Get to Know the Bees
We are a small family-run business that tends beehives in backyards in Seattle and all over King County to bring you ultra local pure raw honey, bottled by neighborhood. Want to learn more about bees? Become a hive host, attend a beekeeping experience or join a class!
Our Products
You can live in the city and still have honey harvested from your neighborhood! We sell honey from neighborhoods all over Seattle and Shoreline. In addition to bottled honey, you will find tasty creamed honey and beautiful eco-friendly homemade beeswax candles. And if you want to harvest your own honey, we also sell bees.
Featured Products
Our Team
It's a group effort to take care of all these honeybees and make tasty local honey.
Peter
Co-Owner & Head Beekeeper
The vision and hard work behind the honeybees. Peter loves to teach and share his knowledge of these beautiful insects he's been fascinated by since his youth.
Amy Beth
Co-Owner
The other half of Rainy Day Bees. Find Amy Beth at the farmers market, sharing on our Instagram about gardening, or designing our next product.
FAQs
Our neighborhood honeys are from backyards in the greater Seattle area, all labeled by neighborhood so you know their exact location. Our farm and forestry honeys give the closest landmark!
A few of our honeys like Nordic Spiced Creamed Honey and Honey Hot Cocoa are made in collaboration with other local beekeepers. All of the honey is from Western Washington.
There is no organic certification process for honey in the United States, and therefore it is illegal to call honey that was produced in the United States "organic"! If you see honey labeled "organic" it's either from another country or mislabeled.
That said, our honey is all raw, unfiltered, and all the things you want out of sustainable local honey (and yes, we follow general organic practices in our beekeeping, though those are not officially defined in the United States).
We always do free-local pickup at our workshop in Shoreline, WA and we ship all over the US! From June-October you can find us at Shoreline and Magnolia Farmers Markets.
You can also find us in some stores. You can find our stockists list here.
You may not know this, but 2 out of 3 of these terms don't actually have an official definition! Because transparency is important to us, here is how we define these:
- Pure (this is the one that is legally defined): Our honey is pure. It has not been adulterated or cut with sugar, corn syrup, or any other product. If we've added anything at all to the honey (such as in our Honey Hot Cocoa), we'll tell you!
- Raw: Honey is generally considered to be raw and for the enzymes and flavors to be intact as long as the temperature of the honey is kept below 120 degrees. That feels high to us, so we bottle our honey at the same temperature the bees keep it at: 95 degrees Fahrenheit (yes, the bees keep the hive at a nice toasty 95 degrees).
- Unfiltered: Our honey is strained to remove chunks of beeswax and other hive debris that most people don't want in their honey. All of the good stuff is still there. Some jars may have a very small amount of foam and/or sand-like wax and propolis particles on top. It's perfectly safe to eat.
- Local: Local means that the honey is from where we say it's from. If it's from the Fremont Neighborhood in Seattle, then ALL of the honey is from hives in Seattle's Fremont Neighborhood. If it's from a specific county, then ALL of the honey is from that county. We don't play games with local.