The Story
Ryan and Anne Mullins have been married since 2004 and have a primary vocation of pastoring and planting churches around the world. Ryan is a learner and would tell you he has watched 100 of hours of beekeeping videos just to learn and then in 2018 picked it up as a hobby. After a couple of years a friend reached out with a need to for Ryan to remove two very large hives from two cabins at a campground in North Memphis. That year after the removals and a large honey crop, Anne and Ryan had more honey than they knew what to do with it. So on a fateful day in 2021 Anne told Ryan he should start a business and call it The Bearded Beekeeper. Now they offer beekeeping classes, cutout and removal services, and a wide variety of delicious local honey and beeswax products.
How to buy
Ryan has a small apiary in Germantown, Tennessee. With a wide inventory of varieties of honey and beeswax they sell at local farmers markets, out of their home, wholesale to local retailers, and ship to the lower 48 states via this website. Place your order here and if you are local select the local pickup option to prevent from having to pay for shipping.
You need honey
Question, was Winnie the Pooh a honey purest or addict?
No judgement here in either case, we have you covered. From whipped to raw, flavored to hot, we have an expansive line of local honey.
The RAW Process
We are honey fanatics. RAW/PURE! LOCAL! ORGANIC! These words have unfortunately become ways to sell products and many have lost sight on their intent.
RAW - This means we have done nothing to it except remove the wax and dead bees out of it. NOTHING added. We hold our raw honey in a warmer year round that does not exceed 100 degrees. This prevents crystallization yet while maintaining the medicinal benefits.
LOCAL - Our apiary is here in Germantown, TN and our other beekeeping partners are right here in the greater Memphis area. So allergy benefits of our local honey work best for those who live here.
ORGANIC - An average hive has 50,000-90,000 bees during the nectar flows so we position an intern in front of each hive to stop and ask each bee what all they consumed on their foraging journey. JUST KIDDING! ORGANIC HONEY MEANS NOTHING!!!
The WHIPPED Process
Hi, my name is Ryan and I am a whipped honey addict! We take partially crystallized honey and use it in a similar fashion to a sourdough starter. We put the starter in a mixer with raw honey and whipped it for hours. This turns the honey into a marshmallow cream kind of texture.
DRY INGREDIENTS - If you put a liquid into honey the shelf life is dramatically reduced, so our process with our whipped honey flavors is only dry ingredients.
SHELF LIFE/STORAGE - Honey will always crystallize but whipped honey has intentionally had its texture changed so to maintain it sometimes refrigeration for a few hours prevents separation. Whipped honey won’t go bad just the consistency will change depending on where it’s stored. In the pantry will make it running, and in the frig will make it more firm.
The HOT Process
Spicy honey! We take our raw honey and infuse it with dried ancho peppers, red pepper flakes, and cinnamon sticks. We bring that to a simmer and then filter out all the solid ingredients to leave behind a yummy spicy honey.
Simmer - This is obviously with heat above 107 degrees which pasteurizes the honey thus our Hot honey is our only product that we sell that has very little medicinal benefits. Oh but it is tasty.
Our favorites - We put our hot honey on fried chicken, use it in cooking recipes, on to of pizza, in and as dips, and we have even been known to drizzle it across vanilla ice cream.
What Our Customers Say