Courtesy of Elizabeth Pattullo

Pattulo poses at Silver Lining Honey’s stand at the Santana Row farmers’ market.

Although Silicon Valley is now known as a bustling tech metropolis, it began as a landscape of untainted rolling green hills. In the mid 1800s, the grassy hills gradually transformed into fruit orchards and vineyards filled with mouth-watering cherries and fleshy French prunes as settlers came to the area.  

It remained that way for decades unless mass housing tracts elbowed out most agriculture in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s. Today only some of that agriculture remains, and it is on a small scale like the kind run by junior Elizabeth Pattullo and her family.

 The family’s beekeeping business, Silver Lining Honey, was started as a distraction during the COVID-19 pandemic when Pattullo’s dad, Douglas Pattullo, found a swarm of bees for sale through Nextdoor — an app connecting local residents together. Before they knew it, the Pattullos had more than enough honey for themselves, and started giving it away, as a supplemental source of income. In fact the business got its name due to its beginnings: It was their silver lining of the pandemic. Since its founding in 2020, Silver Linings has turned a profit of nearly $24,000. 

For the Patullos, beekeeping has become an integral part of their daily lives. 

“The thing that makes beekeeping the most different from everything else I do is the unpredictability,” Elizabeth said. “You are relying on a completely different species to do almost all the work. You can do a lot to try and influence the outcome, but even if you do everything right, you can’t always control whether your hives survive or swarm or produce honey, which can be frustrating when it doesn’t work out how you want it to.”

Generally, Douglas acts as the primary beekeeper, while her mother, Manuela helps when the business is busy during harvest season.  Elizabeth helps out with the beekeeping when her mom is away at the farmer’s market, but also has a more consistent role as their social media manager. They also host a booth at the Santana Row Farmers’ Market on Wednesday afternoons to sell their wares. Depending on the season, each bottle of honey’s price changes. For example 13 oz of fall honey costs $16, but 13oz of summer honey costs $14. 

Every weekend, Elizabeth’s parents check on the bees to ensure the colony is thriving. When they see the bees have made enough honey, they harvest it. 

The harvesting process is painstaking. The Pattullos begin by taking the top layer of wax — also known as cappings — off the honeycomb frames. They then put the frames of honey into an extractor, which uses centrifugal force to spin the frames fast enough to get the honey. Once it’s extracted, it’s packaged and ready to be sold online or at the farmer’s market.

Harvesting occurs once a season. As of now, Silver Lining Honey sells fall honey, which has the greatest viscosity; spring honey, which is characterized by its runny texture and summer honey, the most flavorful of the three.

Because the bees fly much less during the winter — only on the occasional warmer days — the business does not sell winter honey. However, the weather changes not only the bees’ productivity but also what they do. 

The family’s hive consists of worker bees, drone bees and the queen bee. The worker bees are all females and handle the tasks in the hive. On the other hand, drone bees are all males and their only goal is to mate with a queen from another hive; they don’t make honey or defend the hive. Finally, the queen bee is in charge of reproduction, laying up to 3,000 eggs a day to ensure population growth.

However, during the winter, the queen stops laying eggs and the jobs of the worker bees change — they have to make sure the hive survives the winter by keeping it warm.  Over the winter, the bees, especially on rainy days, primarily stay in the hive. 

According to their website, the Pattullos leave honey in the hive for the bees to draw from over winter. The bees put propolis — a natural resinous mixture to seal and protect their hives — in places where they feel draft coming in. To help the bees, the Pattullos also insulate and protect the hive with cardboard and bricks. Ultimately, they say the beekeeping business has introduced the family to unique experiences and helped connect them to their local tight-knit community of consumers and vendors. 

“My favorite part is getting to eat the honey, especially right after we harvest it when we have a lot of cappings that are covered in honey, so you can kind of eat them like honeycomb,” Elizabeth said. “It’s also fun to go along to farmers markets because you get to meet the people in stands on either side of our stand and it’s just a really unique experience.”