If you are new to beekeeping, please consider taking a hands on class, with us or another experienced beekeeper. We are here to help and we are normally only a phone call or email away from answering any questions you may have. Keep in mind we are beekeeping in the field more than the office and cell service is not great at some of our bee yard locations.
We do have an answering system we check regularly, so if you need to leave a message, please be patient and someone will return your call as soon as we are able and back in the office.
The honey bees we offer are of some of the most gentle nature from top-quality genetics. Depending on the season and what we have in stock, we typically offer options from a nucleus ("nuc") in a transport tote to starter colonies in 10 frame hives. We also provide the basic information and instructions needed to get started in beekeeping.
We raise our own bees, and we make all of our own splits to grow our inventory. We normally make more than we need for pollination work, so we produce as many as we feel comfortable with from year to year and offer Nucs to the community. These are all made by reproducing bees from our own yards. These are the combination of local survivor stock genetics bred with imported lines from different regions, outside of Africanized bee territory. We select from the lines that check the boxes on our wish lists for different purposes.
Various lines produce different traits and have a wide range in temperament, honey production, swarm tendency, mite resistance, etc. We have some hardy bees and we have some "cup cakes" and we have been successful with both. They all have their pros and cons, but at the end of the day, they are bees and offer the same basic tool sets, so selection becomes a matter of the reason for needing bees in the first place.
Some beekeepers want to sell honey, while others may want them for personal property pollination and ag value for the land and allow the bees to keep all the honey they can save. Others will follow a different branch on the trail, such as crop pollination. Renting bees to the right farmer can be a beneficial relationship for both parties.
So the questions we get about bees are often best answered once we understand the goals of the beekeeper for the bees in question. Let us know what you need bees for and we can let you know what we have available and help you decide what will be the best fit for your goals.
