A great desire of mine has been to have bee hives in the garden to help with pollination. Bee-keeping is a great component of sustainable farming and organic gardening because the pollination keeps plants hardy and helps seeds be more productive for the next year’s planting. As a side bonus, raw honey has incredible health benefits and is delicious!Finally our wonderful bee keeper Barry Richards helped that dream to come true. Late one night (the bees like to travel at night) he arrived with three hives wrapped up with lovely red bows. I can at least pretend they were red bows.
The hives were set on metal sheeting and some wood to keep the hives tilted to ensure that water does not pool under or in the hives. The hives are unwrapped.
The bees are doing great and keeping the plants in the garden pollinated. We hope to get pollen traps on the hives soon and will be selling the pollen in our farm shop. You can buy Barry’s raw honey in the store now for $7.00 a pint and $13.00 a quart. We are looking forward to Barry teaching some classes on basic beekeeping for those interested in keeping their own bees to further their homesteading or organic gardening interests.