The I Love CVille Show With Jerry Miller! - Amanda Sweeney Of Edgewood Apiaries Joined Hillary L. Murray On "The Juicy Details"

Episode Date: February 26, 2024

Amanda Sweeney, Founder & Keeper of Edgewood Apiaries, joined Hillary L. Murray live on The Juicy Details! Follow The Juicy Details on iTunes Follow The Juicy Details on Spotify The Juicy Details airs live Wednesday from 2:15 pm – 3 pm on The I Love CVille Network. Watch and listen to The Juicy Details on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, iTunes, Apple Podcast, YouTube, Spotify, Amazon Music, Audible and iLoveCVille.com.

Hey friends, I'm Hillary Murray and you're here tuning in live to the Juicy Details. Today we have Amanda Sweeney, who is Keeper of the Bees and founder of Edgewood Apiaries. Amanda, welcome to the show. Hilary, we're so excited to be here. Well, I always say that you're here and per usual we're going to start the show with a cheers juice shot. Sounds good. Good to see you. Good to see you. here. And per usual, we're going to start the show with a cheers juice shot. Sounds good. Good to see you. Good to see you.

Cheers. Cheers. Gold Rush. I know. Get excited. Okay. How's it make you feel? This is Amanda's first Gold Rush shot, so I can't wait to hear her thoughts.

It's very peppery. So turmeric, which is one of the ingredients in Gold Rush, is really wonderful to help prevent inflammation and help with brain health, but you need a spice agent to help it be useful in your body, so that's why we use cayenne in the Gold Rush shot. I love it. I'm not going to die here, right? Are you okay? Do you need some water? No, we're good. I'm joking. It's not even funny to joke about. Before the show, I asked Amanda if she had allergies and if she were okay to have a shot of Gold Rush, but I guess I forgot to tell you that there was cayenne in it.

It's okay. It's all good. It's all good. So I'm liking hot. I like a little heat. Totally. I know. Are you sweating yet? I'm sorry. Not yet. I might cry. We haven't even gotten started. The juicy details just got so juicy. We're already crying.

Oh, my goodness. Well, the other drink in front of you, Amanda, is farmhouse greens. And in farmhouse greens is apple, cucumber, Italian flat leaf parsley, lemon, and celery. So that is going to be no cayenne. This is my palate cleanse. This is your palate cleanse. Keep comfortable. Cleanse your palate. And grab some honey in front of you as well. Oh, that's really, really nice. I love it. I get the celery. You get the celery? Awesome. Awesome. All right. So, Amanda, talk to us. Tell us about yourself.

Amanda also grew up on a farm, which I think is really fun because last week's guest, Lauren Woodruff, also grew up on a farm in Virginia. So we got a lot. I grew up on a farm in Virginia, in Florida. So we have a lot of these tenacious, entrepreneurial farm girls. I mean, I just, I think I told my mom just last week, I'm just a farm girl. I'm just an old Powhatan gal. I mean, I grew up in Powhatan, Virginia, right outside of Richmond. I graduated high school there in 1999. So I am, I'm the result of, you know, the 90s version of

the public school systems. Not so bad, you know. What were they teaching in the 90s version of the public school systems. Not so bad. What were they teaching in the 90s in the public school systems? Real stuff. Like what? In some cases, I remember my English teachers in high school, like real literature, dissecting the Scarlet Letter, an array of different novels, real English lit, American lit, and more intense than when I went to college. Yes. My teachers in high school, they were serious about what they brought to the classroom. It was an amazing experience.

So love Powhatan High School, 1999 grad. Woo-hoo! So when you say like farm town Powhatan, how far did you have to take the bus or drive to school? We did take the bus. My mom is actually a schoolteacher, was a schoolteacher. She's now serving on the school board in Powhatan and has been for a couple of years now.

And so we, as kids, we would often, you know, ride the, what is it, like the Ford Uber station wagon of the 1990s, the town and country. The town and country station wagon where you had like an extra four seats in the trunk of the car that would pop open. And so if we weren't headed to school, we were headed to vacation Bible school in the summer. It was a car absolutely filled with children. That was how my mom rolled, like just kids all the time. But my mom would drive us to school until we got to the age where we were embarrassed to be seen with the mother school teacher. And so then we thought it was way cooler to ride the bus. But little did we know that we were like met with a really, really strict bus driver who like would blow the whistle really,

really loud if the children weren't behaving. And everybody sat very, you know, very upright and in their seats and there was no hanging and crazy noise. Mary Brown kept that school bus absolutely in tip-top shape. Oh my goodness, I love that you remember your school bus driver's name as well. That's right, Mary Brown. I said, hey, Mary Brown, I hope you're listening today. That's awesome. And how big was your class then so in 99 I think we were just under 200

