About Us

Our Family

The Bee Barn is a family owned business operated by Chuck Collins, his wife Beverly, and Mother-In-Law Annie Broyles. We were all introduced to beekeeping by Annie's late husband Richard Broyles about 20 years ago. Richard had a thought he might like to have bees to pollinate his garden one summer day. The very next day there was a swarm of honey bees outside Annie's classroom. It seems Annie and Richard had some divine assistance and were meant to be beekeepers. Annie Broyles and Chuck Collins

Richard became a prolific beekeeper with more than 100 colonies, began raising queens, providing pollination services, and producing honey. Annie was in charge of the retail side of the beekeeping endeavor and sold honey and beeswax products at the local farmers market, mostly to pay for Richard's beekeeping habit. Richard went on to become an officer in the Lake Barkley Beekeepers Association and the Kentucky State Beekeepers Association. Bev Collins and Annie Broyles

Our Beekeeping Store

Chuck, Beverly, and Annie opened The Bee Barn in 2013 after recognizing a need for a local beekeeping supplier. Our focus has been to become a regional outlet for local beekeepers who would otherwise travel many hours to purchase supplies. We are grateful for the support of our loyal customers and we love to meet new ones. We are especially proud to know there are new beekeepers today that would not have been otherwise had they not been able to have a local resource.

With the help of good friend and fellow beekeeper Kent Williams, the store opened in April of 2013 selling products at Kent's annual beekeeping school in Wingo, KY. Kent was instrumental in choosing products offered by The Bee Barn and continues to provide beekeeping services, nuc production, and queens for The Bee Barn. Kent even supplies us with his hive tool design that he makes by hand himself.

Our humble beginning is housed in a building built by Annie and Richard as a Honey House and garage. We have since remodeled the garage into our store. The inspiration for our company name comes from a 100 year old tobacco barn on Annie's property we remodeled in 2012. While our store is not in the barn, the barn does hold our beekeeping hardware we use for our own colonies, as warehouse storage for our store, and as a woodworking and hive assembly shop.

2015 marks the birth of our online store. Our hope is it will help spread the word about beekeeping, become a valuable resource for new beekeepers and our loyal customers.

Quality Beekeeping Products

The reason we sell beekeeping equipment is our desire is to provide the best quality beekeeping products at the best value. The Bee Barn is a dealer for several major national beekeeping manufacturers. We offer products our national manufactures when the products offer quality and value to our customers. We continue to expand out supplier base in order to bring quality products and services and reduce the end cost to our customers

Our Honey and Beeswax Products

The beeswax products sold by The Bee Barn are made by Annie Broyles of the Broyles Apiary. Annie has marketed her Bar-B brand honey and wax products over the years and sold locally at farmers markets and other events.

Annie is a retired school teacher and beekeepers wife. She teaches classes in beeswax products at major events such as the Heartland Apiculture Society conference and Bluegrass Beekeeping School. Annie recently won first place and "Best of Show" for her hand-poured beeswax ornaments at the 2014 Eastern Apiculture Society conference.

Our On-Line Store

The bee barn's online store launched in January 2015 with hopes it will help grow our small business and share our passion for beekeeping. We frequently add new products to our online store. We choose products to offer in our online store by evaluating weather they offer good value to our customers. The online store offers items we can ship right to your door, however there are others that can only be picked up at our store and can not be shipped such as honey bees.

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