Meet the Beekeeper

Stan Moulton started beekeeping in 1995. He is a fourth generation beekeeper. He and his family build beekeeping equipment, keep bees, extract honey, and sell the honey. He teaches beekeeping classes locally to beginning beekeepers, which focus on sustainable beekeeping. He hosts annual beeswax candle-making workshops and Pysanka egg workshops using the beeswax candles. He also arc welded bees and honeycomb onto the rack of his bee truck and builds hand-carved furniture from beehive boxes. He amazingly combines art with sustainable beekeeping.

The Proposal

He even proposed in bees. He spelled, “Alicia, Marry Me? Stan,” on the driveway in honey and wax on a warm summer day and the bees flocked to the site, spelling the proposal. Alicia said, “Yes!” and they were married in 2007.

Alicia Moulton has been working with Stan at The Honey Company since they married in 2007. She is in charge of the business and website part of The Honey Company. Stan and Alicia are the parents of two awesome kids and loves to homeschool them. She has a Master’s Degree in Agriculture, focused on range beef cattle nutrition, but now applies her ag knowledge to honeybees. She always has a project (or several) going and believes she can make or do anything.

Generations

1840-1932 Niels and Christine Andersen

1882-1982 Arthur and Clara Andersen

1938-2016 Clark and LeArta Moulton

Current-Stan and Alicia Moulton

Current-The next generation

Dates reflect lifespan of the beekeeping husbands.

Niels and Christine Andersen are Stan’s great grandparents. They immigrated to Utah from Denmark. In 1890, Christine Andersen traded a hand-woven carpet with neighbors across the street in Emery, Utah for a hive of bees. That’s how it all started. The beekeeping operation grew until it was more profitable than farming.

They used this horse-drawn cart to truck bees around 1935. They would park the horses some distance away, pull the cart by hand to the hives, load the supers, and then pull the wagon to the horses again and move it after dark. At some point they probably converted this cart to be pulled by a truck.

Here is an apiary in Emery, Utah, about 1915. Noticed the covered flatbed truck, honey-extracting house, and beekeeper suited for action.

Stan’s maternal grandfather, Arthur Andersen left a legacy of beekeeping. At age 92, he was featured in the American Bee Journal after 81 years of beekeeping. He kept up to 400 colonies of bees. In the article he said, “One year we harvested over 36,000 pounds of honey. That amounts to 600 five gallon cans. At that time we sold a 60-pound can of honey for less than $5.” Some of these photos were featured in the article.

Stan’s father, Clark Moulton, Jr. learned to keep bees from father-in-law Arthur Andersen after marrying LeArta. He kept about 13 hives as a hobby.

Stan is now teaching the 5th generation to keep bees. They especially like to help with queen rearing and honey tasting.

Photos were taken years ago, when kids were each 2 years old.