students graduating so small and that's pretty big actually for a rural call high school I think I want to say 35 or 40 of us had been together since kindergarten oh wow and I remember that I think there's a picture of all of us, you know, in right before we graduated, who'd been students of, of the high school or of the school system since kindergarten. And it was, I mean, we were at that point, you felt very much like family in many cases. And I still am in contact with a number of them you know even still today that's awesome so from from there when you graduated where did you talk to us about your next step I could not get out of farmland rural Virginia fast enough which is really funny that now you know life has come full circle in the last you know three years I ran. I mean, I always joked that I ran away. Ran away as far

as I could possibly get to Southern California, San Diego. I went to, attended the University of San Diego. I graduated from there in three and a half years. And that was the deal I had worked out with my parents that I would graduate early and that I would maintain 50% of my tuition and scholarship so that it was relatively on par price-wise to staying in Virginia and getting an education here, which is definitely what both my, I mean, my mom, but certainly my father, the great Virginia man that he is. He loves Virginia. There's all goodness and greatness comes from Virginia. So now I'm back. And you have four daughters and you're raising them in Virginia to be great. And much to at least one of their chagrins, the oldest. Yes. And this is the oldest is how I met Amanda. Well, I met her at the farmer's market. So when we talk about Edgewood Apiaries and her products, her honeys and her skin cares that are available, they're available online. And they're also the way I met Amanda was at the farmer's market. That's right. And then one day, I came again to the farmer's market with my daughter,

and there was this really energetic, so enthusiastic young lady that was selling the product. And I was like, wow, she went to work for me? She's so awesome. Like, how old is she? She's legal to work. She's legal to work. But, I mean, her enthusiasm But her enthusiasm was so contagious. And then, of course, it was Amanda's daughter,

so it made total sense because your enthusiasm is also contagious. And then my 6-year-old daughter was like, Mom, why are you making friends again at the farmer's market? But it's where I make all my friends at the farmer's market. It's a good place to have friends. Exactly, exactly. And I know how hard it is as an entrepreneur starting out and selling at a farmer's market because, one, you can sell a ton.

But the second thing, though, is it's stressful. You're waking up early. You're driving an hour and a half to get there. You're setting up, and it's raining, it's freezing cold, or it's sunny, and you're sweating. So it's kind of like there's no ideal circumstances at the farmer's market. All right, but let's get back to your story here. So you went then to San Diego. What did you major in? So I went to San Diego with the intention of majoring in journalism. Oh, fun. I came out with a business degree with an emphasis in international business and supply chain management. So 180 degrees opposite what I went to school to do. That's awesome. But I've used that degree every day since I obtained it. Okay.

So tell us how you've implemented the degree in real life. I mean, you've done so many cool things. Just wait, you guys. Keep listening. So I went to work. So 2003, I graduated um and I was a December 22 graduate or January 20 January 2003 January of 2003 graduate thank you um so I was allowed to go and start work before I formally got my degree. And I started work at Southern California Edison. I had very randomly. Southern California Edison

is the utilities company just to help people understand. Yes. Thank you. Thank you for that. So and I had randomly met the director of procurement in the hallway. He was taking supply chain classes for their like master's program. And I was there as an undergrad and I met him. We were just talking, just, it was just a very casual conversation. And he asked if I would send over my resume. And of course I said, absolutely. And within within a matter of months I was hired and headed from San Diego up to LA I had bought a condo and was like very very quickly pressing the accelerator to life and like just going to work I mean what was that interview process like? Did you ever think you'd be working in utilities? I never did not go to school with the goal or even come out of school

with the goal of going to work for the utility company. I just wanted a solid job where I was able to pay my bills, pay back, um, the little bit of a school loan that I had taken out and like demonstrate to my parents that I could support myself and just start to build a life on my own. That was really what it was all about. It was all about the money at that point in my life. That's so funny. I mean, that's like exactly, yeah. I mean, that's, but it sounds like you found the work fulfilling. It wasn't just about the money. It was interesting and challenging. And I didn't really know what to expect going in. I was, I mean, I was just super excited and proud to be putting my degree to use because so many people go to college and get a degree and they never

actually use it. And so I was, you know, very busy patting myself on the back to have, you know, selected something to study that I was actually going to get to use. And it was an absolutely amazing learning experience. I was only there for a couple years, but I worked with, I mean, I call them the crusty engineers, right? They were guys that had been with the utility company for decades. They knew the ins and outs of all of the equipment. And, you know, I was the newbie. And, you know, kind of cocky probably to them. I don't ever really.

