Dream Team
Meet the Force Behind our Honey & Hive-Based Products
“Edgewood Apiaries is more than just a business, it's a continuation of my deep-rooted family legacy in farming & a commitment to sustainable agriculture in Virginia.”
Amanda Sweeney
Amanda Sweeney is the Founder & Keeper of the Bees @Edgewood Apiaries. She loves honey and her greatest enjoyment (aside from motherhood) is hands on work with the bees. With over twenty years of experience in supply chain, technology and marketing at companies like Nike and Petco Animal Supplies, she realized she could help improve how Virginia does honey by focusing on what the market increasingly demands: honest, traceable honey that connects consumers directly with local beekeepers. She desires to ensure U.S. beekeepers are paid fairly and is working to provide an increased supply of top-quality honey for consumers alongside a growing product assortment which demonstrates the power & versatility of hive-based products.
Kate Goad
Director of Production and Customer Service
Kate Goad is the Director of Production and Customer Service at Edgewood Apiaries, where she oversees the creation of the brand’s handcrafted, small-batch products. With a background in event planning and fundraising, she brings organization, creativity, and attention to detail into every aspect of production. After being recruited by Amanda and joining the Edgewood team, Kate quickly developed a passion for working with bees and creating products using hive-based and other natural ingredients. She loves knowing the products she helps create are clean, nurturing, and thoughtfully made, and finds excitement in developing new products and bringing fresh ideas to life.
Outside of work, Kate is a proud and devoted wife and mother and cherishes time spent with her family. She and her husband, Mike, enjoy life in Fork Union with their son, Reagan, and daughter, Madison.
The Production Team
Katherine Blue
Kristalen Adams
HIRING
Rae Bellows
Chief Herbalist
Rae Bellows is the Chief Herbalist at Edgewood Apiaries. She is a trained herbalist, horticulturist, and artisan distiller. She owns Wild Origins, a seed-to-bottle botanical house on her seven-acre farm in Powhatan, Virginia, where she grows, harvests, and distills plants for hydrosols and herbal skincare. She has been a member of the American Herbalists Guild since 2017, is a Virginia Master Naturalist, and has studied botanical skincare since 2018. She also trained with the Herbal Academy (Introductory Herbal Course, Botanical Skin Care Course, and Intermediate Herbal Course) and has studied with teachers in Ayurveda and Traditional Chinese Medicine, with her focus on the plants that grow where we grow.
Her path started in Germany, where a neighbor’s story about stinging nettles, and a WWII prison camp, pulled her out of a real estate career and into plants. Years of military moves meant starting gardens over. After her husband’s retirement from the USMC, she put down roots in Powhatan. In 2023 her youngest convinced her to take a farmers-market booth. Wild Origins grew from there. She later licensed many of those formulas, which is how her work lives in Edgewood’s hive-based skincare, lotions, and wellness line. She is a founding member of the RVA Herbalist Alliance. She still distills, consults, and teaches, and is growing that distillation work under Virelai.
The Front Line
Sharon Lee Smith
Kindle Zimmerman
}}Henricka Hamler
Victoria Sweeney
Peter Signorino
Behind the Scenes
Jason Sweeney
Jason's legal and supply chain background provides advice and counsel to ensure efficient operations & makes sure we're dotting 'i's' & crossing 't's' on the legal front. Jason owns Lead on, a law firm delivering transactional law support to Fortune 50 Companies, with a focus on technology & artificial intelligence law.
Kathryn Tuttle
Kathryn provides strategy & marketing guidance as we build our brands. Her experience in agribusiness & consumer packaged goods is essential to our growth. Kathryn owns KATHRYNTUTTLE.
Jon Golden
The mastermind behind our imagery. Jon's amazing talents are graciously shared with our team bringing a lifetime of experience in capturing nature through a lens. Jon owns Jon Golden Studio.