If you’re lucky, you might have one job in your life that you truly enjoy, one that doesn’t feel like work. For Jake Snider, that happened at a game preserve outside of Riverside where he was immersed in nature, able to watch wildlife in its natural environment every day.

“Outside was my office, and it was amazing,” he says.

Like many things that happen in youth, that was only for a season, after which Jake went back to what he knew best -- construction -- and his passion for nature was relegated to recreational instead of occupational.

Fast forward 14 years and a whole lotta life, and you’ll find Jake the owner of a construction business with a family of seven and a life partner who was growing concerned with his stress levels.

“You don’t hunt anymore, you don’t fish anymore,” Lindsey said to him. “You need to do something, get outside and relax. You’ve been talking about getting bees forever, why don’t you just order them?”

Beekeeping had long fascinated Jake, but it remained just a notion until he was prompted to act on it. He thought maybe Lindsey was right, so he ordered the bees and signed up for Ron and Carol Wehr’s introductory beekeeping class, in that order. If he had taken the class first, he says, “I probably wouldn’t own a bee. Ron and Carol's class is thorough and wonderful, but it really underscored how little I knew.”

On the first day of class Jake ran into an old customer and friend, Scott Flynn, a tax and real estate lawyer in Keota, who was taking the beekeeping course as well. The two men chatted about their plans and the irony of both being in the class at the same time.

As time passed, they both purchased three overwintered nucleus colonies and began their individual adventures in beekeeping.

“After that first six months, I was so enamored by their processes and seeing that in motion right in front of me,” Jake says. “I’d take one evening a week, go sit in the timber, and watch the bees work. They didn’t really care that I was there, they were cool just doing their jobs. The more you’re around them, the more amazing processes you notice that they utilize. It’s truly mind blowing to witness God's hand in motion right in front of you.”

The class connected Jake and Scott to a community of beekeepers – there are some 4,500 in Iowa alone. During that first year, when others needed to divest themselves of colonies for one reason or another – developing an allergy, interference with other livestock, for example – they offered their bees to the pair, and quickly the backyard beekeepers became Golden Hills Apiary.

From Chill Hobby to Serious Business

Fast forward three years and you’ll find Jake and Scott are very good at what they do. Their 138 colonies spread out over a handful of locations are effective little factories, converting nectar into sweet golden honey. Scott handles production, caring for the bees and the creamed honey production. Jake excels at marketing, securing spots for their booths at farmers markets and other events.

Both are fortunate to have not only their families’ encouragement and support, but also their help with production of other bee-based products, such as lip balms, candles, and soaps; family members provide a presence at various sales and assist with the website as well.

Together the team has orchestrated impressive growth.

Trying to keep up with success is a great problem to have, but a challenge nonetheless. Golden Hills Apiary faces essentially two pain points: flourishing bees and high demand for honey.

Regarding the bees, Jake blames Scott.

“Scott has done a fantastic job of raising these queens and these bees,” he says. “We have had two years of extremely prolific queens and that is a direct derivative of the time Scott has spent managing our hives’ genetics. It’s a ton of work to get in the hives and track all this information you are taking in, not only from what you see that day but from previous visits to that hive. Then to do that over 100-plus hives takes a really special skill set. His work is paying huge dividends for the bees at Golden Hills.”

Such strong queens result in tons of eggs being laid. In the springtime that drives the need to split the hives and thus grow the number of colonies, but Jake and Scott couldn’t do that infinitely; there had to be a limit, not only due to equipment, but also the duo’s capacity.

“We’re certainly not looking to intentionally increase the number of production hives that we have at this time. Not unless we get into a situation where we could take on an intern or something for the summer,” Scott says. “Both of us, at least for the time being, have day jobs. It gets really difficult to try and get around to all the yards on a regular basis and keep an eye on all the hives.”

This year they began selling “nucs” – nucleus colonies that consist of a box of bees including one laying queen, thousands of worker bees, and four or five frames containing brood, honey and pollen. That was a neat solution, with the added benefit of providing revenue in spring, normally a slow time financially in the beekeeping world.

The demand problem appears to be the fault of both Jake and Scott. You see, they sell their raw honey – pure, unheated and unpasteurized, straight from the hive. But they’ve also created a creamed honey that’s soft and spreadable, because that’s the product Jake grew up eating. After much trial and error, Scott eventually achieved what’s become known as their “all-natural jelly.”

In addition to that creamy consistency, they wanted flavor options. In line with their commitment to provide 100% all natural products, they choose to utilize freeze dried fresh fruit and all natural seasonings to create their creamed honey flavors.

“The biggest difference in our creamed honey is that it is 100% all natural,” Jake says. “Many of our competitors choose to pump flavor oil and food dye into their product to create their creams. I have way too much respect for bees and what they do to do something like that to the honey. They put way too much work into making something so good for us to just destroy it so I can say we have a million flavors.”

As you might guess, customers want this creamed honey. That’s a problem for two reasons: it’s labor intensive to produce, and their current food license restricts them to direct sales.

Fortunately, these issues are solvable, and Choose Iowa Value-Added Grants are designed to help producers with exactly these sorts of things. In March, Golden Hills Apiary received a $5,759 grant that will pay half the bills for upgrades to their extraction and bottling line, an automated honey frame uncapper, and other specialized equipment. This equipment will help the duo reduce production labor, increase capacity, and open the door to production levels that can keep up with retail demand.

Of course, they’ll need a kitchen space in which to install it, and Jake is at work designing that at present. Standing inside an existing shop building, he outlines where the counters, mobile workspaces, warmers, and coolers will be someday. A lot will happen here, likely in segregated spaces: extracting, creaming, and bottling honey, and lip balm and candle making.

“I’m super, super stoked about this space,” Jake says. “It’s been a solid three years coming, and I’ve thought about it and fretted about it and overthought about it and rethought about it.”

Next Level GHA

While additional bee colonies aren’t in the plans for Golden Hills Apiary, Scott can imagine them growing and selling queens in addition to growing their nuc sales.

The team is also hoping to work more in conjunction with Mid-Prairie Schools, offering students internships and hands-on beekeeping experience. They placed multiple hives at the high school this spring and are working with Mrs. Schmidt to provide opportunities for students with an interest in bees to get hands-on experience.

Jake would like to train more people to run farmers market booths, which the business doesn’t plan to phase out as it gains market share in retail stores. He can also see himself transitioning from construction work to full-time beekeeper down the road.

“Beekeeping is less physically demanding, and after almost 25 years of construction, my body doesn’t feel the same in the mornings,” he chuckles.

But right now, Jake really wants to spend more time with the bees.

“I enjoy the bees. I’m trying to get back in the yards more,” he says. “Last summer I did not spend very much time with the bees, because I was so fixated on selling and getting markets going, and I missed it. I’m trying to get back to a better balance, but growing our market presence is a full-time job as well.”

Find Golden Hills Apiary products at Market on B and Kalona Historical Village, both in Kalona. Look for them at the following farmers markets this summer: Ely on Tuesday nights, West Liberty on Wednesday nights, Washington on Thursday nights, and Iowa City (weekly) and Muscatine (bi-weekly) on Saturday mornings. They also attend several specialty markets throughout the year. You can find all their products and calendar on their website at goldenhillsapiary.com.