No, I mean confident. But it was a really good learning experience for them and for me. I think as we they were wanting to learn how to work with younger people there was a kind of a wave of younger people coming into the utility company at the time and they were trying to figure out how do we work together and and establish team and respect and understand that there are numbers of different job types that get impacted by every supply chain, every sourcing decision that gets made. So, you know, it was a lot of learning on the job, excellent experience. And, you know, I left because I moved back to San Diego to get married, basically.

Okay. And then tell us what happened there. Where did you meet your husband? I met my husband at the University of San Diego. Okay. And then tell us what happened there. Where'd you meet your husband? I met my husband at the University of San Diego. Okay. And so we had just maintained a really strong friendship for several years. And I mean, there's, you know, I call it love at first sight, because I think we both, sorry, Jace, I have to tell the story. Yeah, tell it. I mean, I think it was very much love at first sight but also um like he hit on me at the airport the San Diego airport we were um he was getting his master's degree in business and his just just doctorate um his focus and and his um master's degree was supply chain so we were both part of the student organization that was touring companies and learning about supply chain.

And so he had hit on me at like 6 or 6.30 in the morning after I had said to my girlfriend, who is that? But of course, I rejected him immediately. I'm like, it's too early. It's too early. And it was, you know, trying to pretend. But we definitely were dating after that weekend jaunt up to Northern California. And we dated for a couple months and then just decided to be good friends. And he went on and did his thing and I went on and did my thing. And not too long after I had moved to L. LA, he sent me flowers at work. It was really sweet.

That's a nice gesture you could do for women. That's right. Surprise flowers. It came with a birthday card. Oh, cool. Was it your birthday? It was really sweet. It was 30 days after my birthday to the date.

So we joke all the time now that I have two birthdays. When is your birthday? Your real one. May 26th. And so June. June 26th. Perfect. Make sure to send you some juice.

But it's lovely, you know, having two birthdays, you know. Celebrate two months long. It's actually wonderful now for me. That's amazing. So let's see here. So I moved back to San Diego. I worked for a fiber optic, um, company, uh, it was an assembly house in, uh, Vista, California for a couple of years. And then,

um, and were you doing supply chain then too? Yes. I was actually responsible. I was the, um, the director of their supply chain. And then, uh, I went on from there to work for gateway computers. Do you remember them? Yes, yes. The cow box? Yes. Hey, Gateway Computers. I'm not sure anybody these days even knows. I think you have to be at least like 30 plus or maybe 37 plus to remember this. So that tells you exactly how old I am. I worked in demand planning for them, for their consumer brand. It was a lot of fun.

Learned a lot. How was their demand? It was amazing still at that point in time. Who did they sell to? Do you remember? I don't remember all those details now. I'm sorry. They did a reverse merger, and then they eventually sold. I was sort of there at the tail end of their heyday.

It was a great culture. I loved working there. It was just that it was up in Orange County, and my life had really been relocated down to San Diego, and then we were expecting a baby. Your little ball of energy? Yes, the now massive redhead ball of energy. Um, so I wanted to be closer to home and I ended up going to work for Petco animal supplies. Oh,

cool. Oh, and there's, there's, for those of the listening, there is a dog in the studio, Liza, who Judah, who's amazing, then helps us put the show on his dog, Liza. She's here, but, um, she's, she's not, but she's not allowed to roam free because she'll jump up and get on set with us. Lots of dog kisses. Lots of dog, which is fine, but definitely distracting. Okay, so Petco, you were doing supply chain for them as well?

So more on the indirect procurement side. Okay. So supporting their salons, their dog salons, all the backend work that it takes to run a retail operation. And then I got into technology and supporting the technology team over there pretty quickly and worked a pretty large outsourcing deal for them. I'd never worked in that space before.

And, you know, that kind of work where you're looking to move jobs offshore is really touchy work. I think we navigated that as a company really well, really elegantly. And they brought in a new CIO shortly thereafter who asked me to more formally move over and support looking at the rest of the technology organization and enabling a strategy that would allow them to grow the skills with the people they had and take the current skills offshore. So it was an opportunity to really help Petco transform. So there in what I call like the heyday of their mega growth and transformation on the technology side of things, I learned an amazing, amazing amount, had an awesome mentor, a number of awesome mentors. Cool. And the culture there is really beautiful.

