Organized Chaos Apiary and Gardens

Organized Chaos Apiary and Gardens Apiary started April 2021. Gardens started in 2001. Beekeeper & Gardener: Jason Campfield-Holdefer It is loaded with many types of goldfish and koi.

I started the gardens in 2001, and I have been adding to them ever since. I like to find interesting plants that not everyone grows, but I still have plenty of the traditional plants. I have some dedicated themed beds, there is the pig bed, which has many garden art pigs. I also have the hedgehog bed, which also has many garden art hedgehogs. I added a pond in 2020, made out of an old 800-gallon c

attle trough, which was our swimming pool as kids. They live all year in the pond with the help of trough heaters during the winter. During the summer I have the pond loaded with many types of pond plants. The neighborhood wildlife love to visit the pond for a drink or take a refreshing bath. We have even had frogs show up and use the pond. I also added a small waterfall pond to the hedgehog bed in 2022. I added that one to hear the sound of running water while sitting on the front deck. On July 9th, 2022, my gardens were one of eleven gardens featured in the Master Gardener Garden Tour. They dubbed my garden as The Organized Choas Garden. This was due to the fact that my gardens are more of a Cottage Garden style. But I also try to introduce old farm equipment and odd forms of art. I view my style of gardening as chaotic, but it all makes since in my head, so it is Organized Chaos. In April of 2021, I started keeping bees. My mom bought me my first hive, twenty-three days after I got that hive, I had to expand to a second hive. In 2022, I added two more hives, they were at my mom's house at first. But she decided chickens and bees were too much to work on by herself, so those hives moved back to my apiary. In 2023, I added two more hives to the apiary. In 2024, I plan to add four hives to the apiary and move all but a few of my hives to a farm south of Indianola, Iowa. Since nothing I do is every easy, I have decorated each of my hives in a different theme. It is always fun trying to come up with a new theme for each hive. You can see the different hive in my photo albums.

Hive cleaning day. Honey is all harvested, starting to clean up the supers for winter storage, collecting the scraps and...
09/04/2026

Hive cleaning day. Honey is all harvested, starting to clean up the supers for winter storage, collecting the scraps and lending some equipment to another bee keepers for her harvest.

08/31/2026

I had accidentally opened an all-you-can-eat honey buffet in the back of my truck. 😂🍯🐝

At the rate the neighborhood bees are going, they might have all the frames cleaned up before I even get a chance to take them back out to my bee yard!

Hey, I’m not complaining—free labor is free labor! 😂🐝

Never a dull moment at Organized Chaos Apiary! 🍯🐝

I had accidentally opened an all-you-can-eat honey buffet in the back of my truck. 😂🍯🐝At the rate the neighborhood bees ...
08/31/2026

I had accidentally opened an all-you-can-eat honey buffet in the back of my truck. 😂🍯🐝

At the rate the neighborhood bees are going, they might have all the frames cleaned up before I even get a chance to take them back out to my bee yard!

Hey, I’m not complaining—free labor is free labor! 😂🐝

Never a dull moment at Organized Chaos Apiary! 🍯🐝

08/31/2026

I had accidentally opened an all-you-can-eat honey buffet in the back of my truck. 😂🍯🐝

08/31/2026

I had accidentally opened an all-you-can-eat honey buffet in the back of my truck. 😂🍯🐝

08/31/2026

🐝🍯 2026 Honey Harvest Update! 🍯🐝

Jeff Holdefer helped me harvest honey yesterday, and just like I suspected, it was a pretty small harvest this year.

We ended up with two 5-gallon buckets of honey, each about 3/4 full. Definitely not one of our biggest years, but that’s beekeeping. Some years the bees give you an amazing harvest, and some years... not so much. 🐝🤷‍♂️

The honey also came in a little wetter than I’d like, at about 19.5% moisture, so I’ll be dehydrating some of it before it gets bottled up. 🍯

After extracting, I loaded all the empty honey frames into the back of my truck so I could take them back out to the bee yard. I let the bees do the final cleanup—there’s still honey left in the cells after extraction, and they are MUCH better at cleaning it up than I am. 😂 Then the frames can be put away for winter storage.

