Beehive Cheese is a food and drink brand founded in Uintah, Utah, in 2005.
Tim Welsh helped create software for the Palm Pilot long before his cheddar came rubbed in espresso. In 2005 he and his brother-in-law Pat Ford left their careers to start Beehive Cheese in Uintah. Welsh calls himself a foodie who will "drive 50 miles for a fresh pear," but neither founder grew up on a dairy farm. "We didn't know the first thing about cheese," he has said.
So they called Utah State University. The school charged a consulting fee to help design the creamery and handed over the first recipes as a land grant service. Barely Buzzed is hand-rubbed with lavender and a Beehive Blend espresso that a Colorado roaster, Legacy Fine Coffees, makes only for it. It has taken first place at the American Cheese Society competition at least six times, from 2007 to 2025.
At their first competition the founders took an order for more cheese than they had ever made. Welsh expected his customers to live in the San Francisco Bay Area, but after the awards, the phone rang close to home. The Ford and Welsh families still own the company. As Welsh put it, "We do not care about making a billion dollars."
Beehive's SeaHive is rubbed with raw honey from Slide Ridge Honey, which keeps some of its bees on Beehive's undeveloped land in Morgan County, and with RealSalt mined from ancient salt beds in Redmond, Utah.