It's still maintained. It's like a really small culture, very family-oriented, family-friendly, and tight-knit. When I would walk into the boardroom to give presentations to the VPs and the chiefs of, they knew who I was. And so that was really lovely. Yeah, a lot of times that doesn't happen, but it's always important that you have leadership that makes you feel valued. And they were always, I mean, the CFO there, Mike Foss at the time,

was constantly checking in to make sure that I was happy, that I was doing something that I really enjoyed doing, and that I felt like I was making a difference on behalf of the company. And, you know, from a leadership perspective, I found that incredibly inspiring. Sure. And, you know, I've taken that and I try to emulate that. And with my teams, even today, you know, yes, we run a small apiary, but I have kids that

Small for now, but Small for now, but we've got a small apiary, but I have kids. Small for now. Small for now, but we've got a million-dollar business school, so that's not going to be small for long. And also not small in the amount of bees you have to manage, which I can't wait to talk about that either. So, you know, being an awesome leader takes a lot of really cool and important personality traits and skill sets, and so I've tried to learn from those awesome leaders in my life and and leave behind what didn't

work from my perspective and and kind of take and modify and change and make work for either myself or my team and some days that team is just me and my daughter which you know personality, that can be beautiful and fun and invigorating and exciting, but it can also be very challenging because she has her own ideas of what we should be doing as a company, you know, and she's participated in that from the very inception, you know, as we were driving down the road and I said, I'm going to do this and we need a honey label. Wait, before you, like, how did you even get to the idea when you were driving down the road that and I said, I'm going to do this, and we need a honey label. Wait, how did you even get to the idea when you were driving down the road that you were going to do this?

So I guess we have to really rewind a little bit. We moved from San Diego, where I was working at Petco, to Oregon, where I worked for Nike for a number of years as a technology executive there. And then I took a hiatus. What was the culture like between Petco and Nike? They're completely different. Absolutely 180 degrees different. Lots of great learnings there. Amazing company to work for.

Like some of the coolest people that I've ever met and had the opportunity to work with, just completely different than Petco. And so learning how to pivot and navigate those waters was challenging for me. And yeah, I think when I fast forward four years forward into that experience there, I had done a lot for the company. I had learned a lot, but it was definitely time for me to let go. And I was definitely done in corporate America. And so I left Nike. I was 13 weeks pregnant. With your second daughter? With my third daughter. Third daughter, okay. I was 13 weeks pregnant. With your second daughter?

With my third daughter. Third daughter, okay. Yes, at that time. So we fast-forwarded through a number of years. And, yeah, I was expecting. And I needed a real break from, like, pretty much all of life at that point in time. And with an opportunity to focus on my family, it was really what I was looking for. And, you know, living in Oregon was really beautiful. We

had a little five acre farm and we were doing a lot of homesteading already. And so it just gave me an opportunity to really dive into that. And I'd say like there's really where I became such an evangelist for healthy living. You know, we started learning about essential oils and herbs and medicinal plants. And, you know, my daughter would say that is when I absolutely went uber crunchy. Uber crunchy. Not just crunchy. Uber, like to the absolute extreme. Oh my goodness.

You're definitely not extreme crunchy at all. I mean, she's almost 17. So, you know, her perspective, I'm uber crunchy. And, um, yeah, it was, it was great. So when COVID hit, uh, being at home for me was nothing. It was, it was simply like simply like oh now I just don't get to have any guests over okay or like the farm friends down the street they'll still stop in yeah which is like just a normal part of life so like our life carried on for a number of months other than the school piece relatively not impacted at all sure because we had just built this beautiful little hollow in the world for ourselves. That's awesome. And then we decided to take a two-month opportunity to visit my family for the holidays. So this is the end of 2020 now. So we've really sped up, but just for the sake of time three hours at least so we came out at the

very beginning it took nine days to drive across the country and we did it with three kids where'd you stop so we strategically at either a national monument or a national park because we were trying to entertain children. What was your favorite park? Putting it on the spot here. It's a gateway arch probably. In St. Louis? Yes. It was,

it's a really hard tie with Mammoth over in Kentucky, but Mammoth Cave. I was shocked. I thought that in St. Louis, we were going to go to the top of the arch and come back down. And that would be the extent of our little day trip. And we were going to jump back in the car, grab some barbecue and head out of town.

But the museum that's underneath that arch is one of the best museums I've ever been in in my life. This is not being paid for by St. Louis. By the National Park Service. Yes, or the state of Missouri, the great state of Missouri. But, yes, keep going. So visit Gateway Arch. I'm taking advertising dollars. Keep going.

Tell me more. No, you know, they really take a great opportunity to look at each type of individual that experienced the westward movement. Okay. of person's life, whether it was the farmer or the first female landowner or the cowboy or the people that were headed out west for the gold rush. Like it was completely unexpected. So first and foremost, I think that was part of the shock. But just the amount of information and the creativity that has gone into the building out of that museum was absolutely phenomenal. So if I ever have an opportunity to go back in terms of like that journey,

we absolutely would. It's amazing. That's really cool. I had no idea there was a museum under there. I mean, I've been to St. Louis, but I didn't visit it. So adding it to my list. The bucket list, list of places to take the kids. Yes. An awesome educational experience. And as a travel consultant too,

people under utilize America as a destination because they don't, you know, what is there to see? But there's so much to see here. So doing it by way of the national parks was a really great, fun thing to do. And my kids collect all the national park, like the patches and the key chain. And like we're the family that runs into the gift store

first probably and then hits the, just so everybody gets their patch. Because I don't need kids fighting in the car over who did or didn't get a patch for that national park. So you made it all the way back to Powhatan, did I say it right? Powhatan. So you made it back to Powhatan in nine days from Oregon and two weeks later so we were here for all of November all of December promised my parents that I was going to be back in the car by the first or second day of January headed back to Oregon two weeks into our trip we found out that we were expecting a fourth daughter and I just remember looking at my husband and saying I need mom. I cannot do this without my mom.

