Things are going pretty good this year at the Honey Farm.  Our loss over the winter was less than the last two years and the new package bees that we installed are thriving.

May & June is the "Swarm season" for honeybees.  That means a hive can get too crowded and decide to leave.  This weakens the hive since the swarm leaves with most of the bees and the old queen.  The remaining hive will make a new queen.  It is great if you can capture the swarm.

We had two different swarms move into a stack of honey supers we had stored by the barn. A few weeks later we moved them to a permanent honeybee yard.

Here is a link to our recent swarming post....

Our main activities in June & July are visiting the bee yard and adding empty honey supers on top of them - hopefully the bees will fill them with honey.

We now have a new 1 Gallon Jug (12 lb of honey) that can be shipped USPS flat rate.

This can be shipped to your door with shipping included for $72.00

Here a a recent post about  "3 ways to purchase Bulk Honey"

We found a great bunch of honeybee you tube videos:

What's in the News from CATCH THE BUZZ 
(Catch the Buzz are articles of interest in the beekeeping community - I get them from a daily email)

• CATCH THE BUZZ – Neonics Killing Bees from Wildflowers - By: Alan Harman New British research finds that 97% of the neonicotinoids brought back to honeybee hives in pollen could come from wildflowers –...
• CATCH THE BUZZ – Chinese Honey Illegally Imported, AGAIN, Labeled As From Vietnam - By Alan Harman Federal agents in Chicago seized nearly 60 tons of illegally imported Chinese honey valued at more than $200,000. The 195 barrels......
• CATCH THE BUZZ – Nation’s Beekeepers Lost 44 Percent of Bees in 2015-16 – BIP - Summer losses rival winter losses for the second year running. Beekeepers across the United States lost 44 percent of their honey bee colonies during...
• CATCH THE BUZZ – A CASE FOR (LOCAL) HONEY - Fully 80% of the honey consumed in this country is imported. Vietnam and India make up half of what’s sent to the U.S. How...

• CATCH THE BUZZ – Pollination Research – We’ve Been Planting Flowers, are They Doing What We Want? - Check out this new video The Xerxes Society has produced about the day-to-day workings of research on the Integrated Crop Pollination project

• CATCH THE BUZZ – Fraudulent Honey – Again - Alan Harman Photo UMF Honey   About a third of honey marketed in the United Kingdom as manuka product from New Zealand does not...