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

For David Bradshaw, beekeeping has always been a family affair.

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

As a child, David Bradshaw remembers playing outside and “learning not to get too close” to beehives, he says. Since then, he has been farmed “thousands of times,” but that hasn’t stopped him from sticking to the business.

The next generation has also been involved: Bradshaw’s daughter works full-time on the farm, where she manages the operation of the honey bottles, and her son helps out as needed. And, he says, “in a way, I think my bees are my children” too.

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

“I remember when I was a kid, he’d just come home crying—probably the first time I’d ever seen my dad cry,” David Bradshaw recalled. “He said, ‘I quit. I’m not coming back. Bees are very safe.’

In 1970, the Bradshaw family, including David and his four siblings, moved to a five-acre property in Visalia, where Howard Bradshaw built his honey operation and began renting his bees to local farmers to pollinate their crops.

Was David Bradshaw always interested in taking over a bee farm? “No,” he said. “As a rebellious child,” he wanted to be an auto mechanic. But his father needed help with the bees, so he earned an associate’s degree in agricultural mechanics and began working on the farm. In the mid-80s, Bradshaw says he and his father each had colonies of 2,000 bees.

Howard Bradshaw was more than happy to have his son take on more responsibility on the farm. “He said, ‘All I need is a lunch pail, and you tell me what to do,'” David Bradshaw recalled. “He was very happy.”

The two ran Bradshaw Honey Farms together until Howard’s death in 2019 at the age of 81.

David Bradshaw still operates Bradshaw Honey Farms at that location in Visalia, where he lives with his wife, but his bees travel throughout the San Joaquin Valley to pollinate crops and make honey.

He leases his bees to farmers on an annual basis that begins with the almond blossom, dropping his trees in the almond orchards in mid-February. Next, he takes bees to pollinate cherries and prunes, before moving on to oranges, lemons and grapefruit in late spring. From summer to early fall, Bradshaw takes her bees to the Sierras so they can pollinate and make honey from native plants.

Extracting honey is a long, hard, hot job, according to Bradshaw. He and his staff collect honey supers – special boxes that sit on top of the hives and store a lot of honey – for each batch. Using a forklift, they load the heavy supers into Bradshaw’s truck and return to the Visalia area, where they spend “days and days extracting honey.” Bradshaw’s daughter bottles honey to sell.

When his bees aren’t busy pollinating crops, Bradshaw leases pastures from local farmers, mostly ranchers, to hold his hives while the bees rest and build their food stores for the winter. Many are willing to mortgage their land for free honey, Bradshaw said.

“If you’re a beekeeper of any size, you have to rely on the generosity of farmers and ranchers to allow you to put bees on their land,” he said. “You need open spaces, and you need to keep moving them.”

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

In the past decade, “bees just weren’t making much honey,” he said, and as domestic honey production has declined, the market has been flooded with cheap imported honey products.

Bradshaw still sells small batches of honey, although it is no longer a major source of income. He also sells beekeeping supplies and bee feed supplements through the farm’s online store, and supplies honey to other local beekeepers for extra income.

Bradshaw Honey Farms brought in about $1.8 million in revenue last year, according to documents reviewed by CNBC Make It, but after expenses, the business ended the year with a loss. Labor is one of the farm’s biggest expenses, as there are two full-time employees, including his daughter. Rising fuel prices and the cost of essential goods such as bottles of honey have added more financial challenges, he said.

Bradshaw used to live “left over” after all the bills were paid off, but in the past few years he’s had to spend his money, which is now “down to the zippo,” he says. “I always put money back into the business,” he adds. “It’s a legacy I feel responsible for.”

In the bee business, “you depend on Mother Nature,” Bradshaw said, but nature doesn’t always cooperate. If there is not enough rain, plants will not grow, which reduces pollination. If it rains too much, the bees can’t leave their hives to gather food, so Bradshaw has to fill their stores with artificial protein and sugar syrup.

One of Bradshaw’s main concerns is infected larvae, which can weaken or kill bees and transmit deadly diseases such as the paralytic wing virus. He and his staff often treat the bees to prevent larvae, but if the virus gets into the hive, “you’re done,” he says.

Bradshaw estimates that he has lost about 60% of his bees by 2025, in large part due to bacterial diseases caused by larvae. He’s not alone: ​​62% of commercial bee colonies in the US died between June 2024 and February 2025, according to research from the nonprofit bee research organization The Project. Where m. published in April 2025. Beekeepers reported that the main causes of death were insects, viruses, pesticide exposure and malnutrition.

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

Bradshaw says he is concerned about the future of Bradshaw Honey Farms, and the future of the American bee industry as a whole. Many private beekeepers are giving up and selling their operations to large corporations, he says. “They say just forget it, it’s too difficult.”

There is one important requirement to be a beekeeper, according to Bradshaw: “You have to care about the bees.” People who get into beekeeping with the sole purpose of making money usually don’t stay in the business, he says: “Eventually, they just quit.”

But Bradshaw says he can’t imagine doing the same: “I’m a beekeeper inside,” he says. “Maybe I’ll do it until I die.”

Despite the difficult past few years, Bradshaw says he still feels the bee business has been “very good to me.” The best part of his job is “the sense of accomplishment when you make a good harvest of honey, when you have thriving bees,” he said. “There’s just no such thing.”

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