded about 5 gallons! These numbers were a little low considering the number of hives that we had, but unfortunately we had a bit of drought that summer and the bees didn't have a whole lot to work with. Despite that, we were still happy to have gotten a drop!

The harvest of our first honey extraction 

    Within four months we sold out of all our honey. We had the privilege of setting up at some festivals and a craft fair to spread the sweetness around. Remington is a preacher, so he's been to many churches and knows many people, and when those people found out about our honey, they were putting in their order. We suffered a bit from the low supply and high demand, so we've already got orders to be taken for this year's batch in the fall (possibly sooner)!

Our display at a Fall Festival we participated in

   To wrap this thing up, we're as happy as can "bee" with our little business and we're excited to see where it takes us. Remington says his goal is to have 100+ hives!