Chaparral Mountain Honey Co.

12/20/2025

As we close out 2025 and look ahead to the first anniversary of the Eaton Fire, we have some good news to report. Bruce has purchased a new (used) truck to replace the one that was stolen. It's a 2019 F-350 that he found in Scottsdale.

This week he took delivery of a lot of bee boxes and frames (aka honey supers). He's anticipating making some honey, hopefully orange, in the spring. Still to be determined is where he'll extract the honey and with what equipment!

Lastly, we signed a lease agreement for a rental house in Altadena for the next year. We are very grateful to our friends who have given us a home during the last year but it is time to move on.

We are so grateful for your help as we've struggled and met the challenges of losing our home, our beekeeping business, and our community in Altadena. May 2026 bring better things to us all!

12/06/2025

Best laid plans...after months of working towards living on our land in an RV, we had a big setback when we discovered that our RV had been colonized by packrats. The damage to the wiring was so extensive that our insurance company totaled the rig. Who knew? Not us. So we are back to square one; now we are looking for a rental house, hopefully in Altadena.

On the beekeeping side, anticipating making some honey in the spring, Bruce purchased a tablesaw and is cutting the wood to make parts for bee boxes. He will also purchase some new woodware, but he likes making some things himself. He's also close to purchasing an old Ford F-250. Yes, he wants a truck just like the one he lost - nothing new for him!

As we approach the one-year anniversary of the catastrophic Eaton Fire, we keep in our hearts everyone who has been affected. Be gentle with yourself and give grace to those whose tempers might be short. Tears are never far below the surface. We will never forget.

We are Bruce and Nancy Steele, owners of Chaparral Mountain H… Nancy Steele needs your support for Help Bruce & Nancy Rebuild Their Beekeeping Business & Home

12/06/2025

Best laid plans...after months of working towards living on our land in an RV, we had a big setback when we discovered that our RV had been colonized by packrats. The damage to the wiring was so extensive that our insurance company totaled the rig. Who knew? Not us. So we are back to square one; now we are looking for a rental house, hopefully in Altadena.

On the beekeeping side, anticipating making some honey in the spring, Bruce purchased a tablesaw and is cutting the wood to make parts for bee boxes. He will also purchase some new woodware, but he likes making some things himself. He's also close to purchasing an old Ford F-250. Yes, he wants a truck just like the one he lost - nothing new for him!

As we approach the one-year anniversary of the catastrophic Eaton Fire, we keep in our hearts everyone who has been affected. Be gentle with yourself and give grace to those whose tempers might be short. Tears are never far below the surface. We will never forget.

We are Bruce and Nancy Steele, owners of Chaparral Mountain H… Nancy Steele needs your support for Help Bruce & Nancy Rebuild Their Beekeeping Business & Home

10/29/2025

Update: they found our stolen truck but it was stripped. Everything removable was removed. Beekeeping equipment they won’t be able to fence (who would buy an old bee suit or smoker off the street?). Even the record book we use to record mileage for our business. Why??

It survived the fire but didn’t make it even to the one year anniversary.

10/27/2025

A man and his truck....The night of the fire Bruce managed to save his two work trucks, the F250 and F550 with the bee loader. In the early hours of last Tuesday, heartless thieves stole the F250, Bruce's workhorse for the past 20 years. We came back from Arizona and the truck just wasn't there. The Sheriffs believe our stolen truck was used to steal a trailer full of emergency gear. How ironic.

The truck was more than just a truck, it was Bruce's trusted partner in the bee business. Twenty years, over 250,000 miles, and now it's gone. Insurance won't give us much for such an old truck and now we have this added burden of buying a replacement.

https://www.gofundme.com/manage/help-bruce-and-nancy-rebuild-their-beekeeping-business/updates

10/10/2025

Honey Lovers - we posted an update to our GFM page. Here is the link in case you might want to read it.

We are Bruce and Nancy Steele, owners of Chaparral Mountain H… Nancy Steele needs your support for Help Bruce & Nancy Rebuild Their Beekeeping Business & Home

05/20/2025

Happy World Bee Day!

05/19/2025

Another Bug Fair weekend is over. We were so thankful to see you and grateful for your support. We loved the wide-eyed stares and excited questions from small children (and some adults) seeing bees 🐝 for the first time. We loved all the conversations with people considering starting beekeeping. 🍯 We loved seeing YOU again, who come every year to get a taste of sweetness. Eighty lucky people took home a gallon of our honey. Truly we wish we had had more but it was all we could put together this year, less than five months after the Eaton Fire. 🔥 We sold out of everything we had brought. We are planning for next year already as we rebuild with your support. We hope to have Orange Blossom honey, and maybe some honey from the summer fire follower blooms in the hills. See you next time!

05/17/2025

We made it! We couldn’t miss the Bug Fair.

05/13/2025

We hope to see you this weekend at the Bug Fair! We will have honey for sale in 1-gal quantities only, plus honey sticks and honees, and these beautiful posters to help us raise funds for restoration.

04/29/2025

As you know, all of our hives burned in the Eaton Fire, including our hand-built four-frame observation beehives. Bruce is busily building new ones for this year's Bug Fair. We will be there!

03/11/2025

We have always had some bees on the property, even when we had no beehives. There are bees in the foothills! Here is one that spent time wandering around on Bruce's bee suit while he was working the other day.