Busy Bees
Honey Company keeps things sweet in Midtown
By Gabrielle Myers
August 2026
Run by three generations of women, Sacramento Honey Company reflects a beehive’s matriarchal power.
Pam Hill and her daughter Courtney manage the business. Pam’s parents Nancy and Fred Stewart started the company as a beekeeping supplier in 1985.
Nancy ran things for several decades. About six years ago, the family transitioned and stopped carrying bee-making supplies in favor of more bee-made products. In 2024, Pam took over with Courtney’s help when Nancy retired.
Pam grew up in the store and helped her father tend to more than 100 hives. As a child she says she “loved to talk about bees and would just sit and watch them come in and out of the hive.”
She continues, “I love that they are female run and if the worker bees don’t do their work, they get thrown out of the hive. It’s like pull your weight or you are out of here!”
The Midtown shop offers local wildflower honey and flavored assortments. Customers buzz in for royal jelly, bee pollen, propolis and beeswax candles. The store, packed with soap and skincare-making supplies, serves craftspeople with raw ingredients.
The store sells local wildflower honey harvested by a group Pam has worked with for years. The local honey is deep, rich, sweet and slightly caramel in flavor. It’s delicious by the spoonful, mixed with tea or drizzled on sliced summer melon with prosciutto.
Customers find California honey and varieties from Oregon, such as eucalyptus, Sierra mountain wildflower, blackberry, sage and star thistle. Buckwheat honey once came from California but Pam says she found a better product from Nebraska.
Pam prefers light, mild honey. But she notes, “A lot of people have been getting into darker varieties like buckwheat because they have more antioxidants.” Lighter honeys are produced in the spring, darker in fall.
Pam believes her products deliver health benefits. When she was pregnant with Courtney, she had royal jelly every day—a regimen Pam thinks enabled her to have her daughter a week early in perfect health. Her mom took royal jelly every afternoon to stay awake and alert on the job.
The family keeps two hives in the back of the store for honeycomb production and demonstration hives. Sacramento residents can legally keep two hives in their yards.
Attending events, such as the California Honey Festival, the State Fair, ALL Women Celebration and other festivals, keeps the women busy.
Hill’s parents offered beekeeping and mead-making classes. Times change. Pam and Courtney are working on developing skincare lotion and candle-making classes.
When Courtney was a baby, Pam kept her in a playpen in the back while she worked. Now Courtney greets customers who recall seeing her playing in the back of the store. As a new mother, Courtney carries on the family tradition and love for everything bee created and inspired.
For information, visit sacramentohoneycompany.com or the store at 2110 X St., (916) 451-2337.
Gabrielle Myers can be reached at gabriellemyers11@gmail.com. Her latest book of poetry, “Go Forth: Lose Yourself Into Life,” is available at finishinglinepress.com. Follow us on Facebook and Instagram: @insidesacramento.
