Mike Campbell

As co-owner, with Judy Campbell, of  Campbell’s Gold Honey Farm and Meadery, we operate a diversified 8 acre farm operation, including an apiary, in south west Abbotsford.  We offer off-farm honey bee pollination services to local growers and focus on honey and honey wine producton.

As retired professionals we set out to have an active and healthy lifestyle in retirement.  We have certainly achieved this goal…and then some!

Mike, who retired from teaching high school after 35+ years, took up hobby beekeeping about 17 years ago, long before he retired.  As retirement approached and in consultation with Judy, the decision was made to combine Mike’s beekeeping and honey wine hobby activities, with Judy’s love of the outdoors, gardening and the arts, to develop what is today a thriving agricultural, agri-tourism business.  Mike has been active in both the Surrey and Langley Bee Clubs and served a term as second vice-president of the B.C. Honey Producters Association.  Over the last 3 years, Mike has participated in research to enhance honey bee health, and results have been submitted for review and publication.

Judy is a retired federal public service manager.  Fear of bees when we first started beekeeping was the biggest obstacle for Judy who reluctantly joined Mike in the beekeeping hobby at the outset.  Mike being the persuasive type, encouraged Judy to take the Ministry of Agriculture’s basic beekeeping course with him. Part of that course had a lab component where participants were a stung in a controlled environment to determine if they had allergies.  It is there that Judy realized that her fear of bees was due to the irrational fear of being stung, and once intentionally stung, she understood that her fear was unfounded.  Slowly Judy overcame her fear of bees, and focused on honey production, product development and sales.

Mike completed the Master Beekeepers Course and Judy completed this same course some years later, as she joined Mike in retirement.

Although Mike is the Apiary Manager and primary apiarist, we work together in our queen rearing and nuc production endeavours.  We are still playing, working, and learning together.

Our passion includes bee education and being socially and environmentally responsible. Both of us have graduate degrees in learning, so in retirement we wanted to continue to learn and facilitate the learning of others. We provide educational tours and activities, and participate in off-farm community events.  Our bee educational tours have involved all ages from 3 yrs to seniors up to 100 years old.  We started a junior beekeeper week-long, summer day camp for ages 10-14, 3 years ago.  In addition to the existing program, for 2012 we are introducing an additional week-long advanced junior beekeepers day camp for those who actually want to start their own hive.  We feel it is critical to encourage future generations to learn about apiculture, an often neglected aspect of agriculture.

The farm is a licenced  Meadery (honey winery),  producing a variety of honey wines, including ancient mead, melomels (honey/fruit wines), pyment (honey/grape wine) and more.

Our on-farm country store opened in 2007 and has provided a location for local consumers from which to buy honeys, honey wines, and other products from the bee hive such as beeswax soaps, candles, and polishes

We also strategically market our honey products to high end markets and stores in the Fraser Valley and in the Caribou.

The honey farm employs 5 employees throughout the year and we attribute much of our success to the group of committed staff, who assist in the apiary and who offer a warm old fashioned country welcome to all who visit the country store.