Macon Magazine

28 maconmagazine.com | February/March 2025 T H E S T U F F BY TALEEN HANNA The Money Family has been raising bee hives since 2016, providing honey and other products to over 20 stores in Central Georgia. Kristen and Joe Money also work with local farmers to host their hives and educate the community on beekeeping practices through their classes. T H E T H E K risten and Joe Money were living in a xer-upper home when some unusual friends made space for themselves. These unusual friends– bees–were living in the walls of the Money home. These uninvited guests were the inspiration behind what is now Money's Honey. Joe asked a local beekeeper to remove the bees, and he went a step further to ask the beekeeper to bring him a beekeeping suit. "I helped him remove the hive out of our wall, and it was a sticky mess," Joe said. Several years after they removed around 50,000 honeybees and gave them a new home, Joe's interest in bees grew. He got three hives and began to raise them to produce honey. He lost all three hives that rst year. What most may label a failed hobby became Joe and Kristen's new driving force. After doing in-depth research online and working with some commercial beekeepers, the Moneys had a new, solid foundation of knowledge to tackle another set of hives. "My hobby turned into 50 hives," said Joe. As they both grew to enjoy the process of beekeeping and producing honey, Kristen and Joe's retirement plan was to raise bees full time. The retirement plan soon became their ve year plan, then became their two year plan. COVID-19 was the push they needed to devote all of their time to beekeeping. "I quit my job after 12 years as a mechanic and pursued my love of beekeeping," Joe said. Today, they run around 400 hives, some of which are located on farms around the state of Georgia. Since they don't have enough foraging for a large number of bees at their house, they reached out to local farms to host their hives. Their crops bene t from the pollinators the Moneys bring.

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