This story appears in the June 2025 issue of Utah Business. Subscribe.
The number of Utah bee farms has quintupled between 2002 and 2022, from 143 to 787, according to the USDA. Beyond producing honey and beeswax, bees pollinate dozens of plants and crops and play a vital role in the environment and food production.
While more beekeepers may sound like a good thing, Jenna Crowder, an apiary inspector for the state, says, “in a lot of cases, folks get in way over their head. … It can actually do more harm than good to start beekeeping as a hobbyist unless you are really invested in putting the time, the money and the effort in.”
Bees are not simple creatures to care for. They are susceptible to disease, bacteria and parasites, which, if left untreated, can spread to other colonies, compromise the bees’ health, and potentially cause death or even Colony Collapse Disorder — first reported in 2006, spawning the popular rallying cry “save the bees.”
What if you could help “save the bees” without needing to pick up beekeeping yourself? The Bee Partner, founded by two recent BYU grads, aims to do just that.
Jed and Jake Poulsen, twin brothers from Richfield, launched the company in March 2024, inspired by their courses in entrepreneurship and driven by a desire “to make an impact in Utah for the better,” Jed says. The idea came to them when a family friend, who worked at Google’s headquarters, told them about a visit to the company’s beehives. If Google saw a benefit in keeping honey bees, Jed wondered if other companies would too.
“We want to support our local communities. We want to support entrepreneurs who are trying to do something that makes a difference.”
— Dale Miller
The Bee Partner works like this: A company or individual buys into one or several bee colonies, gets their name labeled onto the beehive and receives an annual portion of the raw honey produced. Visiting or helping manage the hives is optional; Jed and Jake do all the work.
Although they had no prior beekeeping experience, the Poulsen brothers became dedicated to their hives, turning to several local beekeepers for help. With so many environmental factors at play, what works to keep one bee colony healthy doesn’t always work for another. “We’re still learning a lot as we go.”
The lure for a company to sign up is rooted in corporate social responsibility, what Forbes insists is a “strategic imperative” for modern businesses — the idea that contributing to social or environmental causes engenders loyalty and goodwill among customers and employees. To bolster the effect, the Bee Partner uses social media to highlight participating companies’ commitment to supporting honey bees in the Salt Lake Valley.
“You get impressions,” Jed says. “You get new people seeing the good you’re doing. Your employees are proud of what you do, and you get some honey back as well, which is a cool thing.” To date, 15 individuals and four companies have signed on as bee partners, including Quick Quack Car Wash, iHub of Utah, Sterling Development Global and HealthEquity.
Dale Miller, president of the HealthEquity Community Foundation, says becoming a bee partner was a natural fit because the two companies share a commitment to sustainability. “We want to support our local communities. We want to support entrepreneurs who are trying to do something that makes a difference.”
Buzzing beyond the backyard
Making a successful transition from backyard to commercial beekeeping is tough. Richard Homer, president of Utah Beekeepers’ Association, says, “There’s always this conflict of making enough money beekeeping so that you can quit your job.”
For Jeremiah Johnson, becoming a full-time beekeeper was a childhood dream. He grew up tagging along with his dad who ran a recreational apiary, Miss Bee Haven, in Huntsville, Utah. Even after moving to Washington with his family, Johnson returned home every summer to help his dad manage the hives.
Now, as an adult, Johnson began wondering if he could turn beekeeping into a full-time job. Around the same time, an entrepreneur and self-described hobby farmer from Sandy, Kelly Peterson, installed his first backyard hive. “I fell in love with bees,” Peterson says. He couldn’t resist his entrepreneurial urge, so after only four months of beekeeping, Peterson started looking to invest in a commercial apiary. He found Miss Bee Haven and gave Johnson a call. From a commercial standpoint, Miss Bee Haven was “small potatoes,” Peterson says. But he felt an immediate connection to the Johnsons and saw potential for growth.
The men inked a deal in the fall of 2023 — turning a backyard hobby into a company — and Johnson moved back to Utah to run the business. They quadrupled their hive count and created new products to sell, including honey-sweetened lemonade that Peterson anticipates will become an “enormous revenue stream.” They even shipped their bees to California, securing their first almond pollination contract — an important source of income for most commercial beekeepers in the United States.
Despite recent widespread bee colony losses throughout the U.S., Johnson and Peterson remain optimistic. What helps is the men’s shared determination and approach, which Peterson describes as, “Let’s just get to work. … We always just sit down and figure out the solution to the problem and move on.”