Our Story
My name is Landon and I started Royal Jelly Bee Co. back in 2018 as a hobby beekeeper. Throughout the first year, my aspirations and passions for beekeeping quickly grew. Back then I was working with 24 Diner & Easy Tiger in their commissary kitchen prep, management & operations. In my spare time, I was working to build relations with local landowners, farmers, and learning from other experienced beekeepers to expand my small bee yard.
Throughout that period my passions for bee breeding, along with many recent breakthroughs in genetic science showing the ability for bees to adapt over time towards increased survivability in the face of largely manmade problems. From the varroa mite, the main contributor to colony collapse, but credit should also be given to humans, via our overreliance on chemical means of treating our crops, livestock, and exposing native wildlife to these chemicals is largely responsible for the continued exacerbation of these problems, such as colony collapse, but also is key to so many environmental issues we face overall. While I’m not a scientific expert, my efforts in beekeeping, breeding, and preserving local bee genetics, and their localization – at the center of progressing awareness of, and hopefully contributing, to the science that will help preserve pollinators and native species at large.
The above has a huge scope, and it’s easy to get overwhelmed at the prospect and direction to achieve those goals. Within all social groups, there’s the in-group, and the out-group, and the beekeeping community is no exception. Historically beekeepers have turned to chemical treatments for solutions to many problems. In the present though, our overreliance and potentially our overdistribution of these chemicals is producing weaker colonies, more reliant on human intervention in the face of parasites. It’s also producing poison-resistant parasites. Commercial beekeeping, as an industry, blows through chemical after chemical with only temporary results, all of which have side effects. So a big motivator to us is to counter that norm and continue to pioneer towards a future where biological solutions can achieve the outcomes we, local bees, and native pollinators need.
Here at Royal Jelly Bee Co., our mission is to help provide safe, chemical-free, homes for our bees from the ground up. We partner with organic farmers, ranchers, and landowners to set up and maintain strong hygienic colonies throughout Central Texas and work to conserve native species and habitat in and around our yards. In doing so we hope to enable diverse bee genetics to accumulate not only in our yards but also helping to mitigate some of the genetic dilution that overaggressive genetic traits have had across our locale, making for happier, healthier, and safer bees in and around our yards.
We also work to enable, educate, and assist beginner and experienced beekeepers in our area, and beyond! If you have questions, concerns, or comments about beekeeping, bees, or pollinators generally – we’d love to hear from you! If you’re someone in the local community who wants to know more about our services please contact us!