Flora Molyneaux started her beekeeping career with a wild swarm
As a non-migratory beekeeper, Flora Molyneaux lives her life in accordance with the wheel of the year. From the spring equinox to the summer solstice, she works 12-hour days, attempting to keep up with her bees during their most active season.
From the summer solstice to the fall equinox, her trade slows down. She helps the bees prepare for winter by ridding their hives of Varroa mites and extracting honey. The winter season is for rest and recuperation. Molyneaux cleans her gear, sells honey and makes beeswax candles while her bees cluster to survive the cold.
Next year, she'll do it all again.
Flora Molyneaux has been keeping bees for the last 10 years and has expanded to offering classes and educational experiences at her Dorena farm.
"The season is what decides everything in beekeeping," Molyneaux said. "We're totally beholden to Mother Nature's circumstances."
Molyneaux is the sole owner and operator of Wild Everlasting Honey, a company consisting of 30 hives. She is a master herbalist and has close to 10 years of experience with beekeeping under her belt. Molyneaux also runs Sun Queen School of Apiary Arts, which teaches beginners how to take care of their own apiaries. This year, she made 1,500 pounds of honey for her business.
Finding her hive
Molyneaux has always been interested in organic agriculture, partially because her father was an exterminator.
"My father suffered from health issues because of what he was exposed to as an exterminator," she said. "That got me interested in organic farming at a really young age."
Flora Molyneaux slides a frame from a hive as she tends to her beehives at her farm near Dorena on Aug. 22, 2025.
Molyneaux studied at herbalism schools throughout California. She and her husband, Matthew, met when they were 17, and worked on organic farms together throughout young adulthood. The couple settled near Cottage Grove 10 years ago and started their work at Wild Everlasting Farm. She remembers the first month her family moved to the farm, she was doing a botany lesson with her children on the front porch of their new home when a swarm of bees flew overhead.
"It sounded like a freight train, it was so loud," Molyneaux said. "We were totally in awe watching them."
The swarm attached to the apple tree in Molyneaux's yard and formed a giant ball. Molyneaux had some knowledge of bees at the time from reading books on beekeeping, and decided to try to capture the swarm.Flora Molyneaux started her
"Something clicked in me, and I knew I had to capture that swarm," she said. "I was just completely compelled."
Molyneaux wrapped herself in sarongs and extra layers of clothing, climbed a ladder, and attempted to shake the swarm into a moving box with a hearth broom. After a few attempts and stings, she finally got the queen into the box, and the rest of the swarm followed. She acquired a nesting kit from Glory Bee and started her first hive that day.
"I was completely head over heels in love with that hive," Molyneaux said. "The bees just filled an entire niche for me. They've given me a life so much more beautiful than I ever imagined for myself. There isn't a day that goes by that something about them doesn't completely strike me."
Since that day, Molyneaux has slowly been growing her bee colony. She was utterly enthralled with her bees the first year she had them, and soaked up knowledge about beekeeping from any source she could. She shadowed local beekeepers and joined different beekeeping groups around Lane County. This helped her propagate her hive the first year she had it.
"I have some of that same line in my apiaries today," she said. "The abundance and friendship and childlike wonder they give me fills my life with beauty."
Molyneaux vs. the Mites
Molyneaux has faced one particularly large problem while honing her hives. Beekeepers in North America are locked in a constant battle with the Varroa Destructor mite, a parasitic mite that feeds on and attacks honeybees, and can lead to colony collapse. The Varroa mite is a parasite that burrows under the breastplate of a bee, and can kill up to 40% of a hive.
"If you have a garden, and someone told you 40% was going to die, people would say, 'I don't think I'm going to do that garden," Molyneux said. "Or if 40 out of 100 cows died, people would be marching in the streets. But with beekeeping, it's become accepted as a common issue."
As someone who practices organic farming, Molyneaux wanted to keep her beekeeping as natural as possible. But after losing a lot of bees to the Varroa mites, she came to the conclusion that she needed to use a natural treatment on her hives.
"The first time I saw the mite drop, I almost vomited," she said. "It was the most disgusting thing I'd ever seen. It was an uncountable number of mites. Just piles and piles."
Molyneux explained that August and September are a very important time of year for mite treatment. After she pulls all the honey out of the hive, Molyneux administers treatment that helps the bees overwinter and survive to the next season.
"The bees born in the spring live 6 to 7 weeks, but bees born now or in September live 6 or 7 months," Molyneaux said. "So it doesn't matter how big or bountiful the hive is, if there's too much mite pressure, those bees won't have a long enough life span to carry the hive through winter."
Even after taking care of the mite problem during fall, Molyneaux says a resilient 1% of the Verroa mites remain in the hive, waiting to strike again next season.
"Beekeeping is so difficult, and I'm consistantly learning through my failures. There's never a season where I don't have a teachable moment or a failure, and I think that's really kept me on my chops," she said.
A life sweeter than honey
Flora Molyneaux smokes a hive while working on her Wild Everlasting Farm near Dorena on Aug. 22, 2025.
Today, Molyneaux has two apiaries in Lane County, with 30 hives between them. The way Molyneaux practices beekeeping is unique. Some beekeepers are migratory, meaning they chase warm weather so their bees produce honey during the winter.
Many beekeepers from Oregon will head down to California in December so their bees stay warm and help pollinate a single plant field of crops. This leads to single-flavor honey, like clover or lavender, that is often sold in grocery stores.
Molyneaux allows her bees to winter down. She doesn't see her bees from October to March. When they emerge for spring and summer, the bees at Wild Everlasting have access to all of the pollinator plants on the farm and beyond. To Molyneaux, their honey is an edible footprint of the bioregion, creating honey terroir.
"We're really interested in that taste of place, because for us, you could taste up to 1,000 different plant nectars in a single bite of honey," Molyneaux said. "You could have two hives sitting next to each other, and they'll make completely different honey, just based on their personalities."
Curious customers can find Wild Everlasting honey at the Tuesday Lane County Farmers Market, and can also order it online at Wild Everlasting's virtual farmstand at www.wildeverlasting.com/shop. beekeeping career with a wild swarm
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