Our Origin Story

Like most things, it started with a dream.

When I was young, we lived in a rural setting in northeast Texas. I loved being outdoors and kicking around in the woods. Farm work? Not so much! But it was part of the bargain, even if I did not understand it at the time.

After 30 years of living in Austin, the growth of my adopted city was starting to beat me down and I longed to get back to spending time outdoors, working with my hands. I wasn’t interested in crop farming or raising livestock, so what should I do? My research kept taking me back to honey bees.

Why bees? I find them fascinating for a number of reasons. A colony of honey bees are more of a super organism than a collection of insects, and the colony development rises and falls in sync with the seasons. Raising them doesn’t require much space or a fenced pasture, or a large investment in machinery. And with few exceptions, they reward the keeper’s efforts with the sweetest of products!

To that end, we purchased 30 acres in eastern Burnet County which serves as our home apiary and the headquarters for our operation. From a modest start of a handful of hives in 2018, we now have 230+ hives spread across a dozen apiaries in three Central Texas counties. And while the journey has been rewarding, it has also been challenging. Weather that’s either too wet or too dry, the February 2021 freeze, poorly mated queens, and varroa mites have all been setbacks that we have had to overcome. But as any farmer or rancher will tell you, managing and overcoming risk is key to success.

So if you have been fortunate enough to sample Johnny Bee Good Raw Honey, enjoy it knowing that it is the product of hard working bees . . . and beekeepers!

– Johnny Umphress