Wrapping Up GRuB's Healing Through Hives Project: Growing a Community of Veteran-led Enterprises through Beekeeping Training, Certification, Mentoring & Resource Sharing
From first hives to advanced certifications, GRuB’s Healing Through Hives Project has spent the past four years supporting Veterans across Washington State in developing beekeeping skills, adding to farm businesses, and building community connections. Since 2022, the project expanded from individual beekeeping courses into a wide network of training, mentorship, and community apiaries.
By the numbers~
- 20 Veterans participated in the 2026 beginning beekeeper cohort with 17 Veterans successfully managing 1–7 hives by the end of their first season, supporting new farm starts and farm expansions.
- 2026 alone: 14 Veterans certified at Beginning/Apprentice levels and 50+ workshop participants reached.
- 2022–2025: 70+ Veteran beekeeping certifications from Beginner to Journeyman levels and 200+ Veterans connected to statewide beekeeping resources.
- 5 distinct community apiary sites were established over the life of the project with each site hosting an experienced beekeeping mentor.
Over the past four years, Healing Through Hives has partnered with the Washington Chapter of the Farmer Veteran Coalition and the Washington State Beekeepers Association to develop and make accessible a progressive pathway of beekeeping education and certification. The program has also expanded hands-on learning through community apiaries at partner organizations across Western Washington. Today, Veterans can access mentorship and practical experience at GRuB in Olympia, Roots Farm in Poulsbo, and Growing Veterans in Lynden.
Quoted from one of our 2026 Veteran beginner beekeepers:
As a disabled veteran who has struggled with the deep, often isolating impacts of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), this program has been nothing short of transformative for my life. Before finding this program, the depths of my PTSD symptoms had led me to sever nearly all of my social threads, pulling away from the world and closing myself off. When I discovered the program, the desire to learn beekeeping was there, but the financial realities of starting an apiary felt insurmountable. By completely removing the fiscal roadblocks—providing us not only with top-tier education but with a complete hive, all the necessary protective equipment, and the bees themselves—this program turned a distant dream into an immediate, accessible reality. They didn’t just give me a hobby; they gave me a jumpstart into a brand-new lifepath.
The healing aspects of working with the bees have had an immense, tangible impact on my daily life. Honeybees require a calm, grounded presence. Standing at the hive forces me to breathe, regulate my energy, and focus entirely on the present moment. In doing so, it has significantly reduced my PTSD symptoms. The bees have given me something beautiful to focus on that inspires and motivates me every single day. I now wake up each day, excited to walk over to my hive and watch the bees leaving on foraging missions and returning loaded with resources for the hive.
Because of this program, I am more physically active, spending hours outside each week caring for the hive. More importantly, it has given me the strength to begin reconnecting with the world. Caring for these creatures has reawakened a sense of purpose that I thought was gone, motivating me to step out of isolation and rebuild the social connections I had walked away from, and even giving me the drive and desire to reach out to others to form new relationships in order to share knowledge and experiences.
The qualitative increase to my lifestyle and mental well-being is immeasurable. This program does not just teach agricultural skills; it saves lives, restores purpose, and fosters deep, lasting healing for the veterans who need it most.
Healing Through Hives was funded by the USDA Beginning Farming and Rancher Development Program. Unfortunately, we have not received the grant to continue this work in the same capacity. We will be continuing to support our current Veteran beekeeping cohort, continuing beekeeping workshops in the Spring, continue to welcome Veterans into all other programs at GRuB and are launching a Veteran Advisory Group who will support GRuB in future planning. If you are a Veteran and are interested in providing feedback or becoming a member of the Veteran Advisory Group, please reach out to Sade Gilliom at sade@goodgrub.org.
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