2026 Virginia Honey Harvest: Late Freeze, Drought, 60% Less Honey

Every beekeeper learns the same lesson sooner or later. Honey depends entirely on what's blooming, and the weather decides that.

This year the weather decided hard. A late freeze came first, and then the drought settled in behind it. The spring flow came late, and in some places it barely happened at all. Fall hasn't been much better. Pollen and nectar both seem low, so the bees have had very little to bring in.

Here's what that adds up to. We estimate our honey production will be down about 60% compared to 2025, and the losses reach every one of our hive locations. That's a tough number to write down, especially since we have more bees than ever before. More bees don't make more honey when there's nothing out there for them to gather.

I saw it up close back in May. Some of our production colonies were big enough to be making real honey, and instead they'd turned to winter survival mode because of their size and how little nectar they had stored. I'll never forget pulling a single frame of nectar out of a double deep colony of 100k-plus bees. That colony was starving and near collapse. We started feeding colonies in that situation right away, and I've certainly never seen anything like it before.

So this fall, some of our production colonies are still in survival mode. Rather than harvesting from them, we're keeping them alive. That means supplemental feeding with sugar syrup and pollen substitutes, and keeping a careful eye on mites and overall colony health. Those colonies have to make it through winter before they can make honey again, and any we lose would mean fewer productive hives next season. The bees come first. The jars come after.

The good news is that the bees themselves came into the year healthy. We overwintered well, with a 15% loss rate, which is significantly below the Virginia state average. I'd always prefer zero, but that's rarely the case. The Italian pole line genetics we brought in from a keeper in Georgia have done well health-wise, too. This season's trouble was the weather, not the colonies.

Where our own yards fall short, we're leaning on our neighbors. We're expanding our relationships with other Virginia beekeepers and buying honey from producers across the state, so there's still local honey on the shelf and the keepers who made it get paid for it. I'd rather have a jar that tells the truth about where it came from than a pretty one that can't.

A year like this also makes me appreciate the honey we do have. Raw Forest Honey is raw and unfiltered with notes of butter and caramel, and it comes from Fluvanna. Halifax Honey is a blend of medium florals. You can taste the poplar notes but the florals from the other wildflowers, lavender, clover and buckwheat have created a lovely honey like none I've ever tasted. It's lovely stirred into a mug of tea on a cold morning or drizzled over warm biscuits. If you'd like to taste how different Virginia honey can be from one place to the next, the Virginia Honey Flight puts three 6oz jars of raw Virginia honey side by side with a bamboo dipper. Set it out with a cheese board and let everyone pick a favorite.

When local honey is harder to find or costs a little more, now you know why. One late freeze and a dry summer can cut a harvest by more than half. Buying from a beekeeper you can name helps keep those hives going into the next season, and that matters more this year than most.

You can shop all of our honey online, or stop by the farm store at 3456 James Madison Highway in Bremo Bluff. Questions? Call us at (804) 380-5820.

Journey with the Bees.