So you were, you were 39, 40 years old. I was 40. And you said, I need my mom. I was turning 40. All of our moms out there. So true. Moms, you are forever important forever. So I needed my mom. And so we started looking at houses and the parameter was I had to be within an hour, an hour's drive of my mom's house. So that's at houses and the parameter was I had to be within an hour, an hour's drive of my mom's house. So that's how we landed in Fluvanna County. Okay. So we bought, first we bought a 60 acre property there with a beautiful home that has been there since, the main part of the home has been there since 1910. Okay. And purchased, we purchased it from a lovely family who also had raised daughters there.

Okay. And the family prior to that had raised a daughter there. So it's now been owned by like three kind of generations of families that have raised daughters at Edgewood. Cool. This is really lovely. We fell in love with the one-room log cabin that sits right up against the little pond lake there. And that's where we, you know, we fish as a family and just spend some quiet time together. It was named the Beehive before we got there, but very serendipitously, I think. That's amazing. So is this when you started to

think about bees? Yeah, sort of. I mean, I started asking God, what am I going to do with my life? Like I, I was shocked to find out that I was having a fourth daughter. That was not at all in the plan. Um, and I was, I think somewhat feeling still a little bit lost and not really grounded in where I was in life. And I had for a hot minute thought I should go back to corporate America or start like maybe some, something corporate related, but that was, that lasted for literally a hot minute. Well, I mean, it's hard. You, you literally worked in these very serious roles where you were

definitely corporate America. I mean, they were creative, but you know, you were just doing these things that were just business acumen, you know, to wazoo. Yeah. And I think I had really defined who I was as a person through the lens of corporate America. And that didn't work for me, that I was in my 20s up until my mid-30s at least, how I really defined success was the title, the amount of money that I was making, my investment portfolio. And that's all great. And there are important components of that to life. But that was, it took me really taking a step back and, you know, having a fourth kid to really get myself grounded in who I was ultimately intended to be,

if that makes any sense at all. It's very... Most people don't say they're less grounded after their fourth kid. Definitely Jesus answering your prayers. So I, you know, I had this young infant in my arms and I kept asking God, what was I supposed to do? And I kept getting, go back to your roots, go back to your roots, go back to your roots. Well, what on earth does that mean? Like my family's been here farming Virginia for 15 generations. 15 generations in Virginia? In Virginia. 15 generations. Like what year does that put us at? Back to the founding of Jamestown. Oh my goodness, what year is that? 16 something? So like they, my dad has a cousin who has meticulously traced the family history. And then my mom has a sister who has done the same similarly on her side. And we

know that there's like a distant cousin that was rewarded for, I guess, valor or something out of the Revolutionary War. I mean, it's beautiful and beautiful history. And, you know, we've been here for a really long time. But what did that mean? Go back to your roots, go back to your roots. Well, we had always contemplated adding bees to our farm in Oregon or even in San Diego when we were living on our little 8,000 square foot lot. Like we wanted to have a hive and just play around with bees. And they had always just been a curiosity to me, but I love honey. I love honey. I love honey medicinally. I love honey in food. I love to experiment with different ways to use honey.

And just, I mean, I love food too. Food, wine, and, you know. Cocktails with honey. All great things come from, I mean, agriculture in my, you know, in my viewpoint, my worldly viewpoint. And so I said, okay, bees. And I looked at Jason and I said, we're going to do bees. And, you know, he says, okay, then do it right. Like, go big.

And I'd never read a book on beekeeping. Probably would have been a good thing to do. Have you read one since? Absolutely. I've read a lot. I've read a lot. I have, I have, I've been drinking honeybee husbandry from the fire hose for three years. Okay. I have amazing mentors here locally in Virginia, up at Sourwood Farm. Ryan Williamson, he's been great. Down at Huddy and the Hive over in Powhatan. Keith White has been an absolutely amazing supporter from the very get-go of just getting me grounded and trying to help me understand. Because when most people get into beekeeping

