Why Bison?

We love history. Ecological history and human history. We love how things go together and their connectedness directs us how to go forward.

Our Greeley Is My Home line has a bison as its logo.

Here’s some questions you have asked about why we have a bison as a logo.

Is it because you keep some of your bees on a bison ranch close to Wyoming?

Yes.

Is it because over 300,000 bison used to call Greeley home?

Yes

Is it because there is a bison hanging up in your living room?

Yes.

The bison has come to mean a lot to us personally. It all started eight years ago when one of us felt called to do a bison hunt in South Dakota. To do the hunt the right way was very costly. We mustered up some of the funds, but we needed help. This bison hunt was a tribute to a relative and a way to honor her. Our community of Greeley was right behind us. We offered to sell the harvested meat, and people bought shares of the bison. This hunt meant to honor someone turned into a new way of understanding our purpose as connectors. We are connected to the earth in ways that some people are not. We are able to bring gifts from its bounty. Keeping our bees the way we do is extra hard work. We don’t cut corners. We don’t ship our bees down to California to make a lot more money through the winter. We choose to leave them in Colorado because we want to build heartier Colorado honeybees. We choose to use natural practices which require more work and more time but it is our way of caring for the honeybees with integrity.

 For us the bison is the story of Greeley before we were here. We honor its full ecological heritage. The bison was Greeley’s past, and it became our present in our hunt. Now, it is our future as we work with the good people of Memphis Ranch in restoring the land with our honeybees pollinating the wildflowers and they work to restore the bison to that area.

We gratefully hold onto Greeley’s history because it has also become our own in our community of Greeley. We are proud to work together with these people in dreaming into the future and honoring the past.