the farm is buzzin’ ...

Since the old heritage apple trees and flowering herbaceous weeds surrounding the garden provide abundant pollen and nectar, we thought it would be fun to become bee keepers. We joined a local bee keeping organization and started our own little apiary. 

Bee keeping is a mostly enjoyable, sometimes frustrating enterprise, and a lot of work. The social life of the bee is truly amazing, and the honey, delectable.

Please contact us for availability.

Benefits of beekeeping

One advantage of raising bees is that they do a fantastic job of pollinating our vegetables and fruit trees, significantly increasing the yield. However, the bees are also susceptible to hive die off due to varroa mite infestation; poisoning by insecticides from a nearby homeowner’s garden or farm; or winter starvation as a result of consuming their store of honey before the early spring blooms appear. Occasionally the bees swarm away if not carefully monitored. 

We usually have 4 or 5 hives going into the fall, but typically lose 1 to 4 of them through the winter. The bees are examined periodically for varroa mites and treated organically. Good progress is being made in controlling the varroa mites, but it is still a serious problem.  Fortunately we have never experienced colony “collapse”.

A single bee hive can produce up to 40 pounds of salable honey in a good year! Our honey is “wildflower” – with a heavy dose of apple.