Making Mead & Money With Beekeeping - Guest Rick Reault

Massachusetts beekeeper and entrepreneur Rick Reault (New England Beekeeping /The Colony) joins Eric for a deep, joyful dive into bees and business—from his first disastrous mead batch to an award-winning traditional made with Japanese knotweed honey and bourbon-barrel aging.

Rick demystifies the mead making process (must temps around 60–65°F, 6–8 weeks of ferment, a year of patient aging), then maps how he turned a backyard beekeeping hobby into a diversified honey operation: honey wholesale and retail, classes, apothecary goods, candles, and seasonal pollination.

You’ll hear a practical revenue framework (“five ways to make $20k”), the realities of transporting bee packages from Georgia with partner apiaries, and how Northeast nectar flows shape both honey and mead.

In our “Invention Mention,” we t ...