Welcome to our blog!
The latest buzz from our apiaries.
How to Make Homemade Honey Barbecue Sauce
It is finally summer, time to get out the grill! Creating your own honey barbecue sauce at home is a delightful way to add a personal touch to your grilling season. This rich, tangy, and sweet sauce is perfect for marinating, basting, or simply dipping. Best of all,...
Sweeten Up Your Valentine’s Day With Honey!
As Valentine's Day approaches, love is in the air, and what better way to celebrate the sweetest day of the year than by exploring the fascinating connection between honey and romance?Honey has been a symbol of sweetness and indulgence for centuries, making it a...
Honey bee Friendly Yard Plantings for Michigan Homeowners
We are often asked by customers, friends and family “What can I do to help honey bees and their keepers, short of being a beekeeper myself?” One suggestion of course is to buy honey from your local beekeeper, a suggestion we’ve discussed on this blog before. If you...
Sweet Celebrations: How to Incorporate Honey into Festive Recipes
The holiday season is synonymous with joy, warmth, and of course food. What better way to infuse your celebrations with a touch of natural sweetness than by incorporating pure natural direct-from-the-beekeeper local honey into your festive recipes? In this article,...
Exploring the Art of Mead-Making: Your Gateway to Home Brewing
Mead, often referred to as “drink of the Vikings,” is an ancient fermented beverage that has been enjoyed by civilizations throughout history. Crafted from honey, water, and yeast, mead offers a unique and versatile alternative to traditional beers. What makes mead...
5 Compelling Reasons to Purchase Honey Directly from the Beekeeper
In recent years, there has been a growing interest in sourcing food directly from producers, and honey is no exception. While big box supermarkets offer convenience and discounted prices, purchasing honey directly from beekeepers has its own set of advantages. Here...
Pure Beeswax is Completely Amazing!
Beeswax, a golden-hued substance secreted by honeybees, stands as a testament to nature’s multifaceted ingenuity. Its composition, a complex blend of fatty acids, esters, and long-chain alcohols, renders it a substance of remarkable versatility and utility. As we...
Unveiling the Sweet World of Creamed Honey: Uses and Benefits
In the enchanting realm of honey, there's a delightful variation that has been gaining popularity among food enthusiasts and health-conscious individuals alike—creamed honey. This velvety and spreadable honey offers a unique texture and flavor profile that sets it...
Wanna be a beekeeper?
Have you been itching to start a few bee hives of your own in your backyard? If so, spring time is when you want to begin. We will be selling five frame starter nucleus hives (nucs) through June (or until sold out) this spring for pickup at our site in Nunica, MI. If...
Wintering Bees in Michigan (Revisited)
Back eight years ago or so I published a short article on wintering bees in Michigan that to this day is one of the most visited pages on our website. This is not surprising, in that for many cold climate beekeepers, bringing bees through the winter remains one of...
Honey in the comb!
A while back we wrote an article in which we tried to clear up some of the confusion around the term "raw honey". If you want to get really technical, perhaps the only correct definition of the term is honey still in the comb, or simply "comb honey". Every year, we...
What beekeepers do in the winter
Sometime ago, we posted an article about what bees do in the winter. It occurred to us, that our readers might be wondering what the keepers of bees do in the winter as well. The answer to that of course depends on what kind of beekeeper you're talking about. Large...
Why Bees Swarm
Here in the West Michigan area where we live, honey bee swarming season begins in May and runs well into June. Residents are often startled to find a large cluster of bees (can be as small as a softball or larger than a basketball!) hanging on a shrub or tree in...
What Is Raw Honey?
One of the most frequent questions we get asked by honey customers is: is your honey raw? Interestingly enough, almost nobody asks us: what is raw honey? Just for fun, for a while whenever somebody would ask if our honey was raw, I would answer by asking them what...
Small Scale Queen Rearing
Every beekeeper these days seems to be at least thinking about raising his or her own queens. That's a good thing, and really not an option if you intend to keep bees for the long haul. While mated queens can be readily purchased the entire beekeeping season from...
What Bees and Their Keepers Do in the Spring
Springtime is arguably the busiest time of the year for both the honey bee and the beekeeper. From the bees' perspective, the activity begins before Spring actually arrives. In late winter, as the days increase in length, the queen will resume laying eggs. Slowly at...
Hive Scales
Electronics enclosure of the SolutionBee Smart Hive Monitor. Jonathan and his graduate students at Grand Valley State University have been working with the Bee Informed Partnership to automate the monitoring of live honeybee colonies via electronic sensor platforms....
What Bees Do in the Winter
We often get asked “what do your bees do in the winter?”. Given the rather brutal winters we experience here in the West Michigan area, these questions are often prompted by concern for the bees’ welfare. The quick answer to the question is that bees eat lots of...