Hey there, my name is Angelika! I make the lovely Oregon beeswax candles you see in my shop.

Beeswax has an enduring quality that people of all nations, cultures and backgrounds love and appreciate. My candles have been part of so many important moments in people's lives. From birthing ceremonies to remembering a departed loved one, I constantly hear touching stories of how my candles have enriched someone's life, marked a special day or provided the warmth and the light that got them through a rough patch.

What a privilege and an honor! But of course I give all the credit to the humble, busy bees that provide me with my most favorite and treasured raw material, the fragrant beeswax!

So how did all this start?

My background is in Architecture, construction and project management. I'd always lived in the big city, raised in Los Angeles and figured I'd be a confirmed single woman.

In 1993, I moved first from Southern California, where I had spent my whole life, to Cincinnati, then to Southern Oregon. What a culture shock and a whirlwind! After only 2 years in Oregon, I met and married my husband. We were married 3 months after we met. The confirmed city girl/bachelorette got hitched and moved onto a farm, with a lifelong beekeeper for a husband.

When I first met Mike and he told me he kept bees, I never heard of such a profession but it seemed mighty interesting. I drove with him a couple times on day trips to pick up equipment and whatnot, but I found out most of the driving is at night because the bees have to be at home in their box when you move them. A commercial beekeeper is in large part a truck driver. Who knew...

A year after we were married, I was laid off from my construction/project management job so I started helping with the bee business. I was good experience but not really my cup of tea. I know enough about the bees to be dangerous, I like to say. I can help newbies get get up with a new hive and equipment and answer most common questions... but the tough stuff, that gets referred to my expert hubby!

Since I wasn't going to be working the bees (and because I was pregnant with our first child and my bee suit wouldn't zip closed anymore) and for something to do, I thought I'd give the local Grower's Market a try and sell honey there. At that time, we were only selling honey from a little self-service stand at our house and we didn't have a label to speak of.

My in-laws had been selling honey from the place for 40 years at that time, so people knew us, but a little modern marketing never hurt! After sales started improving we designed a pretty new label for the honey featuring the view of beautiful Mount McLaughlin that we see from our farm. We started trying to make more and more varietal honeys to give our customers a choice. Now we can offer anywhere from 3 to upwards of half a dozen types, depending on the time of year.

I'd always made a few candles over the years, more as a hobby than anything else, bee-cause when you extract honey, you get a lot of wax cappings, as a by-product. So what to do with it all? In late 2006-early 2007, I decided to try really getting into the candle business and building up my assortment. I purchased some molds but more than that I learned to make custom molds so I can pretty much make a candle out of anything I want.

It's gotten to be quite an obsession with me! I think of almost everything I see now in terms of whether it would make a good candle. We even came back from our trip to Thailand in 2013-2014 with our luggage stuffed full of figurines and sculptures with which to make candles. I guess it's a bit of a sickness, but a good one to have!

My goal is to have the largest assortment of beeswax candles on the web.

In addition to the bees, the honey and the candles, we farm a small, 7-acre organic property in Eagle Point, Oregon. Our delicious strawberries and other produce can be found at all the local Grower's Markets in Southern Oregon. From March to November, we attend 3 Grower's markets a week and 4 a week from May to October.

Then there are craft and Holiday fairs, and a growing portion of online sales on our own sites and right here on Etsy! I am always amazed by how far-and-wide my bee-based treasures go... we have sent candles literally all around the globe - to the Arctic, the Tropics and everywhere in between.

And as if that wasn't enough to keep us busy, in 2012, we opened the Oregon Bee Store, a bee-themed farm stand and store, right here on our property! There we also sell my beautiful PeaceBlossom beeswax candles, the honeys we make and yummy local and organic produce in-season.

We want to do everything we can to make our family farm continue to grow and flourish. We hope you enjoy our products -- they are made with lots of love and care.

Cheers to all those who support us all year round, round the world...we really appreciate you!