Montana Honey Bee Company — Local services in Bozeman

This store is a huge missed opportunity to support the apiaries across the state of Montana. So far, they have discarded a chance to enrich themselves and the Montana bee-keeping industry, to be a network and nexus for increasing numbers of local honey enthusiasts. In the last few years, Montanans have developed quite a few new artisan apiaries in addition to the well-established local bee-keepers that we already had. We have some outstanding bee-keepers with a great variety of honey products in Montana. Local honey is wonderful for many reasons: allergy reduction, good taste, better nutrition and supporting the local economy to name a few. I buy a half pound of honey every month and live near this store, so I was excited to buy local honey offered in this store. I was hoping to see a network of honey from different places in Montana and the Northwest, to learn about the places and people behind Montana honey. So I was disappointed to see that they offered only four kinds of honey, only two of which were local. I got the impression that the owners had no interest in connecting with and supporting the many local beekeepers. In fact, I felt unwelcome the minute I walked in. It seemed that this store is marketed for such a narrow demographic as to exclude hardworking Montanans like myself. Maybe the owners had money burning a hole in their pocket and wanted to appeal to the Housewives of Bozeman who can pay a premium for imported boutique honey that does nothing to further the bee-keeping industry in Montana. These are not the values I was raised with. This is why I will not support this store unless substantial changes are made. I hope other honey buyers will do their research and support the local honey...

This was one of the worst customer service experiences I have ever had at a local Bozeman shop. A friend and I walked into the store on Sunday, August 5th, around 11AM. There were several other parties in the store, primarily tourists. Myself and my friend are locals and went in to fill up a mason jar with local honey. I briefly spoke to the saleswoman about this. When we decided which honey we would like to fill up our jar with, we waited in line. She rung up the theee people ahead of us. Right before our turn, someone jumped in front of us to ask a quick question regarding the chrystalzation process for different types of honey. The saleswoman was very abrasive and would not really answer the question. The woman who asked the question seemed shocked by the hostility and walked out. It was then our turn in line, the saleswoman looked at us and then actually walked away! She went to the other side of the store to ask someone else if they had questions about the bee boxes. I was just trying to fill up a jar with honey- a really quick task. I found this incredibly rude and decided to leave, as I had already been waiting for her assistance for quite a while. I left and will not return to fill up my honey jars here, even though I live close to the store. I ended up seeing the woman who asked the question about honey types later on the street and she shared the...

Like so many other reviews I had an encounter with the rude lady, I believe she is one of the owners. When I visit Bozeman I stop by this store and purchase different kinds of honey. This time I went to purchase the body butter products and lotion for a Christmas gift for my wife. I was rudely approached by the gray haired lady who told me I could not open the product to smell them. I told her how would I know what they smell like, she said well everyone knows what spearmint smell like. I told her it would be nice to have some testers to smell but she remained rude. So rude I put all products back and walked out.

We have loved supporting this store in the past but I’ll never walk in there again based on this encounter.

To your response Steve, yes they do. I headed on down to the Coop after leaving and selected a few products after being able to smell them. My wife does not like strong scents. This encounter could have been handled so much differently, without sassy comments Steve. Reading other reviews it appears this wasn’t an...