We get asked all the time — “Do you wholesale?” or “Can I get a discount if I buy a case?” — and the short answer is no. But we think you deserve the longer answer, because it says a lot about who we are, what we believe, and why our honey costs what it costs.
At Shuga Bee Farm, we’ve been keeping bees in Johnston County, North Carolina for over 14 years. We’re a small, family-owned operation — not a factory, not a warehouse, not a brand slapped on someone else’s product. Every jar of honey we sell comes from our hives, tended by our hands, right here in our community. And that’s exactly why we won’t cut corners on price.
What You’re Really Paying For
When you pick up a jar of Shuga Bee Farm honey, you’re not just buying something sweet to put on your biscuit. You’re paying for an entire year of beekeeping — the good days, the hard days, and everything in between.
Our bees require year-round care. That means regular hive inspections, disease monitoring, pest management, feeding during nectar dearths, replacing aging equipment, and sometimes rebuilding after losses. We never use pesticides or chemicals on our hives. That commitment to chemical-free beekeeping takes more time, more attention, and more hands-on work than conventional methods — but it’s the only way we’ll do it.
Then there’s everything that happens after the harvest. We extract, strain, and bottle every jar ourselves. Our honey is raw, unfiltered, unheated, and unmixed — meaning we don’t blend it with honey from other sources, we don’t heat it to make it flow faster, and we don’t ultrafilter out the pollen and good stuff. That’s what makes it real. But it also means it takes longer and produces less than the industrial approach.
🍯 What Goes Into Every Jar
Year-round hive care and inspections, chemical-free pest and disease management, high-quality food-safe jars and custom labels, small-batch hand extraction and bottling, insurance, licensing, and food safety compliance, transportation and delivery, and the time and love of a family that’s been doing this for over 14 years. None of this is free — and none of it scales the way factory production does.
Why We Don’t Wholesale
Wholesaling means selling our honey to a retailer at a steep discount so they can mark it back up on their shelf. For a large commercial producer churning out thousands of pounds, the math works. For a small family farm like ours, it doesn’t — not even close.
We don’t have access to bulk pricing on jars, labels, or supplies. We can’t negotiate volume discounts on equipment or shipping. Every single cost we carry is at small-business scale, which means our margins are razor thin to begin with. Wholesaling would mean either selling at a loss or cutting the quality of what we produce. We won’t do either.
The truth is, we don’t operate at a profit most years. We often don’t even break even. Every dollar that comes in goes right back to the bees — feeding them, housing them, treating them with care, and making sure the next season’s harvest is just as good as the last. This isn’t a side hustle we’re trying to scale. It’s a labor of love, and we’d rather do it right than do it big.
⚠️ The Hard Truth About Cheap Honey
When you see honey at the grocery store for a few dollars a jar, ask yourself how that’s possible. In many cases, it’s because the product is blended from multiple countries, heavily processed, ultrafiltered to remove pollen (making its origin untraceable), heated to high temperatures that destroy beneficial enzymes, or in some cases, adulterated with corn syrup or other sweeteners. Investigations have repeatedly found that a significant portion of imported honey sold in the U.S. doesn’t meet the standard of what honey should be. That low price comes at a cost — you just can’t see it on the label.
What Makes Our Honey Different
We’re proud to produce award-winning, certified raw honey that is everything cheap honey isn’t. Our honey is never heated, which preserves the natural enzymes, antioxidants, and beneficial compounds that make raw honey so valuable. It’s never ultrafiltered, so all the local pollen stays in — which is exactly what customers looking for local honey want. It’s never blended or mixed with honey from other sources, so when we say it’s from Johnston County, we mean every drop. And it comes from hives that are managed without chemicals or pesticides, because that’s the right way to treat both the bees and the people who eat their honey.
We can tell you exactly which apiary your jar came from, what zip code the bees foraged in, and what season it was harvested. That level of traceability is something no mass-produced honey can offer, and it’s something we’ll never compromise on.
Did You Know?
Every jar of Shuga Bee Farm honey is labeled with the specific apiary and zip code where the bees foraged. When you buy from us, you know exactly where your honey comes from — something most store-bought honey can’t promise.
Why We Don’t Discount
We respect our customers enough to price our honey honestly. Our price reflects the real cost of production — no inflated retail markup, no “sale” gimmicks, no fake discounts. What you see is what it genuinely costs to produce ethical, local, raw honey at a small-farm scale.
Offering discounts would mean one of two things: either we were overcharging to begin with (we aren’t), or we’d be absorbing a loss we can’t afford. Neither is honest, and neither serves our customers or our bees well.
We’d rather sell less honey at a fair price than sacrifice the quality, integrity, or sustainability of what we do. That’s a decision we’ve made as a family, and it’s one we’re at peace with.
What You’re Really Supporting
When you buy a jar of Shuga Bee Farm honey, your money doesn’t go to a corporation or a distributor. It goes directly to supporting pollinators and the ecosystems they sustain. It goes to a family that has dedicated over 14 years to sustainable, chemical-free beekeeping. It supports local agriculture and the Johnston County community. And it supports a small business that puts the welfare of bees above the bottom line.
That’s not something you get from a bear-shaped bottle on a grocery store shelf. And it’s the reason our loyal customers come back year after year — because they understand the value of what they’re getting and who they’re supporting.
🐝 Thank You for Choosing Local
Every jar you buy, every friend you tell, every time you choose local honey over the mass-produced alternative — it makes a difference. Not just for us, but for the bees, for the local environment, and for the future of small-scale agriculture in our community. We don’t take that support for granted, and we never will.
If you have questions about our honey, our practices, or our pricing, we’re always happy to have that conversation. Transparency is part of who we are.
Thank you for understanding, and for choosing to support small-scale beekeeping.
Warmly,
Shuga Bee Farm