01/02/2021- Most commercial beekeepers rely on migratory pollination services, trucking their bees across the country to pollinate the foods we rely on, such as almonds in California.
Weaker Bees
Because the grocery stores are stocking many honeys that are adulterated and selling far below the beekeepers costs, and consumers are buying this honey. Beekeepers are forced to make money from additional services like pollination. In fact some beekeepers are not even making honey for commercial sale and relying solely on pollination paychecks.
The problem with this is, it stresses the bees out and brings back diseases from areas the bees would have normally not been exposed to. Think covid-19 for the bees, plus they are more susceptible to these diseases with the stresses of getting moved around and trucked across the country on the back of semi trucks, through heat and cold and being locked up within their hives for days on end.
Now, we do not fault beekeepers for trying to survive, however we believe this is contributing to the collapse of bees locally. There is some science indicating this to be true, because of the diseases and weak bee genes brought back to the Summer yards here in MN and WI.
What we are Doing
We keep all of our bees locally and over winter the bees in their summer yards. This helps keep a strong genetic line that is capable of surviving over the winters, and those that do not are no longer in our breeding stock, helping to strengthen the winter genetic lines of not only our bees but the bees our drones mate with from other apiaries near by.
Treatment-Free
Because we let the weak colonies genes parish over winter and only the strong survive (the way nature intends) we are able to provide treatment free bees. We are proud to say, even in our backyard beekeeping days we have never treated our bees with chemicals, even organic.
Many beekeepers sees treatment free beekeeping as being part of the problem they are fighting with their chemicals, however science is showing that it's likely treating for mites or similar with chemicals is strengthening the pest and weakening the bees. There is also information of the contrary, but we know one thing, we have strong bees that through our management processes, require no chemicals for helping them manage pests.
Supporting our operations is helping a local family owned business keep bees locally helping pollinate local flowers and trees. Follow us to keep up to date on beekeeping, honey, bees, and anything else us beekeepers are knowledgeable on.
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