About us

Eric and Victor Sandschafer are father and son co-owners of Honyok Honey Bees. We started our commercial honey bee business after taking commercial beekeeping classes with Don Kuchenmeister (The Fat Bee Man). We enjoy raising and supplying gentle honeybee stock for other beekeepers in Illinois and surrounding states.

We are located near Newton, IL which is in South Eastern Illinois. We raise Don Kuchenmeister’s (The Fat Bee Man) stock exclusively. We also have a 6 acre Dunstan Chestnut orchard and many other fruit and nut trees on our farm.

We enjoy sharing our knowledge and enthusiasm about honeybees and plan to have classes here in our bee yard to pass along Don’s methods.

Why we chose Honyok.

Honyok is a nickname Eric’s father-in-law (Leo) gave him while dating his daughter. Leo sadly has passed, but the nickname and Leo’s hard work ethic lives on.