One Year's Offering

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When we look at this picture of our bottles of honey, we don't see just honey. Looking back over the past year of beekeeping, these bottles represent a journey for our family. They embody lots of studying as we have learned, read and been mentored by beekeepers past and present. These bottles stand for my son who built the hives and that time the temperatures reached 20 below zero and we used every towel and blanket in our house to cover the colonies. They represent the joys of seeing the bees fly on warm winter days, and the sorrow we felt when one of our colonies just vanished in August. This honey tells the story of smoke on 100 degree summer days, sticky hands and lots of bee stings. These bottles tell stories, and we are proud to offer them to you.

We have quadrupled the amount of honey we had last year because you have loved and supported our business, yet we still haven't come close to meeting the demand. Last week as we were bottling, the simple idea of "This is what the bees made, and this is all there is," struck us. We can't make more this year. This is it. We can't try harder or spend money to make more. It is what it is. We are at the mercy of the bees. There is something so beautiful about that. With that said, we are thankful for the work that our bees and our family participated in. We are honored! One of the great things about beekeeping is the constant learning that happens. Many of you have asked about the honey collecting process and how it gets extracted. In a brief way with pictures and videos, we want to share with you or process. This way, when you eat our honey, you will be connected to a larger story, and this is what Illuman Apiary is all about: the bigger story.

Each beehive is comprised of boxes: deep boxes and medium boxes. The queens lays eggs in the first two deep boxes and the honey is stored in the top medium boxes. Each medium box holds 40-60 pounds of honey. We leave one medium box on the top of each hive for the bees and whatever is left, that is for you and I. Each box has 10 frames that the bees build wax on and fill with honey... 

This is our truck full of medium boxes and a frame full of honey. This frame was loaded and weighed about 6 pounds!

We then take the frames and use a heat gun to melt the top layer of wax, exposing the honey. The top layer of wax is called capping. When the honey is exposed, we then put the frames in a machine called an extractor. An extractor can hold 6 frames at a time. It spins the frames and the centripetal force pulls the honey out of each frame.  

This year we tried extracting our honey somewhere the bees wouldn't find us, but we failed. As soon as we started spinning, one bee came and went back and told all of her friends. Before we knew it, we had every bee in the neighborhood swarming around us. It was awesome and made for quite the adventure!

After the honey is extracted, there is a lot of honey still in the frames. We cant get it all, and so we give it back to the bees. So we put the boxes back out in front of the hives for a few days. This gives the bees a chance to collect all the extra honey and bring it back to their hives.

The honey is then taken and the wax is strained out over a long, slow process. Then comes the bottling process where the honey slowly drips into each bottle. Some people warm the honey to bottle it and hurry the experience. When you heat honey, it kills the enzymes that make it antimicrobial and antibacterial. We don't heat our honey, so its slow. You are welcome =)

Then we take the full bottles, seal them, cap them and label them. They are now ready for you. As you can see, this is a huge process and a lot of love goes into it. We are honored to make stuff for you to enjoy. Thank you so much for supporting our business and our family.

Two Feet On The Path

“It’s a dangerous business, Frodo, going out your door. You step onto the road, and if you don’t keep your feet, there’s no knowing where you might be swept off to”

— Bilbo Baggins "The Hobbit"

We started beekeeping because we understood the plight of the bee and we wanted to do our part.  A new friend emerged who showed us the beekeeping basics.  Once we started, we knew that it wasn’t just a hobby but a calling.  We wanted to grow our hives and we wanted to support ourselves while doing it.  We put our honey up for sale and it sold like wildfire. Then, we had lots of wax leftover.  “Why not sell a lip balm?” we thought.  So we did.   With a lot of   love, quality ingredients and inexperience we created our initial logo and hoped for the best.

This was our first batch of lip-balm! We made 20 of them wondering if anyone would be interested in them. Boy were we surprised at the response! =)

We were surprised at the big response and demand for our lip balm.  “Why not sell more products?” we thought. So we created and sold lotions bars and sticks.  Again, these were met with a solid response.  We used the profits to purchase 6 additional beehives to our beginning 3.  We continued to dream and added candles and soaps.  Although we say that we began to sell products, this was no small task.  Each success represents a rigorous process and a product that we are proud of and would want to buy at the store.  We have learned that we have something valuable to give to the world and meaningful to put our hearts into.

We decided to rework our logo and lablels to represent who we are, the great care we put in our products and the rugged Colorado landscape that inspires them. We are slowly growing our presence in Colorado.  Our products can be found in 6 locally-owned stores.  Ace Hardware in Greeley, John Galt Coffee Shop,  Bikram Yoga Greeley and Warm Hugs Gift Shop.  In Fort Collins, we are at Copoco’s Honey and HeArt in Colorado Springs. 

We work on our business everyday.  We are constantly monitoring our hives, learning in an apprenticeship to be excellent beekeepers, making existing products, researching new offerings and believing in our dream.  It turns out; when you believe in something that is good others want to support you.  Especially when that something is a quality product line as an overflow of your passion.  We love what we do.  Thank you for making our dreams a reality!

Building "Bridges" A New Soap Experience

“Like all magnificent things, it's very simple.”
― Natalie Babbitt, Tuck Everlasting

We all strive to find the deeper story in the every day life, trying to make sense of it and call out the beauty. Soap making is an ancient, simple practice but proves to be a challenging art. When we started learning the rhythms of forming soap, we didn't want to just make soap to make soap; we wanted to heighten the idea of cleanliness and what it means to be mindful about all the things that go into our own experience process of being clean. You can imagine all of the different processes that each element of the soap making experience goes through to become soap including: honey, beeswax, olive oil, mango butter, grape seed oil, avocado oil, coconut oil and lye. All these things are combined at various temperatures, just perfectly, and then cured for six weeks as it goes through the soapification process. If this isn't inspiring enough, we began making soap around things that have inspired us in nature. We have made a soap that was inspired by our land and apiary which we named our Signature Soap. We have made soap inspired by Bull Mountain in Colorado State Park, called Bull Mountain, and now we are releasing "Bridges" Which is a Soap inspired by The Cache La Poudre River.

From camping, whitewater kayaking and fly-fishing, so much of our Colorado life exists in the Poudre canyon. It was an honor and a challenge to create a soap that did this river justice. Bridges is a four-colored soap swirling together green, blue, white and black in a beautiful pattern. The scent has a  unique blend of Bergamot, Orchid, Jasmine and Violet with supporting notes of Ozone, Sandalwood, Musk and of course, Moss. We made it extra moisturizing with large amounts of grapeseed oil and honey. The end product is a soap that makes you feel like you are swimming at Picnic Rock in the Poudre. We are proud to offer our art and poetry to you as we share the places we love.

To check out or purchase "Bridges" for a friend or for yourself, click here!