Kelly and Tim Miller have owned The Honeybee Shoppe since 2001.
Martin Miller, great-grandfather of Tim Miller, stands beside the beehives on his farm circa 1910.
Tim Miller shows off a bottle of his Pennsylvania wildflower raw honey.
A customer at Green Dragon Farmer’s Market looks over the honey and other products sold at The Honeybee Shoppe’s stand.
Tim Miller checks out a 55-gallon drum of honey in the honey melter’s area.
Honey Bears line up on shelves while awaiting shipping.
From left, Megan Fox and Holly Miller dispense honey into jars before adding lids and labels.
A barrel of honey sits inside the “honey melter” to prepare its contents for transferring into jars.
Kelly and Tim Miller have owned The Honeybee Shoppe since 2001.
Known as nature’s perfect food — and the only food produced by an insect that humans consume — honey has been around since ancient times.
Honey has earned a reputation not only as a natural sweetener, but also for its medicinal and cosmetic properties. Due to its rarity in earlier days, honey was once an expensive commodity used sparingly and primarily available only to people of wealth — especially when it came to cooking with honey.
Fortunately, honey is no longer in scarce supply. One of its commercial purveyors in south central Pennsylvania is based in Lancaster County’s Rapho Township.
The Honeybee Shoppe has been owned and operated by Tim and Kelly Miller since late 2001, when they purchased and moved to a five-acre property that was previously home to beekeepers David and Catherine Wampler.
The Wamplers turned to honey production full-time in 1973 and the Millers have continued using the Wampler’s Honey brand name for the numerous honey varieties they purchase from other beekeepers as far away as the western United States.
Honey from the Millers’ hives is sold under their Pennsylvania Mountain Wildflower and Lancaster County Spring Blossom labels.
Tim Miller shows off a bottle of his Pennsylvania wildflower raw honey.
For Tim Miller and his wife Kelly, it all started 35 summers ago in rural Kentucky, when Tim was serving as a volunteer construction coordinator for Mennonite Central Committee’s Sharing With Appalachian People (SWAP) project. One of the resident staff members invited Tim to accompany him “up the mountain” to check on his two beehives.
Tim was immediately intrigued. Kelly said he called her in Pennsylvania to ask, “Can you go get some books on beekeeping for me?” She headed to a local bookstore, bought three books on the subject and mailed them to him.
Tim was not his family’s first beekeeper. On the Millers’ dining room wall hangs a prized 1910 photograph showing Tim’s great grandfather, Martin Miller, with his assortment of beehives sheltered under open-front sheds. Tim still recalls stumbling upon some of those rickety beehives, stored in an old family woodshed, when he was 10 years old.
The Millers started out small, selling their natural honey and related products from their home. But their business model evolved as sales grew.
Martin Miller, great-grandfather of Tim Miller, stands beside the beehives on his farm circa 1910.
These days their retail sales are done at three area farmer’s markets — Root’s Country Market in Manheim, Green Dragon Farmers Market in Ephrata and York’s New Eastern Market. Their stands do a brisk business, which accounts for about 20% of The Honeybee Shoppe’s sales.
The other 80% of the Millers’ operation involves wholesaling to 45 family-owned markets and roadside stands in Lancaster and surrounding counties. These locations include nearby Hilltop Acres Farm Market, Manheim; The Country Store, Mount Joy; and Country View Grocery, Annville.
Their honey and honey-related products are the result of a complex series of beekeeping activities needed to provide a steady flow of honey requiring strategic hive locations.
A customer at Green Dragon Farmer’s Market looks over the honey and other products sold at The Honeybee Shoppe’s stand.
This is no small feat, considering on average, a single honeybee creates just one-twelfth teaspoon of honey during its lifetime — which can be as short as six weeks during the summer, when Tim said, the bees literally work themselves to death.
It all revolves around the hive — defined as an enclosed structure where honeybee species live and raise their young.
