What About the Bees?

We do our best to work in partnership with our bees. Certainly we take their honey, but we make sure they have everything they need to meet their needs in each season of the year. Bees need a certain amount of honey to eat when there is no nectar available, and we make sure they always have plenty. We take only the surplus.

Bees, like honey, are meant to be local. But, like honey, it is possible to order bees from places like California or Georgia, and have them shipped in the mail.
We chose to begin our beekeeping in Virginia with local stock, and we can be found exploring Stafford County in search of honey bee swarms to catch. Bees raised locally tend to be better adapted to local climate and environmental conditions than bees raised in some other state, and using local bees reduces the chances of spreading diseases and pests from state to state.  Sometimes we find it necessary to add bees from Pennsylvania and other places to our stock, but in the main we prefer to deal with local bees.