Pinecrest Honey-Bee Supply Co. is WLAF’s Business of the Week

 By Charlotte Underwood

JACKSBORO, TN. (WLAF)- Looking for something sweet and good for you? The Pinecrest Honey and Bee Supply Company has fresh honey available. The honey was “pulled” from the hives in late May and early June.

The business is family owned and operated by James and Megan Gross and their children.

According to Gross, he began the honey business about 13 years ago. He was originally in law enforcement, then he started a brief handy-man business. Now, he drives a school bus and runs the bee farm. Over the past decade he has grown his bee farm from 50 or 60 bee colonies to almost 200 colonies.

According to Gross he’s “still building the company and the colonies.”

“Bee keeping was more of a hobby until about a year and a half ago,” Gross said.

He sells his honey at a self-serve stand and at local farmer’s markets. His company also sells bees, some bee supplies and does bee removal and bee extractions as well. The Pinecrest Honey Company is also available to set up as a vendor at local events. The stand is educational and incudes information about the Campbell County Beekeeper’s Association as well. Gross brings a live observation hive as part of the setup.

Gross is the president of the Campbell County Beekeeper’s Association, which he helped reignite several years ago.

“People were contacting me about taking care of bee hives, so I started the Beekeeper’s Association back up; between myself and Mike Freeman at Lyk Nu, he’s the vice president,” Gross said.

Over the past two years over 90 people have participated in the Beekeeper’s Association.

“Having the association allows us to do things for these backyard beekeepers,” Gross said.

People can also call and set up visits and inspections of the Pinecrest Honey farm by appointment.

“We offer classes to share our information with other beekeepers. I’m not a professor of etymology or anything, but most of the time, life skills are just as good but I tell people all the time, we could study bees for 500 years and still only know a little about them, so it’s good to share information and there’s always something more to learn,” Gross said.

Gross invites anyone interested in keeping bees to attend a Campbell County Beekeeper’s Association meeting. The association meets at the LaFollette Recreation Center on Beech Street on the fourth Tuesday of each month at 6 pm. There is something educational at each meeting. Follow them on Facebook to keep up with educational posts and events.

“I encourage people to follow us on Facebook that way if something happens and we get an opportunity to go do something that month, instead of sitting in a classroom, we may get to go out and do some hive inspections or something,” Gross said.

Pinecrest Honey Company has a self-serve honey stand located across from Indian Creek Church at 2513 Pinecrest Road, Jacksboro. For more information call James Gross at 423.377.5150.

(WLAF NEWS PUBLISHED 6/21/2024-6AM)