Woods Bee Co. is located at 919 West Reynolds Ave. in Centralia.
Woods Bee Co. owners Alan and Beverly Woods pose for a photo next to honey inside their store Tuesday afternoon in Centralia.
Bees fly into and around a Woods Bee Co. box Tuesday afternoon in Centralia.
Woods Bee Co. owners Beverly and Alan Woods pose for a photo next to a bee box outside their store Tuesday afternoon in Centralia.
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Over 50 wooden boxes, many stacked on top of one another, dot the forested landscape around a large house, a small retail store and an adjoining workshop under construction on West Reynolds Avenue.
Docile honey bees lazily buzz around this scene, unbothered by the construction workers as they travel back and forth between various wild plants and trees, pollinating as they go, before returning to their hives in one of the wooden boxes.
It’s the site of Woods Bee Co., owned by Alan Woods and his wife Beverly Woods, and it’s a business they never thought they be in.
Wood began his life in Texas, moved to Washington and retired after a military career. Beverly grew up in Adna and was a preschool teacher before the COVID-19 pandemic. Their first step toward beekeeping started when Alan’s daughter bought him a spot in a beekeeping class. Before he knew it he had a hive of his own.
But the business started when the Woods’ friend caught a swarm one day and they learned the price they paid for the wooden box that the bees are placed in. Alan and Beverly decided they would start buying boxes in bulk and then sell them to people at a reasonable price.
So Woods Bee Co. began in their humble garage in 2014. And when they needed to expand in April 2019, they moved their business from one garage to another. Well, at least the retail store.
The Woods now have over 50 hives and sell raw honey, cream honey, comb honey, wax, candles and much more. They also sell everything a prospective beekeeper would need, including growing boxes, queen-rearing kits, books, bee-friendly plant seeds and beekeeper suits.
‘It’s not really a living, it’s a lifestyle, taking care of the bees,” Beverly said.
Alan, who is a certified master beekeeper in both Washington and Montana, also teaches certification classes. Those started with on-site workshop classes every other weekend in 2019, where each student gets to work on their own hive and learn the ins and outs of keeping a healthy bee population. The classes are still offered but the Woods have had to switch to weekly Zoom classes online due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
“Most people learn by hands-on instead of by book,” Beverly said. “Books and YouTube are great, but hands-on is so much better.”
They also do visits to peoples’ houses to check out their hives and offer suggestions and tips, including how to help them make sure their hive survives winter. This is a business but that isn’t the sole focus for the Woods. They aren’t out to get rich from beekeeping.
“We’re actually more about the beekeepers and the bees,” Alan said. “Most people try to make beekeepers or train you how to beekeep. We believe if we teach you about the bees, what they do, how they live, what they like, then you’ll be a better beekeeper because you’ll be able to support them better.”
Honey bees only have a short lifespan, about 45 days, and Alan has been working on maximizing a bee’s potential before they are gone. That includes knowing when to put empty wood frames in the hives near the young bees so they can make wax at the early stages of their lives.
“When you understand their process it helps them because for one, bees work until they die,” Alan said. “They want to work. So when you don’t do anything to your hive and there’s too much honey and nectar and you’re not shifting it so the bees can work, they leave.”
And the bees have given back to Alan, who is a pastor at Trinity Christian Fellowship in Chehalis, by exchanging bigger-picture life lessons in return for his gentle beekeeping. With honey bees having such a short lifespan, each stage of their life is filled with a different duty, all building toward a future they’ll never live in or benefit from. Their selflessness is something Alan has connected with over the years.
“Each hive is a society, a culture,” Alan said. “They always work for something they never see. They always work for the next generation of bees. And they pass that culture to the next bees in a short amount of time. It’s like your father trying to teach you how to be a man in 45 days. To me, that’s fascinating, because if we could live like the bees and we cared about our next generation, rather than worrying about ourselves, I think we’d be like the bees. We’d flourish.”
More Information on Wood Bee Co.
Owners: Alan and Beverly Woods
Location: 919 W. Reynolds Ave., Centralia
Phone: 360-623-3359
Website: woodsbeeco.com
Social media: Facebook.com/woodsbeeco.
Hours: noon to 5 p.m.,
Monday, Wednesday, Friday; 10 a.m. to 2 p.m., Saturday
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Reporter Eric Trent can be reached at etrent@chronline.com. Visit chronline.com/business for more coverage of local businesses.
