With her blond hair whipping in the wind, smiling 4-year-old Phoenix held a jar of honey while asking customers, “Want to buy some?”
Phoenix and her father, Timothy Lund, 32, recently set up shop in a covered trailer near Home Depot in Apple Valley to sell a variety of pure, raw honey flavors and items.
“We operate Lund Family Hive, and we get our honey from my big brother’s best friend, Brandon Bouye,” said Lund, a full-time electrician who lives in Hesperia. “I’ve known him since I was 13, and he’s the honey expert.”
Lund told the Daily Press that Bouye does commercial honey sales, but also sells directly to his family, with honey coming from hives from “Redlands all the way to North Dakota.”
‘Bees at Work’
Lund’s trailer is filled with jars of honey, stuffed bee toys, bee cutouts, a bee license plate frame, and a yellow and black sign covered with bee print that reads “Lund Bees at Work.”
Some of the bee and honey brands include unfiltered purple sage, orange blossom, bee pollen and wooden honey drizzlers/drippers.
Lund said he and his family will buy 55 gallons of honey at a time, then filter, jar and label them for sale.
“I’ve been doing this on and off since 2008,” said Lund, just before several customers approached his trailer.
‘American Honey’
Bouye is a U.S. migratory beekeeper and star of the new family reality series “American Honey,” streaming on Tubi TV.
Bouye is also the developer of the Pollination Network mobile app, designed to help farmers and growers find bees and beekeepers.
The California Department of Food and Agriculture also recognized Bouye’s app on the state’s website.
“Strengthening the grower-beekeeper relationship doesn’t just improve a tiny corner of the economy,” said Bouye, in a 2019 press release. “It protects the environment, and it puts food on the table for people across the country.”
Lund said big farms bring in beehives onto their property, with bee pollinating 80% of crops around the world.
The government-based National Library of Medicine said bees play a crucial role in crop pollination alongside other animal pollinators such as bats, birds, beetles, moths, hoverflies, wasps, thrips and butterflies, and other vectors, such as wind and water.
Benefits of honey
Emily Rollins of Apple Valley told the Daily Press she adds raw honey to her oatmeal every morning as an antioxidant and to help her “reduce asthma attacks.”
“As a child, my grandma and mother would add honey to my tea or Cream of Wheat,” Rollins said. “They told me it was a health food. When I got older, I kept eating it and it sure has helped me.”
Honey is a “nutritious, healthy, and natural food, to which antioxidant, anti-inflammatory, and antimicrobial properties have been attributed, mainly due to its content of phenolic compounds,” according to the National Library of Medicine.
Based on the analysis of 48 clinical trials published between 1985 and 2022, the study revealed, “More beneficial effects of honey intake than no or negative effects on different cardiovascular and metabolic risk factors, glucose tolerance, mucositis caused by chemo-radiotherapy, cough in children and wound healing, among others have been observed.”
The U.S. Department of Agriculture said scientists, in collaboration with the National Honey Board, are examining the way honey affects the gut microbial community and possibly assists it in resisting infection by the foodborne pathogen ETEC, a form of E. coli.
Setting up shop
Lund and his family usually set up trailers on weekends in Hesperia at Lime Street and 3rd Avenue, Lemon Street and I Avenue, and Peach Avenue and E Avenue.
In Apple Valley, the family has also set up shop near the corner of Bear Valley Road and Apple Valley Road, and Rock Springs Road and Deep Creek Road.
For more information, visit the Lund Family Hive on Instagram at instagram.com/lund_family_hive, call 760-217-2727, or email lundfamily2024@gmail.com.
Daily Press reporter Rene Ray De La Cruz may be reached at RDeLaCruz@VVDailyPress.com. Follow him on X @DP_ReneDeLaCruz
This article originally appeared on Victorville Daily Press: Lund Family Hive busy as a bee, selling raw honey in the High Desert
Reporting by Rene Ray De La Cruz, Victorville Daily Press / Victorville Daily Press
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