Tim favors using Langstroth-style hives. This popular type of vertical hive resembles a chest of drawers, due to its rectangular body that allows stacking the hives to increase bee capacity.
Typically made from wood, these hives hold multiple removable modular frames, which bees use when forming their beeswax to create the honeycomb. Honey, pollen and brood are stored in these cells.
“We tend to be mobile with our bees,” said Tim, which are contained in up to 300 hives. Growers hire Tim seasonally to place hives among settings like orchards and vine crops to facilitate pollination.
Tim Miller checks out a 55-gallon drum of honey in the honey melter’s area.
Tim also selectively transports his hives to fields and meadows, which have particular blooms during certain seasons. His bees begin gathering nectar and pollen as early as March, when maples and willows start to bud.
As spring proceeds, he places hives to capitalize on blooming fruit orchards, dandelions and locust trees, including 20 or so locust trees on the Millers’ own property. Areas with tulip poplar and clover blooms become the next hive placement targets.
By mid-August, Tim relocates some hives upstate to Tioga County, where his bees gather nectar from late summer blooms like goldenrod and other wildflowers. The various nectars provide different flavor profiles to the resulting honey.
After Pennsylvania’s growing season ends, the Millers truck 100 hives to Georgia to winter in the warmer climate. They’ve been doing this for so long, two of their daughters met and married men from Georgia and now reside there with their families.
Daughter Julia has taken over online sales of the family’s various honey products using Etsy and Facebook. She also makes honey lotion, lip balm and salve products, sold online and in Pennsylvania.
Back home, Tim’s niece, Holly Miller and a family friend, Megan Fox, help fill jars with honey Tim has collected from his hives and purchased from other beekeepers. It’s stored in 55-gallon drums in the Millers’ warehouse, sometimes for up to two years.
A barrel of honey sits inside the “honey melter” to prepare its contents for transferring into jars.
These food-grade drums weigh around 640 pounds each, and are eventually hoisted up into the “honey heater.” This custom piece of machinery was made by David Wampler to liquefy the honey from its semi-solid state, enabling it to be packaged for sale in containers ranging from 8 ounces to 60 pounds.
In 2024, the Millers processed 280 drums, or around 180,000 pounds of honey.
As usual, Tim lost over half of his bees since last season, so he is currently replenishing their numbers by splitting his surviving hives. Since he doesn’t raise queen bees, he also ordered 150 of them at a cost of $28 to $30 each.
The queens arrive in small packages via overnight mail, which Tim retrieves promptly from the post office. The new queens will be carefully introduced to their hives from inside screened cages, which will eventually be eaten through by her new hive mates.
From left, Megan Fox and Holly Miller dispense honey into jars before adding lids and labels.
Each queen can lay up to 2,000 eggs per day. Those eggs will hatch into larvae, spin a cocoon and emerge as a worm before becoming a drone, worker bee or queen bee.
Not surprisingly, Kelly is a big fan of honey, favoring alfalfa, which she said is very mild-tasting, thus great for baking.
She especially likes using it in sourdough and French breads, as well as in other baked goods, like her peanut butter oatmeal cookies, where honey adds a pleasant moistness. Another family favorite made with honey is Kelly’s homemade doughnuts.
Tim advises against refrigerating honey. It will keep almost indefinitely at room temperature, though it may crystallize over time and require heating to liquefy it once again.
Honey Bears line up on shelves while awaiting shipping.
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Beekeeping is facing the same tough economy as the rest of agriculture. Apiarists may need to learn how to evolve and diversify in order to successfully adapt.
Kutik’s Everything Bees does everything from selling hives and queens, to operating beekeeping workshops and classes to selling retail honey and bee-related items.
Hannah Burgess’ grandfather had started as Perry Apiaries in the 1950s. In 2010, Burgess created her own honey business, Beekeeper’s Daughter.
Sue Bowman is a freelance writer in southeastern Pennsylvania.
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