Well...

I loaded everything into the truck and went back inside.

When I came back outside later, apparently word had gotten out around the neighborhood.

🐝🐝🐝🐝🐝🐝🐝

The neighborhood bees had found the frames.
Apparently I had accidentally opened an all-you-can-eat honey buffet in the back of my truck. 😂🍯🐝

Never a dull moment at Organized Chaos Apiary!

08/29/2026

🐝🍯 Today was harvest day at Organized Chaos Apiary! 🍯🐝

I headed out to the bee yard today and quickly realized I hadn’t been out there to mow in about a month. 😬 Bad Jason. 😂

I also finally got the Hippie Dippie Hive set up! ✌️🌼🐝

Then it was time for the real work. I pulled 14 honey supers off the hives.

Unfortunately, there was also some bad news. The Castle Hive, which was a healthy hive just a month ago, was completely dead and infested with wax moths. 😢 It’s amazing—and frustrating—how quickly things can change with bees.
So the Castle Hive went with me to Mom’s Gloria Campfield , where I hired a highly qualified cleanup crew:

🐥🐥🐥 THE BABY CHICKS! 🐥🐥🐥

They were more than happy to take care of the wax moth larvae. Apparently their rates are very reasonable. 😂

After getting home, I separated the heavy supers from the light ones to see what kind of harvest I actually ended up with.
And... it looks like this was a pretty rough honey year for me.

Out of 14 supers, only 5 are heavy with honey. The others are either empty or have very little honey in them.

Not exactly the harvest I was hoping for, but that’s beekeeping. Some years the bees fill supers faster than you can give them boxes, and other years they remind you that they are very much in charge. 🐝

Now it’s time to see how much honey those five heavy supers actually give me.

Never a dull moment at Organized Chaos Apiary. 🍯🐝

🐝🍯 Today was harvest day at Organized Chaos Apiary! 🍯🐝I headed out to the bee yard today and quickly realized I hadn’t b...
08/29/2026

🐝🍯 Today was harvest day at Organized Chaos Apiary! 🍯🐝

I headed out to the bee yard today and quickly realized I hadn’t been out there to mow in about a month. 😬 Bad Jason. 😂

I also finally got the Hippie Dippie Hive set up! ✌️🌼🐝

Then it was time for the real work. I pulled 14 honey supers off the hives.

Unfortunately, there was also some bad news. The Castle Hive, which was a healthy hive just a month ago, was completely dead and infested with wax moths. 😢 It’s amazing—and frustrating—how quickly things can change with bees.
So the Castle Hive went with me to Mom’s Gloria Campfield, where I hired a highly qualified cleanup crew:

🐥🐥🐥 THE BABY CHICKS! 🐥🐥🐥

They were more than happy to take care of the wax moth larvae. Apparently their rates are very reasonable. 😂

After getting home, I separated the heavy supers from the light ones to see what kind of harvest I actually ended up with.
And... it looks like this was a pretty rough honey year for me.

Out of 14 supers, only 5 are heavy with honey. The others are either empty or have very little honey in them.

Not exactly the harvest I was hoping for, but that’s beekeeping. Some years the bees fill supers faster than you can give them boxes, and other years they remind you that they are very much in charge. 🐝

Now it’s time to see how much honey those five heavy supers actually give me.

Never a dull moment at Organized Chaos Apiary. 🍯🐝

I finally finished painting the Hippie Dippie Hive. I will take this out to the bee yard soon and install the last swarm...
08/23/2026

I finally finished painting the Hippie Dippie Hive. I will take this out to the bee yard soon and install the last swarm I caught into this hive. It will also have solar black lights that light up the paint at night.

After only hearing that this happens. I finally got to see it in person. Tonight when I went out to my gardens. A bunch ...
08/17/2026

After only hearing that this happens. I finally got to see it in person. Tonight when I went out to my gardens. A bunch of flowers had sleeping bees in them.

Address

1618 NW Maple Place
Ankeny, IA
50023

Telephone

+15157834409

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