Courtesy of Dave Rickling

Rickling’s stand at De Anza College Farmers’ Market, selling jars of honey and honey sticks alongside other vendors.

At farmers’ markets in Cupertino, San Jose and Palo Alto, Dave Rickling sells honey jars, honey sticks and beeswax candles for his business, Dave’s Backyard Bees. 

For Saratoga High students, the most accessible place to find Rickling’s honey is at De Anza College Farmers’ Market, which is open year-round every Sunday from 9 a.m.-1 p.m.

Rickling started his beekeeping hobby during the COVID-19 pandemic in an attempt to get his children out of the house. 

Initially, he set up a swarm trap to catch bees as an at-home science project at a local park in Palo Alto. The goal was to have his three children visit the park every day and observe the trap by journaling and drawing. What began as a two-week break from school, however, became a year-long lockdown and extended dive into beekeeping. 

Rickling taught himself how to manage the hives through watching dozens of YouTube tutorials and tapping into other online resources. While swarm traps typically catch one swarm a season, Rickling’s trap caught three swarms in a couple months.

After catching those swarms, he harvested his first honey batch of around 12 gallons. Not knowing what to do with the extra honey, Rickling posted pictures of it on Nextdoor, a neighborhood networking app. 

To Rickling’s surprise, his post garnered huge interest from neighbors who wanted to purchase his honey. 

Said Rickling: “It sort of went viral. We hadn’t even put [the honey] into jars yet. We hadn’t even figured out what we were going to charge for. We sold all of [the honey], and we even had other people still wanting to buy some, so that started what has become Dave’s Backyard Bees.”

As a result of that experience, Rickling decided to leave his professional tech job as a program manager at TuSimple in order to fully focus on developing his bee business.

Now, Dave’s Backyard Bees boasts over 30 apiaries with over 150 hives, spanning from Woodside to South San Jose. Most of the hives are located in backyards of his family and friends. Others belong to people who have hives on their property but do not manage the hives themselves, so they hire Rickling to maintain the hives and pay him a monthly fee. Rickling also offers beehive removal services, safely relocating unwanted hives from properties. 

Rickling sells his honey alongside beeswax candles at De Anza Farmers’ Market in Cupertino, Rose Garden Farmers’ Market in San Jose and V.A. Palo Alto Farmers’ Market. Additionally, he sells his honey jars at a 24/7 self-service honey stand in Palo Alto.

Many of his customers are attracted to his honey products because of their richer taste and the health benefits of raw honey. Raw honey contains residual pollen from the environment, so when people consume raw honey they ingest this pollen. Many customers have also reported significant allergy relief after a few months.

On top of producing and managing honey products, Rickling also teaches children who visit his observation beehives at farmers’ markets about the bee life cycle and colony structure. 

“It’s an opportunity to educate kids, and then you see them coming back week after week and pulling their parents over to tell them about it. It really warms the heart,” Rickling said.

For Rickling, the hardest part of managing his beekeeping business is scaling up and adapting as the business grows. Specifically, he notes that his method to support and build the business in previous years has become less applicable as the business expands. Year by year, Rickling’s beehive capacity doubles; currently, he manages over 150 hives, but he isn’t sure if he can continue to double the number hives while still properly managing such a large amount. 

Looking ahead, Rickling hopes to sell his honey at local grocery stores to expand while still keeping a local focus. Whether it’s selling honey, maintaining hives or teaching children about bees, Rickling is proud of the difference he’s making — both environmentally and locally.

“We owe so much to bees and other pollinating insects,” he said. “The common average statement is that every third bite of food us humans consume is sourced from some pollinating insect. Without them, we would all be dead because we wouldn’t have enough food. They’re a pretty amazing blessing.”