If you're driving a little too fast down North Winooski Avenue in Burlington, you might miss the sign: a little wooden board hanging over a residential porch adorned with flowerpots. Double-sided with illustrations of bees and hives, it reads, "Honey for Sale."
Beyond that, no telltale signs of an apiary are visible from the street. Intrigued, this reporter had to head around back to catch the buzz. There, a backyard oasis teems with life — a koi pond, a chicken coop, blackberry and raspberry bushes, a butterfly bush, and four busy beehives.
Those hives produce anywhere from 200 to 500 pounds of honey each year, according to homeowner Randy Sightler, who's been quietly beekeeping and jarring and selling honey for about 13 years. While he's had the occasional vendor approach him about wholesaling, he keeps his backyard operation low-key. The honey is available to those who take time to seek it out, responding to Sightler's posts on Front Porch Forum or simply showing up at his front door.
"You're either doing it commercially or just as a hobby," Sightler said. "We sell some of the honey and give some of it away, so I guess we fall in between those two."
Sightler, 65, is a retired social worker. He got all the necessary beekeeping equipment — bee boxes and hive frames — 15 years ago through his wife, Elizabeth, and took it up as a hobby with guidance from the Vermont Beekeepers Association. Elizabeth's grandfather built the wooden parts of the hives by hand, and her father was a beekeeper for about 10 years before he became allergic to honeybee stings.
Sightler himself said he usually gets stung once a day. "I don't mind the stings as much as the rest of my family," he joked.
Besides being occasionally painful, beekeeping can be expensive — for Sightler, it runs $600 to $1,000 a year. But he said he's found a happy medium between working for pleasure and money. "We make enough to cover equipment, and that's really our main goal," he said.
One of his customers is Martha Maksym, a Grand Isle resident and longtime friend of Elizabeth's. "We probably buy about eight to 10 quarts of honey from Randy every year," she said. She cooks with the honey, and her husband puts it in his coffee and oatmeal every morning.
"Whenever we run out, I immediately put another order in," she added.
Chris Rivers, a longtime friend and neighbor of the Sightlers, uses the honey in everything from infused tea to Thai shrimp dishes. He keeps his home, also an Airbnb, stocked with honey for the guests. "You could say we serve as unofficial ambassadors," he quipped.
Sightler usually offers three different kinds of honey: two batches harvested early and late in the year, plus a linden-forward one he collects when the nearby flowering trees are at the peak of their blooming cycles.
The linden is a standout. Earthy and minty, its notes match the fragrances the wind blew over from Sightler's flowers. He recommends it with something that doesn't have too much of its own flavor — chèvre on crackers, for example. The Early '24 honey could be a sweet and tangy companion to berries, while the Mid '24 has a buttery consistency and is lighter in color than its early-year counterpart. Sightler thinks it works best as an alternative sweetener for tea, coffee or baked treats.
The honey varies in color and taste depending on when it's collected. Sightler has lived among his linden trees for so long that he's become attuned to their blooming cycle and knows when the nectar will have stronger or lighter flows, he said. If he wants a batch to be richer, he'll collect it when the flows are at their strongest.
Sightler sells his honey in one-, two- and three-pound jars, starting at $8. He also gives it away to family, friends and neighbors — and even trades it for bags of chicken feed.
"The honey and eggs from the chickens are like a social currency," he said. "I'd rather make connections with folks than make money."