Puyallup’s honey makers will sweeten the streets this summer

Tucked behind Farm 12 restaurant and events center off East Pioneer Road in Puyallup is Bee King’s, a family-owned honey maker selling a dozen varieties of the sweet nectar.

Since 2013, Christopher Miller has been trucking to farmers markets and festivals, but the COVID-19 pandemic cut off that revenue stream — a majority of its business — all but entirely. He closed the retail shop at Farm 12 when the governor ordered non-essential businesses to close, but soon returned with a curbside pickup tent. Then he revamped the website to allow for online ordering — and offered free shipping.

Still, Miller worried about the future of his family business, which he took over from a longtime beekeeper nearly eight years ago with his brother, Allan, and now runs with his wife and a few employees.

“There’s a lot to not like about what’s going on,” he told The News Tribune in a phone call. “I’m not going to downplay that at all. Your business plan and model doesn’t work. It’s kind of forced us all to be startups again. We have to think about business differently.”

A neighbor offered Bee King’s an old horse trailer that had been abandoned, beat up and rusting in a field. It was perfect for a mobile retail unit, he thought, like a little food truck but without the engine.

Miller had considered mobile retail in the past — “set up and tear down gets monotonous” — but life just got in the way. “I probably would not have given it a lot of thought if business as usual had continued on,” he said. “I had a strategy and it was working.”

The pandemic provided the impetus to get creative and get going.

The trailer quickly morphed from “a fun idea, to this is going to save us,” continued Miller. “We can’t just be hidden back here and waiting for stuff to happen.”

There was still a roadblock, though: The trailer needed a makeover, but like every small business, they were tight on cash.

SWEET SUPPORT

With his background in marketing, web development and graphic design, Miller got to work on a crowdfunding campaign. Bee King’s started encouraging customers to buy gift cards with an extra perk: for every $100, they would receive an extra $20 reward, more than enough for one 12-ounce jar of natural honey produced right here in western Washington.

“If you buy $100 in gift cards, it tells me you’re going to be there as my customer,” said Miller.

He sought corporate donors, too, with the promise that any entity that pledged $1,000 or more would get their logo on the refurbished trailer — local business supporting local business.

The campaign raised $17,000 in four days.

“It was just people coming to say, ‘We’ll be there for you,’” said Miller.

With the help of fellow Puyallup-based business owner Bryan Reynolds of Anthem Coffee, who seems to be a bit of a small business wizard these days — Reynolds, who lives in Puyallup, also helped Campfire Coffee’s Quincy Henry dip into coffee roasting — Miller hooked up with Off Grid Innovations to retrofit the trailer with battery power.

Based in Sumner, Off Grid has renovated a few food trucks in the South Puget Sound, including Fat Zach’s Pizza and Munch Munch Waffles.

The resulting silver and wood-paneled trailer is now all electric, charged overnight for a whole day of roving, bringing honey to the people. He plans to partner with other businesses and apartment complexes to park in their lots, but he can also treat the trailer as a fruit vendor might: Raw honey is considered an agricultural product.

The trailer also will provide a “slick impression” at festivals and other events when they return.

“It’s not only an investment in the here and now, but in the future,” said Miller, who is also a fiction writer and was himself once terribly afraid of bees. (Sadly, he recently developed an allergy to bees, so he spends less time in the hives these days.)

WASHINGTON RAW HONEY

Miller grew curious of the hive after watching the former beekeeper in action.

“I started realizing these bees are completely different, and I was just fascinated,” he said.

It was the farmers market community that really tied the knot for him and allowed him to simultaneously spend more time with his family. Now he brings back local honey from wherever he travels, which has helped inform his understanding of Washington’s diverse ecosystem and the honey it produces — hundreds of varieties, he says.

While Bee King’s keeps a hive at Farm 12, it also works with other regional farms to offer other styles, such as wildflower, a darker and more savory honey, and fireweed, known as the “champagne of honey” for its light viscosity and buttery notes.

One of Miller’s favorites is the buckwheat, which he describes as America’s Manuka, the New Zealand honey reputed for its high concentration of antioxidants.

“It tastes like molasses espresso,” he said.

For those looking for a straightforward honey, try the sweet clover, harvested in Ellensburg — but don’t expect it to match plain old grocery store honey. Some are thick and dark; others are thin and nearly effervescent. They are not heat-treated, diluted, filtered or intermingled with other honeys, as is common in the commodity market.

“Every honey has a story to taste,” said Miller. “We want to be able to have people experience and understand that raw honey will taste extraordinarily different — as sweet as marshmallows to as dark as night. The little honey bear, it always should look the same and taste the same, but that’s a manufactured product. Nature isn’t that way.”

Down the line, he wants to add additional trailers and extend Bee King’s educational component to a full-fledged bee museum, where students can learn about the integral role bees play in our ecosystem.

“I would love for kids to see what it’s like to be a bee,” he mused. “There’s so many things these bees do. The more you learn about it, the more fascinated you become. A bee is an industrious worker but also a machine — it’s amazing what they do.”

BEE KING’S

▪ 3303 8th Ave. SE, Puyallup, 1-833-728-3233, beekings.square.site

▪ Hours: farm store open Monday to Friday, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.; Saturday, 10 a.m. to 3 p.m.; order online anytime; find also at the Puyallup Farmers Market Saturdays, 9 a.m. to 2 p.m., and eventually at The Public Market at Point Ruston

▪ Details: 12-ounce jars of raw honey $14 to $18; whip honey spreads $14 to $16; beeswax personal care products also available

▪ Follow the honey on Facebook and Instagram for updates

This story was originally published June 8, 2020 at 5:00 AM.