OUR STORY

2J Farms was created on December 24, 2007. It began as two entities: 2J Honey Farms, LLC, and 2J Lowline Cattle Co., LLC. Before that, I worked with my father and brother in Miller’s Honey Farms, Inc., a fourth-generation family business. When our fourth daughter, a beekeeper in her own right, got married, her new husband and I decided to branch off independently. What an adventure it’s been.

 

We started by running bees in South Dakota after two tough years in Idaho. Eventually, we found a great outfit for sale in northwestern North Dakota, owned by Dave Nelson. Dave was a family friend, my father’s colleague and a former manager for the Jim Powers Honey Co. Purchasing his operation marked a turning point for us.

 

Over the years, we’ve pollinated almonds in California, working alongside Pat Heitkam in Chico. Pat is a renowned queen breeder, and we’ve purchased queens from him for over twenty years. For the past five years, we’ve focused our work in the Modesto area, operating on both sides of Highway 99. This year, we expanded into Chowchilla, California, where the land is flat, the orchards are expansive, and farm roads are paved.

 

Our annual cycle is carefully planned. We aim to have the bees in North Dakota, on the apiary site, and supered by June 20th. We extract honey in Blackfoot, Idaho, and strive to have it pulled, mite treatments applied, and the bees headed back to Idaho by September 1st. There, we hope to catch the tail end of the rabbitbrush pollen flow.

 

In addition to beekeeping, we’ve added a bee storage service. A typical double Belehn potato cellar can store up to 10,000 hives. We stack hives six pallets high to maximize space and ensure good airflow. Since we can’t fill the cellar completely, we store bees for other commercial beekeepers, some from as far away as Kansas. This allows us to use the ventilation system efficiently, maintain hive health, and help offset the cost of rent. The bees go into storage in mid-November and begin shipping to almond orchards around January 7th. This activity has led to valuable friendships and partnerships, especially during the hectic almond pollination season.

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Cellar storage offers significant benefits. It protects hives from the weather during California’s two wettest months and prevents theft and vandalism. This quiet period allows young bees to mature and build fat reserves, crucial for raising new brood during almond bloom. In contrast, bees that skip this rest period—often called “six-week bees”—have a shorter lifespan compared to cellar bees, which can live up to four months.

 

After almond pollination wraps up in mid-March, we return to California to make our divides. We split bees, brood, and honey into what we hope will be a 2.5-way divide, placing a queen cell into each small nucleus. This process also allows us to replenish the empty boxes left behind by hives that failed over the years due to the many challenges bees face today.

 

And this is how we spend our lives.

 

- Jay Miller