First Tallow, Now Honey.
Most folks who find Rancher's Render come to us for one reason: they want their tallow direct from the source.
They've read enough labels to know that "grass-fed" can mean a lot of different things. They've heard that 85% of the grass-fed beef sold in the U.S. is actually imported. They know that most tallow skincare brands buy their fat in 50-gallon drums from industrial rendering plants, with no real way to trace it back to a specific farm.
We're the alternative to that. We raise the cattle ourselves on our 600-acre family ranch in Hope, New Jersey. We render our own suet. We know where every jar came from — not just the state, not just the region, but the pasture. That's the whole reason we started this company.
And it's working. Our customers tell us it's why they buy from us.
Transparency matter. The single-source story matters.
So naturally, we started asking ourselves...
What else could we raise right here on the ranch?!
Houston, the Honey Bees Have Landed! 
Expanding What We Raise Ourselves
This spring, we started building our first apiary on the ranch.
It's a project we've been quietly planning for a while. Bees aren't a random addition — they're a natural next step for a brand like ours. Two of the most common supporting ingredients in skincare are honey and beeswax.
And just like tallow, they come with the same sourcing question most customers never think to ask: where did this actually come from?
Most beeswax used in skincare is imported — often from China, Vietnam, or Ethiopia. It's usually chemically bleached to remove the natural yellow color, which also strips out a lot of the trace compounds that made the wax interesting in the first place. Most honey used in skincare is similarly anonymous — blended from dozens of sources, sometimes cut with corn or rice syrup. A 2023 European investigation found that nearly half of imported honey shipments were suspected of adulteration.
None of that sits well with us. If we're going to use these ingredients in our products, we'd rather know exactly where they came from. Same way we know our tallow.
So we're doing what we did with the cattle: raising it ourselves.
40 Hives, Multiple Locations, One Beekeeper
The plan is to install 40 hives across all of our ranch locations. The first ten are already in the ground, complete with bear protection — an important detail in this part of New Jersey. The rest will follow as spring continues and the bees have time to get established.
We're not doing this alone. Beekeeping is a craft, and it takes years to do well. So we partnered with John, our beekeeper, who's managing the hives with us. He brings the expertise. We bring the land, the flowers, and the pastures that make the bees want to stick around.
If everything goes to plan, we expect our first honey harvest by the end of this summer.
Why Bees, Why Now
There are three reasons this made sense for us.
First, it extends what we already do. We built this company on one ranch, one family, one zip code. Adding honey and beeswax to that list means more of what goes into your skincare will come from land we actually manage — not from suppliers we've never met. That's a straight-line continuation of the Rancher's Render story.
Second, it's good for the ranch. Bees aren't just an ingredient factory — they're part of a working ecosystem. They pollinate the clover, alfalfa, and wildflowers in our pastures, which in turn makes the forage more diverse and nutritious for the cattle. A healthy apiary and a healthy pasture reinforce each other. That's regenerative ranching in practice.
Third, the bees need ranches like ours. Earlier this year, U.S. beekeepers reported the worst die-off ever recorded — over 60% of commercial colonies lost since the prior summer, tied to Varroa mites, viruses, and chemical resistance. Most commercial bees in this country get trucked between monoculture fields heavily treated with pesticides. That's part of why the collapse happened.
A 600-acre ranch that runs on rotational grazing, doesn't spray pesticides, and has species-rich pastures is almost the exact opposite of that environment. It's the kind of place bees actually thrive in. The fact that our hives can do well here is itself a sign the land is doing well.
A Note on Our Current Lip Balm
We want to be straight about this: the beeswax in our Peppermint Tallow Lip Balm today is sourced from trusted U.S. suppliers — it's not from our hives yet. The apiary is brand new, and it will take time for the colonies to produce enough wax to bring into production.
That will change. As the apiary matures, we'll be reformulating the lip balm with beeswax from the ranch, and launching new products that use honey and wax we've harvested ourselves. When that happens, we'll tell you exactly what changed and when.
Until then, the lip balm stays the same great formula, just with a supply chain that's about to get even more transparent.
What to Expect
A few honest notes for anyone following along this summer:
First-year beekeeping is mostly about letting the colonies establish themselves.
New hives spend most of their first season building comb and laying down reserves for winter. Any honey harvest in year one is going to be modest — and we take the view that the bees come first. We'll only harvest what they can comfortably spare.
Year two is usually when the real production starts.
By then, the colonies will have had time to settle in properly. We'd rather do this right than rush it.
In the meantime, we'll be sharing what we're learning.
Expect more posts this summer about what it actually looks like to run an apiary on a working cattle ranch — the good, the messy, the unexpected.
We're not beekeeping experts yet. That's what John is for.
Thanks for being part of it.
Want to understand how our regenerative ranching approach shapes every ingredient in our skincare?
Learn how regenerative ranching creates superior tallow for skincare →
