Our Story
When you take a bite of Beehive Cheese, it melts like butter in your mouth— that’s because it’s made from some of the creamiest and cleanest milk in Utah, lovingly crafted into specialty cheese by a family who shares a passion for the artisan way of life. In 2005, brothers-in-law, Tim Welsh and Pat Ford, left the fast-paced world of software and real estate seeking a more simple way of life as artisan cheese makers. They traded in their grinding traffic commute for quiet mornings sitting with 500 gallons of farm-fresh milk. They gave up briefcases and laptops for the romance of making hand-crafted cheese: hours spent mixing and warming milk, feeling it thicken and envelope the room with the sweet smell of custard. Days spent following natural rhythms: waking before dawn to welcome new milk and feeling the tired ache of sore muscles at day’s end and months waiting with an artisan’s patience for their cheeses to ripen to perfection. Instead of creating a piece of software or a well-crafted contract, Tim and Pat now turn-out delicious hand-made cheeses they can savor and share with neighbors and cheese-lovers all over. Tim and Pat wanted to bring back the local creamery, so with help from the Western Dairy Center at Utah State University, they opened shop in 2005. Beehive Cheese is among only a few artisan cheese makers in Utah.
Our Place Beehive’s cheeses carry undertones of Utah’s unique high-desert and four-season ecosystem. Tim and Pat use only first-class-grade whole milk from Jersey cows at Ogden’s Wadeland South Dairy: 350 acres near the salty marshes, ponds and mudflats of the mineral-loaded Great Salt Lake. The same nutrient-rich soil that feeds thousands of migrating birds, feeds the lush alfalfa that the cows love to eat. The cheese is also full of the intelligence and imagination of the cheese makers: consider one award-winning cheese, Barley Buzzed, that’s rubbed with crushed lavender and exotic ground coffee. Tim and Pat even create custom cheeses like one requested by a bride-to-be as a surprise for her fiancé: a signature wedding cheese rubbed with honey and lavender and aged with a layer of blueberries in the middle. These original and personal touches set Beehive Cheese apart. Our Creamery The Beehive Cheese Creamery sits at the mouth of Weber Canyon in a valley between the forested Wasatch Mountains: home to world-class powder skiing in the winter and meadows of heavenly wildflowers in the summer. It’s a modern cheese operation where old-world craftsmanship is practiced. The creamery is within walking distance from both Tim and Pat’s homes and their children often make the trek to help their dads make cheese (which involves hopping over a fence and crossing train tracks to get there.) The cousins work side-by-side learning about hard work and even microbiology while stirring milk, flipping cheese slabs, packaging cheese curds, cleaning and rubbing cheese wheels. Our Tours Visitors to Beehive Cheese can experience first-hand the art of cheese making through tours led by the amiable owners themselves. If you catch them at just the right moment, you may get to hear Opera while watching Tim stir the milk after the bacteria and rennet are added (he’s fond of listening to music during this stage.) Or you may catch the hands-on work of “cheddaring” or if you come at the end of the game, you may get to taste some salted cheese curds still warm from the vat. You can also browse the cozy little shop attached to the operation to sample each cheese and choose from cheese gift baskets and even Beehive wildflower honey to pair with your favorite tastes. Our Cheese One Monday night in February under a full moon, using milk just coaxed from the cow, Tim and Pat decided to skip the pasteurization process and stay up late to make cheese while the milk was most fresh. After letting it age 60 days (a federal health requirement for un-pasteurized milk cheese) and giving it a final approving taste, they named the cheese Beehive's Full Moon Cheddar and hit the market running. Beehive Cheese makes many kinds of cheese including a dry, aged jack called Uintah Jack; an Aggiano Parmesan; Promontory Cheddar and fun cheese curds in flavors like caraway, habanero and rosemary and Emigrant, a cross between cheddar and Parmesan. One cheese has subtle notes of smoked English walnut shells and apples and another called Barely Buzzed is a creamy, nutty cheese encased in an irresistible rind of crushed lavender and coffee from Tim’s brother’s coffee shop in Colorado. Barely Buzzed has been wildly popular since it first debuted; it won the American Cheese Society competition in Burlington, VT in 2007 and has been a featured cheese at Murray’s Cheese in New York as well as many gourmet specialty shops around the U.S. Seasoned Business Partners Beehive Cheese is not Tim and Pat’s first business venture together. The two childhood friends started a landscaping business together while still in college, mowing 50 lawns a week. Needless to say, they know how to work together and to work smart. Today, they are making cheese, combining their passion for food and their individual strengths. When you pair Tim’s analytical and technical savvy and his flair for improvised gourmet dishes with Pat’s strong communication and people skills and his seasoned salesmanship ability— the combination works.
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