Our Story

It Started With Bees in a Stump

The story of Everything Beekeeping began in 2003 when my kids were waiting for the school bus and noticed that a colony of bees had taken up residence in a stump in our front yard.

I had been fascinated by bees since the sixth grade, when Gary Reynolds brought an observation hive into my science class. So when we discovered the colony in the stump, the kids and I decided we were going to try to save them.

Unfortunately, those bees didn't make it. But they started something that has lasted more than two decades.

The following spring, we ordered three packages of bees and officially became beekeepers.

From Three Hives to Farmers Markets

Our bees did great, and before long we had more honey than we could use or give away. In 2004, we started selling our honey at farmers markets and craft shows.

One of our most popular products was honey sticks. We bought them already filled, and customers loved them.

There was just one thing that bothered me: the honey inside wasn't ours.

Customers would ask whether the honey sticks contained honey from our own hives, and I wanted to be able to say yes.

So I decided to figure out how to make them myself.

Building the Original Honey Stick Machine

I experimented with different designs, filling methods and more sealers than I care to remember. After a lot of trial and error, I finally developed a simple way for a small beekeeper to make honey sticks using their own honey.

That year, we made more than 5,000 honey sticks and sold every one of them.

That gave me another idea:

Maybe other beekeepers needed this too.

The following year, I built a website and offered the Honey Stick Machine for sale. We sold only four or five machines that first year. It wasn't exactly an overnight success, but the machines worked, customers liked them, and word began to spread.

Over the following years, more and more beekeepers discovered the machine. By 2014, I began advertising it more seriously and sales took off. Eventually, I was spending entire weekends building machines just to keep up.

Everything Beekeeping

In 2017, we combined John & Wayne Honey Farm and Honey Stick Machine into Everything Beekeeping.

That same year, I redesigned the Honey Stick Machine around a pressure-fed system that eliminated the need to heat the honey. The new design made the machine much easier to learn and use, allowing customers to receive their machine and begin making honey sticks in very little time.

As the business grew, we expanded our product offerings and even hired our first employee to help build machines.

But despite the growth, the idea behind the business never really changed.

Still a Small Family Business

It's amazing to think that all of this started with a colony of bees in a stump in our front yard.

What began as a family getting into beekeeping eventually became a machine used by beekeepers far beyond our little corner of Kansas.

Through all those years, we're still a small family-run business. We still believe in building useful products, treating customers right, and helping other beekeepers get more from the honey they work so hard to produce.

To everyone who has bought a machine, ordered supplies, stopped by our website, recommended us to another beekeeper, or supported us over the years:

Thank you.

And if you're just discovering Everything Beekeeping, welcome. We're glad you're here.

Wayne & Jamie Flewelling
Everything Beekeeping