A bucket list item became a full-blown business venture when Stephanie Grant started beekeeping as a hobby. The project evolved into Sassy Bee Honey—a small business run by Grant and her family. Along with local raw honey, Sassy Bee provides beeswax products and pollinator education to Bellefonte and the surrounding areas. Grant acts as an ambassador for the bees in the Greater Wilmington region, showing up at vendor events, holding educational programs and providing products to local retailers.
“Why Not?”
If you ask Grant why she ordered her first box of bees and started her backyard colony, she’d say “Why not?” It was the answer her friend gave her when she told her that keeping bees was on her bucket list. “She just said, ‘Well, why don’t you?'” Grant recalls. “So I did!” After that conversation, Grant ordered her equipment and started her first colony that same year.
As with most ventures, there was a learning curve. According to Grant, most first-time beekeepers lose their first colony, due to a variety of environmental factors. When Grant’s first colony met this tragic fate, she extracted the honey, learned from past mistakes and eventually her backyard apiary grew. After a couple successful years of keeping bees, Grant officially started Sassy Bee Honey.
The Honey House
It was about seven years ago that Grant began her grand beekeeping adventure. Sassy Bee has been up and running for about five years. The honey extraction process on a small scale is extremely labor intensive and demands quite a bit of sanitized space.
“My family hated it,” Grant explains. “We had to take over the whole kitchen, sanitize everything and do everything in there.”
Soon, the demand for Sassy Bee Honey outgrew the kitchen operation. Now, with a renovated garage serving as her new honey house, the extraction process is much smoother. Thanks to a grant, Sassy Bee Honey got its hands on industrial machines to assist in the extraction process. Grant has been taking full advantage of the new space and equipment.
“I’m out here all the time,” she says. “My friend told me, ‘It’s not just a honey house, this is an art studio!'”
Grant’s family is used to helping with her DIY projects. Her dad, who built her first hives, also assisted in the renovation. Along with a fresh coat of paint, honey production equipment and new work spaces, they installed custom-made hexagonal tiles along the wall, and a large octagonal window to match the honeycomb-themed aesthetic.
“I’m big on natural light,” Grant says of the window, which allows plenty of sunlight into the space.
With eclectic decor and plenty of space to work, the future of Sassy Bee Honey promises even higher production rates, which means more honey and beeswax products for the local community.
Honey Extraction
Sassy Bee Honey offers a variety of products using bee pollen, beeswax and, of course, honey. Keeping the bees healthy and happy is only half the process. Once the honeycomb is ready to be harvested, that’s when the new honey house and machinery come into play.
One machine uses blades—warmed internally by hot water—to break through the waxy layer and free the honeycomb. The wax is separated out, and Grant uses it for products like candles, lip balm, soaps and more.
Once the wax is removed, it’s time to get the honey. The second machine spins the honeycomb at a high speed, and the centrifugal force pushes the honey outward into the basin. Once the honey is removed from the honeycomb, Grant can drain it for use. Some is packaged and sold, some is used in Sassy Bee’s other honey products and some is set aside to infuse with herbs, spices and fruits.
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A love of bees and the natural world they help cultivate is at the center of Sassy Bee Honey’s mission. As a Certified Naturally Grown company, Sassy Bee goes through a peer-review process to ensure the company continues to work in harmony with nature, without relying on synthetic chemicals or GMOs. According to Grant, this certification, along with the fact that they’re a family-run, backyard operation, helps to solidify Sassy Bee’s reputation as a top-notch provider of raw honey.
“There’s just such a desire right now for people to know where their food comes from,” Grant says.
Sassy Bee Products
Raw honey not only has incredible health benefits but also beneficial properties for hair and skin. Sassy Bee Honey embraces these benefits by adding it to natural soaps, lip balms and bath and body products. You can also get your hands on natural beeswax candles and, of course, a wide variety of infused honey flavors.
Local partnerships are also a large part of Sassy Bee’s business. By partnering with local businesses, Sassy Bee Honey gets on more shelves and into the kitchens of more raw honey enthusiasts in a variety of forms. Take Sassy Bee’s Sweet Buzz coffee-infused honey, for example. Grant sources espresso beans from Wilmington’s Scout Cafe to create a coffee-flavored honey, and Scout Cafe keeps a few jars on-hand in its retail section for cafe guests to purchase and take home.
Similarly, at Liquid Alchemy Beverages, local mead-makers Jeff Cheskin and Terri Sorantino fermented Sassy Bee Honey to create First Flower—a mead crafted using honey from local beekeepers like Grant. The meadery is another retailer that offers jars of Sassy Bee Honey to its customer base.
Grant also frequently partners with the Shops of Bellefonte around the corner from her home apiary and makes appearances at local vendor fairs, markets, educational events and more.
Learn more about Sassy Bee Honey and shop online at justbeesassy.com.