they acquire maybe one or two colonies of bees like if you're really going to go big might maybe you get four and that's a lot and how many do you have now so we're somewhere between like 75 and 80 colonies of bees last summer we were up to 95, 100. We'll see how we've gotten through winter. But when we started, we started with 73 colonies of bees. All on your property in Fluvana? Between Fluvana and Powhatan. So my brother and my grandma Peggy, they graciously allow us to keep bees there. And it's been an absolute wild ride of a learning experience. So I would never tell anybody out the gate that they should absolutely jump in and, you know, go 50 hives in. But it's how I, I mean, really it's how I do most of everything in life is just like

jumping in the deep end and figuring it out. Um, you know, you, you mentioned the kind of the whole idea around having a desire to learn a capacity to learn and a know how to learn. And that's really how, that's how I was raised. It's embedded in my blood and, and like my, my spirit that that is how you approach life. So you don't have to be an expert, but you have to know how to learn. Sure. And you have to go in and roll up your sleeves and get to work. And so that's what we did. So talk to us about, it was just honey, but then talk about learnings. Like, tell us about what some of your greatest learnings have been as you've built just a honey, and then it's been, what, two years now? Yeah, so we're about to enter our third year of beekeeping,

and so we're coming up on our, what I would call our real second run of honey. The first year, um, our, or my mentor, uh, provided some honey from his colonies just so we could run our, um, honey processing equipment and move through the process of, um, uncapping and spinning all the things that you have to do to get honey. I don't know what any of this means. Yep. From the comb into a jar. And we could just, we could learn that process. And he was great working with us. And we sold out of that honey in 36 hours.

And my corporate brain. Wait, where did you sell out of the honey? The farmer's market? No, we just locally, just to friends and, and people like online on Facebook.

And, you know, we want your honey. Just the goodness of like the family and the friends circle, just people trying to support us. Sure. And helping get our business up and running. That's awesome. And I mean, but we're not really talking a lot of honey. We're talking, you know, one and a half, five gallon buckets of honey. It's not a lot. That's 75, 80 pounds of honey, which for some backyard beekeepers, that would be like the greatest honey

run ever for them. But when you've got, you're looking at a yard of 70 some colonies of bees who each should be producing at least 60 or more pounds of honey every year. You're like, Oh my gosh, what am I going to do? Where's my revenue going to come from to start to demonstrate value for my business? So like that, that whole corporate mindset turned back on. And that is how we ended up in the personal care product world because something had to be created and it was always on the long like the the long term roadmap two three years out to start to you know curate bombs and some soap and like small batch stuff, which is still what we do, small batch work. Um, but it was just on that longterm roadmap and not as, you know, immediate

in the future as it ended up being. And that was purely because there was a need for, for revenue and for, um, for our brand to like get out the community, for people to start to know us and trust us and love the products that we were making so that when honey was available, it also had an immediate way of moving. Sure. So here we are. That's amazing. And now what would you say the split is between honey and personal care 50 50 50 50 it's been amazing I can't like I look at the numbers both from a volume perspective and a dollar like top line revenue and I'm I'm blown away by the

trust that our our customers put us. It's absolutely amazing. And, you know, we're very meticulous. We don't use fragrance oils. So, you know, we're all about raw ingredients, raw shea butter, raw cacao, you know, beeswax, organic coconut oil, castor oil, like just the pure basics and honey. So how are you using your history and like your legacy and supply chain and applying it to your daily bee husbandry and keeping? So I think our world is pretty much all about that. I don't think we will be successful both or have or could have been as successful as we've been to date or will be successful in the future if we don't have a really great understanding of our cost of goods sold.

Like hands down, you know, continuously working to be able to meet the needs of the consumer is not just about what's in the jar or underneath the soap wrapper. It's really about getting that product to the consumer at a price point that is comfortable for them, where they feel like they're getting amazing value. And so we're in the middle of implementing a system called Katana. And that's all about cost of goods sold. So we attempted to do that in QuickBooks and learned really quickly that we needed to get deeper than what QuickBooks was going to allow us to do. Because when you're manufacturing, because we're not just retail, we're actually manufacturing

the personal care products. And so we had to be able to trace our inventory, our raw material inventory, and be able to analyze it and make sure that we were working with the right suppliers and, you know, building up a really high value product for the customer. Well, let's talk about why honey is such a high value product for a customer. Like, talk to me about the medicinal benefits and why we should all be incorporating honey into our daily lives. So allergies, I mean, we all say that, right? Local honey, local honey, local honey. And that is absolutely, you know,

it's smart to use local honey. Sure. It has all the pollen and the nectars from your local area. And often your allergies are, are you know your body is producing histamines and you need enzymes to combat those histamines so the honey contains those enzymes and helps you build up the enzymes to combat your allergen or your allergic response to what's now of course beginning to fall across Virginia. The pollen counts. Lots of pollen.

