Chris Hiatt

Honey has for years been one of the top three most frauded foods in the world.

It's milk, olive oil, and honey.

A few months ago, I got an email from a beekeeper.

My name's Chris Hyatt with Hyatt Honey Company.

My dad started our family business 58 years ago, and I have four brothers and myself that we've taken it over and grown the business, and we run about 18,000 hives between California, North Dakota, and Washington.

I can remember in high school, I really did want to play baseball, and I couldn't because I had to put bees in and out of almond orchards all over Eastern Washington.

And we were helping the family, and of course that paid for my college, and we employed 20, 30 people, and it's been a fun ride.

These honeybees, you take care of them, they'll take care of you financially.

We have a lobbyist, and we've tried to improve our industry, improve honey prices, try to get more research for why the bees are all dying for our national bee labs.

Is there another industry where you have...

such low prices for a commodity that is in such demand.

Well, I've listened to a lot of the episodes and I just thought, hey, economists, they would know or they're so well connected.

I thought they might know of another industry that's having a similar problem that we have had.

Commercial beekeepers, we only produce about 20% to 25% of what our nation needs for honey consumption.

And 20, 30 years ago, it used to be the opposite.

We used to produce 70, 75% of all the honey consumed in the United States.

You know, we're approaching 700 million pounds of honey consumed in the United States, where it used to be 350 million.

And the price is not keeping pace, not even with a price 20, 30 years ago.

At first, this really surprised me.

You need to apprentice with somebody, learn the bee industry.