We’ve been raising bees since 2024, but when we moved at the end of 2025 we decided it was best to leave our hive with a neighbor and start fresh on the new homestead. We received great feedback on the honey our bees produced then. We gave some to the driver who hauled our livestock here, and he said it was “the best.” And we gave some to an old friend from out of state who said it was one of the most layered flavors he’d ever tasted. We hope to have similarly-tasty honey here, but we’ll probably only have a hive or two of our own bees.

Instead of managing a large number of hives ourselves (in addition to all the other things we’re doing), we’re working on a partnership with a local apiary to keep a number of hives here on our farmstead that this more experienced beekeeper will manage. In exchange for housing his hives, we’ll receive some of his honey that we can use ourselves or sell. Additionally, we will be able to sell the honey that he extracts from his hives on our farmstead in our farm store with his labels, etc. Because we are still working on the details of this partnership, we don’t currently have pricing available for honey, but we expect it will be comparable to other local honey you might find in the area.

These bees should make particularly good honey that will become even better in subsequent years because they will have ample access to clean water and a wide diversity of flowers from our gardens and fields and trees. The bees will also help pollinate all of our produce, and we’ll try to give them as much pollen to forage right here on our farmstead as we can.