Yes. And the oaks are about to explode and bloom. And soon we will all have a beautiful yellowish green dusting all over our cars. And so spring is near. Yes. And local honey is really important. Thankfully, spring is near. I'm excited about that too.

But honey is more than just medicinal. Like the benefits of honey, I find equally are in enjoying honey as if it were wine or a cool whiskey or a craft beer. Virginia makes amazing honeys. And, um, one of the ways that we've been really successful in building relationships with consumers across Virginia has been in helping them experience honey from across the Commonwealth that they would not have easy access to. And by easy access, I will tell you a story. Um, my mom is a huge fan of sourwood, honey, huge fan. Okay. And so, um, what, what, what sourwood is a tree. Okay. Yes. Yeah. You're like what on earth? Can you break down for me, please? So sourwood, honey, um, sourwood, honey comes from a tree. It has this beautiful apricot

note to it. It's very light and delicate. And her gal friend used to bring it back from West Virginia when she would come. And so in 2021, and this is well before we started really producing our own honey, I spent a couple of trips driving through Virginia over to the West Virginia area and trying to find sourwood honey. And I could not, I found lots of beautiful maple syrup, but I could not get sourwood honey. And it drove me crazy because I know that Virginia produces amazing sourwood honey. And so it took some time, but I finally found a beekeeper in this tiny little town called Lebanon, Virginia. And where is that? That is past Blacksburg. So over 81, anyone who's familiar with 81? Way further

down south, um, towards West Virginia, toward the Appalachia plateau. Okay. Um, and, and that area, his bees are, are dead. This past year, they produced an amazing sourwood. And like any beekeeper will tell you, like, that's going to ebb and flow every year. And some years, it's going to be a really, like last year, awesome sourwood, honey. Sure. And this year, who knows what you're going to get. It might be all clover. It might be all linden.

Like, you just don't know until the pollen and the nectar starts flowing and the weather does what it does and so um you just that is what makes honey so complex so it's like honey unique it's like it's like a vintage of wine right every year you get something different or like tequila agave has harvest and takes takes the different, agave can like bring on the flavors, terroir properties. So it's almost like the bees have a terroir property that's coming from all the things that are blooming. So can you like date your honey from like 1992 and try it 20 years later or no? Honey has no shelf life, so you could. Absolutely.

Oh my goodness, that's so crazy. Absolutely. I try, I'm really trying to like hold on to because we will name our honeys and so like you know we name our tulip poplar honey the heart of Piedmont as we put it together like in these cute little gift sets for our customers um we have some honey that I um acquired from a keeper over near the Shenandoah Shenandoah National Park that's like a black locust and wildflower honey. It's completely unique. Tastes amazing with goat cheese and green teas. And when you taste it, it tastes like a

Granny Smith apple. It's floral and fresh and crisp and tart all at the same time. Completely different from your butter caramel like tulip poplar honey, and totally worlds different from your sourwood apricot forward note honeys. And so I'm trying to keep them, but like they are so well loved that it's really hard to like keep my own little stockpile of honey going on because we have, we have, we've had amazing demands is, which has been amazing. It's, it's been hands down. Absolutely amazing. We're so thankful. Oh my goodness, I love this. And so aside from these different flavors of honey that depends on weather and where the bees are collecting, talk to us about keeping bees alive. Oh geez, okay. So we did participate in the National Honey Bee Survey this past year.

Our results that we just got back were absolutely amazing. I was really thrilled. What's a National Honey Bee? Not spelling bee, honey bee. Survey, right. So it's a collection of bees that they sample from across the U.S. where they are testing for disease, typically mite-borne disease, things also like European foulbrood, American foulbrood. These are honeybee diseases. So they're testing the comb

for toxins, toxicity levels. That can kill them. Yes. And they are testing also for mites. So they do a sample collection of live bees, dead bees, and comb. So our mite counts for October came back at well under 1%, 0.2. That was really exciting. Congratulations. Yep. And I mean, mites are really a challenge, but the results are starting to show that the beekeepers who are working so diligently to genetically breed queens with super hygienic traits, that that is working. And there are... Are there risks to biodiversity if you are genetically modifying your bees? So we don't, we actually think that it's beneficial because you're genetically, what you're doing is you are looking for hygienic qualities about bees for like cleanliness and their ability to not allow mites to take over the colony and decimate the colony. You're also looking for traits to allow them to survive certain types of weather conditions. So,

you know, in Virginia, we have these wild swings of weather. In many cases, beekeepers around the state encourage new keepers to make sure they're getting Virginia bees. So we kind of laugh and call them Virginia mutts. You can indeed get pure Russian bred bees, pure Italians, pure cannoli. Okay, so they're born in Russia and raised in Virginia. So talk to us about that. That's genetic that's genetic. Like that's, that'll take us well into the evening here. Talking about genetics. On the genetic side of things. But, you know, as part of the Cold War.

