Commercial beekeeping thrives on Skyline Ridge
This article appeared in the Spring 2021 issue of the Skyline Ridge Runner, a newsletter about life in Portland’s most rural neighborhood, Skyline.
A schoolteacher’s hobby almost 50 years ago is today a three-generation Skyline family business that provides commercial pollination in two states, retails honey and beeswax candles, wholesales honey to mead brewers, and collaborates with Oregon State University on entomological research.
In 1973, newly married Mark and Sue Johnson were living on McNamee Road when he started keeping bees as a hobby. Mark taught high school in Scappoose and Sue worked at Freightliner. After their first child, Erin, was born, Mark looked to his beekeeping hobby as a means to supplement the family income. His growing side-hustle fit the bill. Decades later, in 2002 when he retired from teaching, he doubled the number of hives. Today, about 70 percent of their beekeeping revenue comes from pollination, with 30 percent from sales of honey and candles.
All of Mark and Sue’s four children work in the business. Erin oversees its finances and online presence. Ben is head manager at QFC in Bethany, and partners in managing a few hundred hives with his brother Jonathan, a former teacher in the Evergreen School District. He now works full time in the bee business, with occasional substitute teaching at Skyline School. The youngest, Isaiah, who works at QFC on East Burnside, assists in loading for honey deliveries. Some of the ten grandchildren keep their own hives and all help out with sales and operations.
The pollination year
The work year starts for the Johnsons in January, when Mark and Jonathan haul bees to California’s San Joaquin Valley for three weeks during almond pollination. “It’s the largest single pollination in the world,” says Mark.
They return to Oregon and next up are spring-flowering crops: pears, cherries, blueberries, meadowfoam and cane berries; the Johnsons pollinate crops within a 50 to 100-mile radius of Portland. Many of the crops the bees pollinate are grown for seed production: in the Willamette Valley, turnips bloom in April, and radishes in May and June. In July it’s on to Central Oregon to pollinate carrots grown for seed. The bees also pollinate white and red clover fields from Eugene to Sauvie Island. Pollination draws to a close at summer’s end, with more crops grown for seed: lettuce, cucumber, pumpkin and squash.
“By August, we start getting the bees ready for January pollination,” Mark says. It’s also time when some of the family’s 1,700 hives are moved off the family’s McNamee Road properties to other sites, to ensure the bees have plenty of pollen sources. Mark is always on the lookout for sunny sites to set a minimum of 40 hives; sites need road access so he can drive in. Contact him if you’re interested in hosting honeybees on your land.
Honey and candle sales
“Our niche is specialty honey,” says Sue, i.e., those with distinct flavors such as meadowfoam (“a marshmallow and vanilla flavor”), chicory, clover, or carrot.
Mark says, “We take the honey right off the hives when the bloom ends,” so, as far as one can guarantee bees have only been working a single crop, this immediate harvest helps ensure the provenance of their honey types. “In an 800-acre field of meadowfoam,” he says, “you can be fairly sure the bees haven’t strayed too far for pollen and nectar.” (Meadowfoam seed was developed at OSU as a rotation crop for Linn and Lane county grass seed growers. The seed’s oil is used in the cosmetic industry.)
Most of the honey harvested comes from spring and early summer pollination. Almonds — the year’s first crop — don’t produce excess honey, and honey from pumpkin and squash — the last crops pollinated — is left in the hives for the bees’ winter food. “It’s also darker,” Sue says of the squash honey, “and Americans in general prefer lighter honey.”
Besides selling honey at local markets, the Johnsons sell to Heidrun Meadery in Point Reyes Station, California, which produces Oregon radish, Madras carrot and meadowfoam meads.
Honey extraction ends in September. In fall and winter Sue and her assistants rebuild the candle inventory. She and Mark used to take Scappoose High students to Germany on cultural exchanges, and it was there she got unique silicon molds, which have transformed the candle-making process.
Research and challenges
“We’re constantly rebuilding the operation,” Mark says. The 1989 arrival of the Varroa mite in Oregon changed beekeeping dramatically. “We had a 90 percent loss that first year,” he says. “When I started, I’d have about a 5 percent loss each year.” The mites cause what is now known as colony collapse disorder. “This is a major problem,” Mark says. “You used to be able to take a relaxed attitude toward beekeeping, but now the hive will be dead if you don’t recognize disease and parasites and know how to treat them.”
Even with that knowledge, Erin notes the average annual loss for commercial beekeepers in the U.S. is 30 percent. Not many businesses have to contend with that sort of attrition.
And then there was the bear. In 2017, a 275-pound female black bear found the Johnsons’ hives. She returned four nights, hauling 150-pound hives down the hill. She was live-trapped by ODFW and removed.
The Johnsons collaborate with Dr. Ramesh Sagile, at OSU’s Honey Bee Lab. There, researchers study the nutritional values of honey produced by various commercial crops as well as the patterns of mites in Oregon. Mark says, “Pollen is bees’ protein and honey is their carbohydrates.” The lab analyzes their nutritional roles in various crops, vis-à-vis colony collapse disorder.
Find honey and candles
Find Nature’s Best Oregon Honey on Facebook or at honebez@gmail.com. Buy honey year-round at Linnton Feed and Seed and Plainview Grocery; and seasonally at Sauvie Island markets, such as the Pumpkin Patch, which has sold the Johnsons’ honey for over 35 years. Visit with Sue at the Hollywood Farmers Market in Northeast Portland, where she and her children and grandchildren have been selling beeswax candles and honey for 22 years.
