Date: 1998

 

Description: These jars contain four different varieties of a brand of honey familiar to most modern Sioux City citizens today: Sue Bee Honey. Sue Bee Honey is processed and manufactured by the Sioux Honey Association, whose plant and headquarters are located on Lewis Boulevard. The company was started in 1921 by a beekeeper from Sergeant Bluff, 27-year-old Ed Brown. He and several other beekeepers in the area, with about $500 in capital (about $5,000 today) and around 3,000 pounds of honey, started the business selling honey for about 10 cents a pound. The first year the company sold 20,000 pounds of honey in local retail, and the sales only went up from there. In 1928 the company purchased Western Honey Producers and expanded its production. By 1930, production had risen to 825,000 pounds of honey per year and sales valued at about $165,000. In the 1970s Sue Bee made Sioux City gain a national reputation as the honey capital of the world. The abundance of the honey crop in the Midwest has helped keep the business successful to this day. Today the Sioux Honey Association is based out of Anaheim, California, but their plant on Lewis Boulevard still produces honey in large quantities, and in many different flavors and varieties. Though their global presence exports to 40 different countries, they pride themselves in continuing to produce 100% pure, American honey.

 

Donor: Cosmopolitan International

 

On display