Life Is Sweet at RemeBees

Starting your own business can be incredibly challenging. Starting it with your spouse?

“Couples go into business and they end up getting divorced,” said Deon Toy.

“Stop!” Deon’s wife Angela called, laughing in the background.

There’s a lot of give-and-take when you’re talking with this entrepreneurial couple, but from their playful teasing and easy back-and-forth, it’s clear their business — and marriage — are buzzing along just fine.

The Toys own and run RemeBees, a beekeeping operation and product business, in Manhattan. What has become a go-to favorite at local farmers markets started as a passion hobby.

“It was a whole family adventure,” Deon said.

The adventure started when the family moved to Manhattan. Deon was serving in the Army and, shortly after moving, had to go on a tour in Korea. Angela held down the fort with their three sons. She found a church she loved and wanted the family to stay in Manhattan when Deon retired. 

The couple talked about their plans. Angela wanted to raise chickens. Chickens require land, Deon pointed out. How about rabbits, she wondered? Deon wasn’t sold. Angela finally countered with bees, which don’t have as large a footprint. They debated.

“If you go learn about bees, we’ll buy bees,” he told her.

A week later she asked where her bees were and he asked whether she had learned about them.

“Honey, will you learn so you can teach me?,” she replied.

So, Deon attended the University of Montana’s beekeeping program and the couple got some bees.

From there, they started experimenting with honeys and home remedies.

Infused Honey

“The whole thing started with infused honey for tea,” Angela said.

Angela grew up in Germany, which has a robust tea culture. She longed for a certain kind of tea you could only find in Germany. Occasionally her family would make the trek to buy it and ship it to her in the United States, but it was getting too hard on them. She wanted to try to replicate it somehow.

“I wondered what would happen if I tried to mix the ingredients with the honey instead of making a black tea mix,” she said.

When she added infused honey to the tea, it worked. This was how the first RemeBees infused honey was born.

They tried different recipes and shared some of their infused honeys with friends at their church and local American Legion. The honeys were a hit.

The Remedies

The remedy side of the house started as a way to help Deon with some health issues. The couple is quick to point out they make no specific health claims on their remedies. But for them, the proof is in the pudding, er, balm.

“The home remedies started with me being in pain a lot,” Deon said.

Angela wanted to help. Growing up, her family and neighbors were always concocting various balms and remedies, so she started researching ingredients and recipes to help Deon.

“I’d lay in bed at night for hours with my phone and do research. It’s so cool to find out what the plants around us can do. There’s so much out there — it’s amazing,” she said. “But, translating things I need from German to English is a whole other thing. ‘Calendula’ to English is ‘marigold,’ but it’s the wrong thing. They breed marigold from calendula, but it’s different. There’s a lot of research.”

Her research paid off. Angela’s balm was one of the only things that helped Deon’s pain.

“I wanted to see if I could help other people, too,” she said.

To sell their products at a farmers market, they’d have to create an official business. They brainstormed as a family until, by accident, two people spoke at the same time. “Remedies” and “bees” became “RemeBees.”

“RemeBees is a family name and the logo was made by our family,” Deon said. “When people buy our products, they become part of our family, too.”

The Bees

Of course, none of this would have been possible without the bees. Deon manages five hives, which technically makes him a hobbyist. He’s been thinking about adding more, but he likes the balance of beekeeping and running the business.

“The biggest challenge is to not go overboard,” he said. “When you start out, it’s recommended you do two hives. If you enjoy it, then you add a few more hives. Before you know it, you own ten hives and it starts to become work. Restricting yourself is probably the hardest thing.”

Deon loves the work, although it took him time to get used to it.

“When I first started, a bee would sting me and my first reaction was to be mad, which is typical for the human thought process,” he said. “Over time, you learn to respect them. They’re the hardest working beings on the planet.”

It takes one worker bee its entire life to produce 1/12 of a teaspoon of honey. There are more than 64 teaspoons of honey in a pound. (If you’re doing the math, that’s the life’s work of about 768 worker bees.) On average, one hive can produce 60 to 100 pounds of honey per year, depending on the location. (If you’re still following along with the math, that’s roughly 46,000 to 76,800 bees per hive.) The bees also produce wax and propolis.

What Deon can’t produce from his own hives, he sources locally. He’ll drive within a two-and-a-half-hour radius to buy additional honey, wax and propolis for the remedy products. And that’s by design. The hives take a certain amount of work and Deon has found a balance that gives him time to help with the remedy side of the business. The more hives, the more time away from other things.

“As a beekeeper, you have a responsibility. If you’re not willing to put the work in, don’t even start,” he said. “For me, we have the right balance between hives and RemeBees.”

The Business

The couple splits the work between the two wings — Angela handles remedies and Deon handles the honey. They help each other out, but if a decision must be made, the person in charge of that aspect of the business makes the call.

During the warmer months from April to October, the hives are busy and require a lot more attention from Deon. That coincides with market season, when Angela is busy processing, packaging and replenishing their products. It’s a lot of work and it doesn’t leave much time for anything else.

“November to March, I can read, knit, or do other things. But not April to October,” Angela said.

They started making their home remedies in October 2017 and officially launched the business in February 2018. Through RemeBees, they’ve been able to share their passion with others.

“It’s the most gratifying thing when customers come back and say, ‘Nothing else works. Your stuff is the only thing that helps,’” Angela said. “It fills your tank so much, it’s amazing.”

Angela’s only gripe is that she still doesn’t have her chickens.

“All I wanted was some chickens,” she joked. “I got the rabbits I wanted and I got the bees I wanted, but no chickens.”

“I built a woodshed to get my wood out of the weather and told her she could have half the shed for rabbits. She took the whole thing. Now I don’t have a woodshed,” Deon countered.

That’s marriage for you. And business. Deon said it’s always been 50-50. When he was a soldier in the Army, she looked after everything at home as a military spouse. That was a partnership, just like RemeBees.

“I’m just grateful for where we’re at right now. We’re happy. The wife’s happy. We wouldn’t want anything different than where we are,” Deon said. “I thank God for all of it. It’s through His grace we have all this.”

To learn more about RemeBees, follow them on Facebook or Instagram. If you spot them at a farmers market, stop by. They’d love to share some free samples with you. And if you’re not nearby, you can order from their online shop through From the Land of Kansas. They sell raw, creamed and infused honey, home remedies, beauty products, candles, and more.