04/28/2026
🐝 This is what 90 bee hives looks like! Our beekeeper Jim, who keeps the bees up north from May to mid Oct, is currently packing them up to bring back to their summer home. He packs them up at night while it's much cooler and the worker bees have finished their foraging and they're nice and calm. They wake up and re-orient themselves to their new home.
Jim lost fewer bees than ever this winter, and split the hives from 50 to 90 a couple weeks ago, resulting in a TON of bees. The bees stay in early spring during blossom 🌸 to pollinate our fruit trees, then they get packed up just before some of the surrounding orchards spray pesticides, and arrive back home healthy and happy 😊 Im going to miss their familiar buzzing around the orchard but look forward to tasting this year's honey in the months to come 🍯
A lot of people ask if we get stung a lot at this time of year, and the answer is not often at all! They're quite peaceful creatures, and usually only sting when they've been moved, stepped on, or are being worked on in their hives.
Time to flip this bee home into our squash and melon patch!!!
