There’s a genuine buzz filtering in off the Three Sisters Peaks these days as Liddell’s Honey and Supply has just opened this spring in Sisters, offering area beekeepers and honey lovers a convenient local resource to indulge their busy insects and sweet tooths.
Owners Eric and Peter Liddell are third generation apiarists (bee farmers) and are proud to carry on the legacy in Central Oregon. Before the Liddell brothers opened their business, backyard beekeepers had to rely on a few local hobbyists or a cruise over the Santiam Pass to pick up hive supplies, drones, workers and queens.
“We want to be the one-stop shopping place and local supply house for all new and experienced beekeepers and be a constant, year-round source for good organic local honey. That’s my grandfather’s original honey label up there on the wall,” Eric explained, pointing up to a vintage orange and red logo. “He was one of the first suppliers to Fred Meyer Health Stores in the ‘70s.”
The legend of Liddell’s Honey began in the early 1930s, when Maurice Scott Liddell, a young farm boy from Wellington, Utah started producing batches of fresh honey. In 1948, following the war, Scott started up the business again while attending college in Logan, Utah.
After a successful career as a design engineer with Boeing, Scott and his wife Bernice revived Liddell’s Old Fashioned Honey in the 1970s, becoming the main-line label for the Fred Meyer Health Food chain throughout Washington and Oregon, producing uncooked, organic honey infused with interesting flavors such as Alfalfa, Clover, Fireweed, Snowberry, Wildflower, Maple and Huckleberry. The sweet manna was harvested from over 400 bee colonies near Mt. Rainier, Moses Lake and the entire Pacific Northwest.
Beekeeping as a hobby, commercial and agricultural enterprise is big business, with yearly revenues from the industry humming along well over three billion dollars. And if anyone has checked the skyrocketing price of the sweet liquid gold in stores, you can see why. The United States consumes a whopping 400 million pounds of honey per year, with the average wholesale price per pound nearing a record $1.80 due to weather shifts, supply shortages, parasites and catastrophic hive collapse disease.
The annual value of honeybee pollination to U.S. agriculture is estimated at over $15 billion, far exceeding the sum value of wax and raw honey sales. Miraculously, honey bees are the only insects in the entire animal kingdom that produce a product for human consumption. They’re a consummate example of the beautiful design of nature and an inspiration for their work ethic.
Liddell caters to not only the newbie bee aficionado, but also all experienced bee farmers, selling everything from beginner hive kits, hive boxes and covers, queen extruders, smokers, feeders and instructional videos, manuals and books. In addition to a fully stocked warehouse, Eric and his brother also offer swarm removal and colony disposal services for the entire Central Oregon region.
“We sell people a three-pound package of bees that they can just dump into an empty hive,” Eric explained. “We had over a hundred people come out this past Saturday to pick up their bees. It was a fun day with live demonstrations and everybody was really excited. Within 24 hours those bees are already building their hexagonal hive structures and working away. It’s amazing.”
Liddell’s Honey has its supply warehouse located near downtown Sisters and is open by appointment only. Available hours are Monday thru Friday 8am-5pm and Saturday 10am-2pm. Customers are welcome to pick up supply orders in person and they also ship UPS ground. Depending on timing and location Liddell’s is able to deliver to Bend and Redmond at no charge.
“What I love best, and a big part of it is working with the bees,” said Peter. “They’re such fascinating creatures and I love to teach. This is a family business producing a healthy, natural product right here in Sisters and helping our local beekeepers to maintain the health and prosperity of their hives. I think this is something my grandfather would be very proud of, keeping the tradition alive.”
Liddell’s Honey and Supply, 597 Sisters Park Court, Sisters, www.liddellshoney.com, 541-604-9268.
