It all started with a watermelon patch

Believe it or not, our beekeeping story starts in a watermelon patch.

Years ago, we were living in Spokane and I had been selling produce to a local grocery store. One day I asked the produce manager, "If I grew some other crops, would you buy them?"

He said yes and one of the crops he mentioned was watermelon.

Now, a lot of people told me you couldn't grow good watermelons in Spokane. Which, naturally, made me want to prove them wrong.

So I did some research (not enough as it turns out), came up with a plan, and planted a big watermelon patch.

The vines took off, the blossoms showed up, and before long the first melons started forming… except they looked a little funny. Deformed and not exactly blue-ribbon material.

That got me curious, so I started digging into why. Turns out, watermelons need good bee pollination to develop properly. Without enough pollination, they can grow uneven or disfigured.

So I tracked down a beekeeper and asked if he'd bring a couple of hives out to the patch.

The difference was incredible. The bees went to work, and the melons started growing like they were supposed to.

But the real surprise was what happened to me.

I kept finding myself out by those hives, watching the bees fly, bring in pollen, and work together. My dad had kept bees when I was little, so maybe that interest had been there all along… it just needed to be woken back up.

That eventually led me to meeting a commercial beekeeper, who became a good friend, and showed me what beekeeping could look like as a business.

I bought my first two hives around 2007. The next year, I bought 100 more. We kept reinvesting and growing, and by 2012, we made the jump into commercial beekeeping.

So when people ask how Royal Honey got started, the answer is pretty simple:

It all started with a watermelon.