edible seattle | Summer 2025 17 size hive. In just a few minutes, Peter is able to assess the health and production of the bees by sight alone, keeping them ahead of any potential pitfalls. Amy Beth laughs, adding, “Right, that was an unpredictable year. And every year since, it’s been ‘a weird year.’ For like a decade now.” Rainy Day Bees tries to weather the constantly changing conditions of beekeeping—some of which are the normal cost of doing business with a superorganism like bees, and some of which are due to climate change or market changes—by creating a diverse array of products and services. They teach classes, host events and keep corporate and residential hives, as well as hives on local farms, like Jubilee Farm in Carnation, or in rural forests. They have classic raw honeys, and also incredibly popular products like their Nordic Spice Creamed Honey, Honey Cocoa and classic creamed honey, but also carry products like bee pollen, and handmade beeswax candles. Through another grant, they were able to work with a business strategy consultant and a marketing consultant, both of whom suggested they may be doing too many things to remain sustainable. After working with them, the consultants changed their tune. “At the end of it, they’re like ‘You’re actually really well diversified to mitigate the risks of farming,’” Amy Beth says. “Well, we’ve had to be! This is where we are.” They work on staying flexible, and taking on new opportunities as they arise. This past winter, Peter took their hives south to California to help with pollination in the almond fields. Almonds are one of California’s top agricultural exports. It wasn’t easy for the Noltes to decide to participate. “It was a complicated decision for us,” says Amy Beth. “The goal was to learn, but it is part of Big Ag[riculture]. Should California have so many almond trees? Maybe not, but does almost the entire beekeeping industry depend on pollination? Yes.” There were added benefits, like learning about larger scale techniques for keeping bees and utilizing hives. Rainy Day’s bees also got a jump on the season, growing bigger and stronger in the California sunshine, while Seattle was still deep in the throes of cool, wet springtime weather, which with the added learning opportunity, seemed like a pretty good deal. Each new year brings new opportunities and challenges for Rainy Day, but Peter and Amy Beth meet both with a similar cheerfulness. Though Amy Beth works a full-time job for an accounting firm, the couple work constantly to make Rainy Day Bees stronger and more independent. It can be difficult to keep moving forward, especially when controversy crops up, like debates about resource competition between honeybees and native bees. The phenomenon known as “colony collapse disorder” notwithstanding, several invertebrate conservationists have cited honeybees as a possible reason native bees also appear to be struggling. The Noltes think the issue is a lot more nuanced, but it cost Rainy Day and many other beekeepers access to honey flows on federal lands while the science on competition between bee species was even more opaque than it is today. Even a recent review of pollinator competition studies, done by Oregon State University in May, found that results were nearly split down the middle on positive or negative effects of honeybees on native bees. The general consensus of the review was that more habitat and less chemicals (like pesticides) would be the most beneficial to all pollinator species.
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