Mount Hope Honey and Apiary

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Mount Hope Honey and Apiary We're a small honey bee operation focusing on creating a great environment for our bees.

I've been helping a new beekeeper this year, and visited his hives today for the first time since May. They're doing gre...
09/21/2026

I've been helping a new beekeeper this year, and visited his hives today for the first time since May. They're doing great, and should have plenty of food to get through the winter! But I wanted to share his daughter's contributions to the apiary. Not only did she give the hives a great paint job, she also decided to name the queens. To the left is the home of Queen Victoria and her children. Queen Elizabeth and her family are to the right. (The center boxes are extras.)

09/19/2026

We got 2 boxes, approximately 40 pounds, of honey off the hives today. With the way that our spring went, I'm overjoyed with this! I brushed the bees off of each frame and put the frames in a box with this lid, a bee escape board, for those bees who snuck back onto the frames to have a way out. When the last of the bees are out, the honey goes into the freezer for a week, to kill anything that is hiding in the honey. Then it's time to extract. I'll let you know when it's available to buy!

You may hate the fact that the goldenrod is blooming. But honeybees and tons of other pollinators are loving it, and are...
09/15/2026

You may hate the fact that the goldenrod is blooming. But honeybees and tons of other pollinators are loving it, and are hard at work preparing for winter. (Look at how loaded her legs are with pollen!)

The Wingstem is blooming, and the girls are loving it! Hope to check the hives soon to see if we have honey to harvest.
09/01/2026

The Wingstem is blooming, and the girls are loving it! Hope to check the hives soon to see if we have honey to harvest.

We had a short, hard rain, followed by sunshine, and had a beautiful double rainbow in front of Laird's K**b! And then...
08/21/2026

We had a short, hard rain, followed by sunshine, and had a beautiful double rainbow in front of Laird's K**b! And then the top one disappeared, while the lower became more intense!

Two great nights at the Rockingham County Fair! Last night I enjoyed an 8 ounce ribeye sandwich at the 4H booth, along ...
08/13/2026

Two great nights at the Rockingham County Fair! Last night I enjoyed an 8 ounce ribeye sandwich at the 4H booth, along with a freshly squeezed lemonade. But the highlight was certainly everyone who stopped at the SVBA booth to watch the bees in our observation hive. So much interest, so many questions! And quite a few kids who I met on Monday were back on Wednesday as well, and apparently had come on Tuesday as well. It's hard to get too much when it comes to watching honeybees hard at work! (My apologies for not taking a picture of the observation hive, as every time that I thought about taking one we were busy answering lots of questions. I'll try to do better next year.)

Making some cashew and honey ice cream! It's Rockingham County Fair week, and the Shenandoah Valley Beekeepers will hav...
08/10/2026

Making some cashew and honey ice cream! It's Rockingham County Fair week, and the Shenandoah Valley Beekeepers will have an observation bee hive there once again. I'll be there on Monday and Wednesday from 7 to 10 pm. Stop by and say hi if you're there!

I went to see if the queenless colony was making a new queen from the frames of eggs that I had given them, only to be s...
08/04/2026

I went to see if the queenless colony was making a new queen from the frames of eggs that I had given them, only to be surprised and find out that they had a laying queen! Apparently when I found an empty queen cell and no eggs was right around the time that she was making her mating flights. That hive is doing great now! But my weakest hive was overrun with wax moths, to the point that I carried the boxes away, dumped the bees out on the ground, and then put the boxes of frames in the freezer for a week to kill the larvae. The bees hopefully found another hive to join where they'll have a much better chance of survival. The yellow mounds through the comb in the picture are where the wax moth larvae are.

We had 0.8 inches of rain over the weekend, which seemed to increase the amount of foraging I was seeing today. Most of ...
08/03/2026

We had 0.8 inches of rain over the weekend, which seemed to increase the amount of foraging I was seeing today. Most of it was still on thistles, and some on clover as well, but today was the first day that I saw foraging on knapweed. There's also another wave of milkweed that should start blooming in another few days. More hope for a honey harvest this year!

I went to check on if the queenless colony was making a new queen from the frame of eggs that I gave them. I parked a di...
07/20/2026

I went to check on if the queenless colony was making a new queen from the frame of eggs that I gave them. I parked a distance from the hives, but before I could get my jacket and veil on, a bee stung me on the end of my nose (you can see the dark spot where she got me). And the hives were in the kind of uproar that happens when one hive decides to rob honey from another hive. I only stayed long enough to close the robbing screens on each hive, which only leave a small opening into the hive that is easier to defend from robbers. No idea if that hive is making a queen, as I didn't want to open up a hive in those conditions, but I hope to be able to check tomorrow.

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5075 Mount Hope Lane
Keezletown, VA
22832

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