Small-batch raw honey, kept the old way.

A few hives on a four-hundred-year-old farm in Kennebunk, Maine — where the river meets the sea, tended slowly and bottled exactly as the bees made it.

Our first season · 2026

The Place · Since 1637

Where the river meets the sea.

Arundel Apiary sits on a peninsula where the Kennebunk River meets the Atlantic. In 1637, John Gooch arrived in Maine at the request of Ferdinando Gorges, agent for the Crown, and the Gooch family became central figures in what became known as the Kennebunks.

The early history of the family was later chronicled in Arundel, the novel by Pulitzer Prize–winning author Kenneth Roberts. The Gooches farmed this land for generations, and their descendants still run one of the oldest continuously operating inns in America, just a few steps down the beach.

Nearly four hundred years on, the same shore is still growing things.

Our hives stand on that land now, in Kennebunk — a small operation, and one we intend to keep that way.

The Bees

A creature the New World had never seen.

Those first settlements grew from the vast land grants the English Crown gave Sir Ferdinando Gorges — a key founder of colonial Maine — across the 1620s and 1630s. The colonists who came to build them carried English honeybees on the ships: a creature then unknown to North America, brought over for their honey and wax, and — though no one yet understood it — quietly pollinating the Old World crops they planted, from apple orchards to clover pasture.

A few of those heritage apple trees still stand and bear fruit on the property today. The bees soon escaped into the wild and spread ahead of the settlers themselves, sowing the fields with white clover and English grasses and reshaping the New England landscape into much of what we know now — right down to the very mix our own bees forage today.

The Forage

What the bees gather.

Surrounded by water on three sides, the property leans heavy on milkweed — far more of it than most places — with apple blossom, clover, goldenrod, beach rose, and hydrangea filling out the season. The bees take what they want.

Put together, it's honey from this particular patch of coast — whatever the bees make of it, one season to the next.

AppleSpring blossom

The first nectar of the year — the old heritage trees waking the hive up. A short bloom, more build-up than harvest.

MilkweedThe main flow

There's more of it here than almost anywhere — and it's the heart of the honey: pale, mild, and slow to crystallize. It's also vital habitat for monarchs.

White CloverHigh summer

The plain, familiar honey most people picture.

GoldenrodThe fall flow

Comes on strong late in the season — a darker, bolder honey the bees pack away for winter.

Beach RosePollen, not nectar

Worked for pollen — food for the hive, not flavor in the jar.

HydrangeaMostly for show

Plenty of it around, but more ornament than nectar — the bees pick at it and move on.

In the Hives

How we keep our bees.

Built for Maine winters

Insulated hives engineered for the cold, so colonies hold their warmth and come out of winter strong — without coddling.

Raw & unblended

Never heated or over-filtered. Just a clean strain, so the honey keeps its pollen, its enzymes, and its character.

Small by design

A few hives, tended by hand. We grow by splitting our own colonies — never by chasing yield at the bees' expense.

The Honey

The first lineup.

Bottled in glass to show the color. Here's what we're putting up this season — jar photos drop straight into these frames once they're filled.

Photo coming

First harvest · 2026

Coastal Wildflower Honey

8 oz · glass hex

Water-white and delicate — milkweed-forward, with beach rose and a whisper of lavender.

Photo coming

First harvest · 2026

Pure Beeswax

Rendered from our own cappings

Clean, golden, and lightly scented of honey — for candles, balms, and the workbench.

The First Harvest

The first jars are still on the bees.

The bees are at work, and the first small-batch jars are coming this season — raw honey and beeswax, bottled the moment they're ready. Leave a note and we'll tell you when the first ones come off the farm.

Tell me when it's ready