We’ve all seen the bottles of Sioux Honey in the grocery store.  Ever wonder how the Sioux Honey cooperative works? Could you join? Would you want to? In this episode, we meet Matt Beekman, a 4000-colony co-op member in California who recently joined Sioux and shares information on this 100-year-old agriculture cooperative. Sioux’s 250 or so members produce somewhere around 60 million pounds of honey each season and the co-op buys everything the members produce. Not only the honey, all the beeswax produced from this honey production is sold by the co-op too. Selling 5 different kinds of honey – local spun honey, Aunt Sue brand and others make Sioux a major player in the domestic honey production market.

Matt is also an almond pollinator, with essentially all of his bees sitting in almonds the day we talked. Find out about almonds, almond pollination, honey production and what it takes to be Sioux Honey member with Matt Beekman.

Websites and Linked mentioned in this episode –

• Sioux Honey Assn. Co-Op - https://siouxhoney.com
• The Pollinator's Film by Peter Nelson - https://www.thepollinators.net

______________

This episode is brought to you by Global Patties! Global Patties is a family business that manufactures protein supplement patties for honey bees. Feeding your hives protein supplement patties will help ensure that they produce strong and health colonies by increasing brood production and overall honey flow. Global offers a variety of standard patties, as well as custom patties to meet your specific needs. Visit them today at http://globalpatties.com and let them know you appreciate them sponsoring this episode! 

We want to also thank 2 Million Blossoms as a sponsor of the podcast. 2 Million Blossoms is a new quarterly magazine destined for your coffee table. Each page of the magazine is dedicated to the stories and photos of all pollinators and written by leading researchers, photographers and our very own, Kim Flottum.

_______________

We hope you enjoy this podcast and welcome your questions and comments: [email protected]

Thanks to Bee Culture, the Magazine of American Beekeeping, for their support of The Beekeeping Today Podcast. Available in print and digital at www.beeculture.com

Thank you for listening! 

Podcast music: Young Presidents, "Be Strong"