Yeah. At the time, we've already been talking for 50 minutes. So we're at 3.05. I mean, we can go for a little bit longer. I don't know how you're doing on time, but. It just depends on what everybody is interested in hearing about and talking about. We can come back and little bit longer. I don't know how you're doing on time, but it just depends on what everybody is interested in hearing about and talking about. We can come back and talk about genetics. Yeah. Cause there's so, I mean, I feel like we just got started here and there's so much

more to keep diving into. Um, in the interest of time though, and I think it would be great to have you back to talk more about all of your products. Talk to us about your favorite products that you're making right now, where we can buy them. Yeah. So we have the most beautiful flight of Virginia honeys. You want to hold them up and then we can see them. I forget that this is filmed. Yeah. Streaming also, and not just talking, talking. So I think you guys can, can maybe see this. This is our beautiful flight of Virginia honey. So this is honey from three different locations across Virginia. We have a sourwood, a tulip poplar, and the black locust honey that I was referring to earlier. And what does that retail for?

That retails for $50 online. Okay. And then we're right in the middle of our spring launch for our facial and bar soap. So that's a new line. Did everyone look how great Amanda's skin is? You too could have glowing skin with Edgewood skincare. That's right. One of my favorite products is called Honey Immersion. And that's a salve. It's a healing salve that we formulated for your face and particularly for dry skin. It's primarily made of honey and beeswax, tamanu seed oil, which is a product that's not so commonly used here in the U.S. in cosmetics,

and a hemp oil that's infused with St. John's wort, comfrey, and arnica, and a calendula-infused olive oil. So it's like a powerhouse of healing. But because we formulated it for your face, it is amazing anywhere else on the rest of your body. My kids call it mommy cream at home. Like when they've had a boo-boo and they want something special put on it, that's what they ask for. That's awesome. Yeah. That's awesome. I love that.

These are such great products. I mean, I've been buying them at the farmer's market now probably for a year. And, um, I think you like our lip balm. I do like the lip balm because it's, it's, it's, it's hydrating. I had it this, I use it this morning. He's every morning. It sits on my bathroom counter. Um, and sometimes I carry it in a jacket pocket as well. So that lip balm, we got tons of things you have offering to us. The shea butter thing, that's like in a honey combo. Oh, the hard lotion bar. Yes. My daughter loves that. She'll like, she has it in her car seat cup holder and she like rubs it on her hands every time she gets

off the playground because most of their days outside. I love that. So that our hands don't crack from the coldness right now. And so it's been really awesome to use your products and see them in our house and the kids to always be asking for the glass jar honey versus the plastic jar honey. Oh yes. That's important too. How they, how they ask for your honey. I love it. They're five and six. I'm building honey connoisseurs from the ground up. It's not a cheap connoisseur habit, but you know, I'd rather have them addicted to honey than, than sugar, other types of sugar, right?

Because this is one that's created by nature. That's right. And good for you. You know, everyone needs some elements of sugars in their body to function correctly. And so getting it from nature is really important. I guess as, you know, we kind of wrap up here, tell me of people listening that are interested in becoming entrepreneurs and starting something on their own,

what would be your advice to them? That's a good question. Just believe in yourself. Roll up your sleeves and get started. I think I shared with you not too long ago that I don't really know fear. That's just not really in my vocabulary. Sure. And that's, for me personally, that's just simply because I believe I'm standing on the strongest rock that there is.

Sure. And that has allowed me to just take life and go get it. Just go believe in my ability to learn and to make happen. And I think it's just really simple. Make sure you've got a really good surrounding of friends and family who also support you and believe in you. I would not be where I am today if it was not for my in-laws, my parents, my family, some of our close friends. And some days it's just like that shoulder to cry on when you don't think you can pay the bills and you don't know where the

next pennies are going to come from to rub together. Yes. You know, those, you need those people in your life to, to remind you that you are, you're, you're, you're, you're good. You just need to keep, just keep going. I love it. So no fear, keep going and surround yourself with other people that are going to be your cheerleaders. Uh, and I get last, can you tell us your website, please? Edgewoodapieresandfarm.com. All right. Well, Amanda Sweeney, uh, keeper of the bees and founder of Edgewood Apiaries. Thank you so much for joining us today. This has been a wonderful conversation. Thank you all for joining in live.

And for those that listen later, we love you mean it from our kitchen to yours. And we hope that you love yourself and the people you care about and eat real food the way nature intended. That's right. Tune in next week. It's going to be a little bit of a hybrid week

where the episodes will not be filmed live just because I'll be traveling. But we look forward to having you all all and we thank you for tuning in. And as always, visit me at thejuicydetails.com if you would like to be on the show. All right. Or have any questions. Thank you.