Keeping On Keeping Bees
Reading books by veteran beekeepers which tell you to start small, make sure beekeeping is for you, successfully over-winter a small number of hives and then grow organically is fabulous advice. However, we took the road less traveled you might call it? Jumping in with over 70 hives our first year was a MAJOR undertaking. Some would call it complete madness! There’s an old saying, “drinking from a fire hose”…that was me for most all of 2022; trying to balance motherhood and honeybee husbandry. There are many things we’ll do differently as we move forward and some things we’ve landed on that will stick…at least for a while. I’m thrilled to share them with you! At the end of the day, we’ve learned what it takes to keep bees; vision, focus, passion, purpose and faith to believe that it can, indeed, be done.
Make it Happen
2023 has been a serious adventure! The mild winter allowed for a quick transition into spring and an early honey flow. In mid-March we lost TEN colonies to a cold snap. Those queens were just not convinced we were having an early spring and refused to buildout their brood nest. This behavior maintained a smaller colonies of bees which resulted in their inability to both access food and keep the brood warm. Bees will always prioritize keeping their brood warm. In this situation, they were not able to both maintain the temperature inside the hive, warming the brood and access food.
As a result of such a devastating loss, coupled with natural winter losses, we decided to boost our apiary with the introduction of Russian honeybees. While this resulted in an unexpected capital investment we believed the benefits of introducing Russian genetics would improve our upcoming winter survival rates. Russian bees are believed to better navigate fluctuating winter temperatures and have stronger resistance to varroa mites.
The nectar flow has been generous this year. We’ve completed EIGHT honey runs on our Lyson honey processing equipment and feel more knowledgeable of how to efficiently use the equipment, despite several major user errors! We continue to re-enforce the concept of resiliency each day! Thus far, it looks like we’ve processed over 1500 pounds of honey across our estate and two out-yards.
Now it’s splitting time and the bees are expanding far more than expected. We’ve completed 15 splits in each yard and still have more to complete. Of course the comedy of errors continues as we under-estimated their re-production abilities and now are busy doing work we should have completed in the winter months: building more woodenware and frames! Oh well! Thankfully we have the help of a strong Army Vet to build hives and little hands which are amazing at placing foundation inside frames, coloring with beeswax and painting.
As a result of our growth, our out-yards are expanding. We’re growing at both Powhatan locations, expanding in Fluvanna and setting up a new yard in Buckingham. We’re excited about our growth, thankful for friends and family who generously support us and grateful for a growing customer base who love our bees, products and services.
We’re preparing to head into Winter 2023/24 with over 120 colonies including 30 NUCS, many of which should be for sale in spring 2024. We’re expanding our product line with both new products and partnerships with beekeepers across the state of Virginia. Exciting times ahead!