Meet Our Team

Ames Farm is a small honey producer and apiary with 18 bee yards spread over central and southern Minnesota. We extract and bottle our honey on a farm near Watertown, MN. We make over a dozen varieties of high quality, raw single-source honeys, table honey, pure beeswax candles, bee pollen, and other bee products, as well as nucs of bees. We also maintain five apple orchards and market 12 varieties of apples. Meet our team below!

Carniolan Honeybee - apis mellifera carnica
Hive Member
The hardest working and best-organized members of the team, the honeybees are a matriarchal society working as a single organism. We raise and keep this northern variety of bee native to Slovenia, versus the more common Italian variety from the Mediterranean. Carniolan bees are known for their gentleness, superior sense of orientation, and over-wintering abilities.  

Brian Fredericksen
Founder & Owner
Brian is a former 3M process engineer and sled dog musher. He bought an old homestead and orchard from a fellow dog-sledder, David Bedford, the University of MN developer of the Honeycrisp apple. Brian became interested in keeping bees while observing the pollination process. Since then, he has grown Ames Farm to national recognition for producing high quality single source honey.

Sarah Mogilevsky

General Manager
Sarah has been working on organic farms around the Twin Cities for the past 5 years and enjoys being a part of the sustainable agriculture community. Sarah's interests revolve around farming, especially eating local veggies and canning. She has many different canning recipes, but her specialty is strawberries canned in red wine, which is best served over a honey pound cake and ice cream.

 

Jeff Weeks
Beekeeper

Jeff takes great care of our hives during the busy summer season and plays a big part in our overwintering process down in Texas, driving down each winter and maintaining our honeybee health. A man of few words, Jeff lives nearby in Buffalo with his family. 

 

  

Keit Osadchuk
Creative Director

With skills in design, photography, and all things digital, Keit runs our social media outlets and takes care of the visual needs for Ames Farm and amesfarm.com. During her spare time, she eats, draws, and bikes all around the metro area. In true Ames Farm fashion, Keit loves growing her garden and being outside whenever possible.

 

 

 

Max Arko
Field Operations Coordinator
Max is a recent graduate from St. John’s University with a degree in Environmental Studies. With a few beekeeping seasons under his belt, Max has a passion for working outside and learning about sustainable agriculture. Outside of the farm, Max works as an outdoor educator, where he teaches outdoor skills to youth around the metro.

 

 

Marty Bergland
Worker Bee/Madame Butterfly
A former educator and current master gardener, Marty has worked at Ames Farm for the past 12 years. She loves gardening and nature— especially bees and butterflies. An appreciation of the unique flavors of pure raw honey keeps her happily engaged with us, contributing in candle making, gift packaging, and honey demos at many local stores and co-ops in Minnesota.

Liv Stewart
Sales Associate/Product Liaison
Originally from the Empire State, Liv is a Saint John's University graduate. She first began running our weekly honey deliveries to our partners and has since expanded her time on the farm to include more of our daily operations. You can also catch her at the farmer's market this summer! When she's not helping spread the love of our local, singly-sourced golden goo, she's brewing her own organic kombucha.