How a 70-year-old bee farmer keeps his family farm afloat

Beekeeping has always been a family affair for David Bradshaw.

Bradshaw, 70, is the second-generation owner of Bradshaw Honey Farms in Visalia, California. His father, Howard Bradshaw, established a farm in their backyard in 1958.

David Bradshaw remembers playing outside as a child and “learning not to get too close” to beehives. He has been stung “thousands of times” since then, but that hasn’t deterred him from continuing with his business.

He also involves the next generation. Bradshaw’s daughter works full time on the farm and manages the honey bottling operation, with her son also helping out as needed. And, he says, “In a way, I think bees are my children, too.”

Before starting Bradshaw Honey Farm, Howard Bradshaw worked as an aircraft mechanic and raised bees as a hobby. David said he quit his job to focus on beekeeping full-time after witnessing a fatal accident at work.

“I remember my dad coming home crying when I was a kid, probably the first time I’d ever seen him cry,” Bradshaw recalls. “He said, ‘I’m done with it. I’m not going back. Bees are safer.'”

In 1970, the Bradshaw family, including David and his four brothers, moved to five acres in Visalia. Howard Bradshaw established a honey business there and began renting bees to local farmers to pollinate their crops.

Was David Bradshaw always interested in taking over a honey farm? “No, not,” he says. A “teenage rebel”, he wanted to become an auto mechanic. But because his father needed help with bees, he earned an associate’s degree in agricultural mechanics and started working on a farm instead. By the mid-1980s, Bradshaw says he and his father each owned a colony of 2,000 bees.

Howard Bradshaw was excited to give his son more responsibility on the farm. “He said, ‘All I need is a lunch bucket. Please tell me what to do,'” David Bradshaw recalls. “He couldn’t be happier.”

The two ran Bradshaw Honey Farm together until Howard passed away in 2019 at the age of 81.

David Bradshaw still operates Bradshaw Honey Farm on the same property in Visalia, where he lives with his wife, but his bees fly throughout the San Joaquin Valley to pollinate crops and make honey.

He lends bees to farmers on a rotational basis every year starting around the time the almond flowers bloom, and then posts the hives in the almond orchard in mid-February. Next, he brings bees to pollinate cherries and prunes, before moving on to oranges, lemons and grapefruit in late spring. During the summer and early fall, Bradshaw takes his bees to the Sierra Nevada mountains where they can store pollen and make honey from native plants.

Extracting honey is a long, hard and hot process, Bradshaw said. He and his employees collect honey supers (special boxes placed on top of the hive to store excess honey) from each colony. They used a forklift to load the heavy supermarkets onto Bradshaw’s truck and returned to the Visalia property, where they would “extract the honey over many days.” Bradshaw’s daughter bottles and sells honey.

When the bees aren’t busy pollinating crops, Bradshaw rents pasture land from local farmers, especially ranchers, to build nests and allow the bees to rest and store food for the winter. Many people are willing to lend their land in exchange for a steady supply of free honey, Bradshaw said.

“Beekeepers of any size must rely on the generosity of farmers and ranchers who allow them to have bees on their land,” he says. “You need big, open spaces, and you need to move them around all the time.”

The majority of Bradshaw Honey Farms’ revenue comes from renting bees for pollination services, according to documents reviewed by CNBC Make It.

Over the past decade, “bees haven’t been producing much honey,” he said, and as domestic honey production has declined, the market has been flooded with cheaper imported honey products.

Bradshaw still sells a small amount of honey, but it’s no longer his main source of income. He also sells custom beekeeping equipment and bee nutritional supplements through the farm’s online store and extracts honey for other local beekeepers to earn extra income.

Bradshaw Honey Farms brought in about $1.8 million in gross revenue last year, but ended the year in the red after expenses, according to documents reviewed by CNBC Make It. Labor costs are one of the farm’s biggest expenses, and they have two full-time employees, including their daughter. Rising fuel prices and tariffs on key supplies such as honey bottles are creating additional financial challenges, he said.

Bradshaw usually lives on “what’s left over” after paying all her bills, but in recent years she’s had to dip into her savings and is now “down to a Zippo.” “I always put money back into the business,” he added. “This is a legacy that I feel responsible for.”

In the bee business, Bradshaw says, “we rely on Mother Nature,” but nature doesn’t always cooperate. Without enough rain, plants will not grow and the pollen supply will decrease. Too much rain prevents the bees from leaving the hive to gather food, so Bradshaw has to supplement the hives with artificial protein and sugar syrup.

One of Bradshaw’s main concerns is parasitic mites, which can weaken or kill bees and transmit deadly diseases such as deformed wing virus. He says he and his employees regularly medicate bees to prevent the mites, but once the virus gets into the hive, “it’s over.”

Bradshaw estimates that the honey bee population will have lost about 60% of its population in 2025, largely due to virus transmission by mites. According to a study by Project Apis M, a nonprofit honey bee research group, 62% of U.S. commercial honey bee colonies died between June 2024 and February 2025. Beekeepers reported that the main causes of death were parasites, pathogens, exposure to pesticides, and inadequate nutrition.

“Our challenge now is to make sure the bees arrive safely next year,” Bradshaw said.

Bradshaw said he is concerned about the future of Bradshaw Honey Farms and the future of the American beekeeping industry as a whole. Many independent beekeepers are abandoning their businesses and selling to larger companies, he said. “They just say, ‘It’s too difficult, forget it.'”

According to Bradshaw, there is one important prerequisite to becoming a beekeeper. “We have to care about the bees.” He says people who go into beekeeping just to make money usually don’t stay in the business. “Eventually, they just give up.”

But Bradshaw says she can’t imagine doing the same thing. “I’m a beekeeper inside and out,” he says. “I’ll probably do it until I die.”

Despite the challenges of the past few years, Bradshaw said he still feels the bee business has been “really good for me.” He says that the most appealing part of his job is the sense of accomplishment he gets when his bees grow well and he harvests wonderful honey. “Nothing like that.”

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