Mount Hope Honey and Apiary

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

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.

I got into the hives today for the first time since May 20th. At that point they were finally starting to make a little ...
07/16/2026

I got into the hives today for the first time since May 20th. At that point they were finally starting to make a little honey. Since then we've had a lot of rain, spread out to where lots of it soaked in, and what a difference that has made! I did a very slow and deliberate inspection of each hive, and found no evidence of small hive beetles or wax moths, for which I'm very happy. One hive had an opened queen cell but no queen. She must have emerged and then been killed on her mating flights or something. The hive got a frame with eggs, and hopefully will have a new queen soon. You can see from my glove that I was sweating a lot. A bee broke off her stinger in my glove, releasing a pheromone telling other bees "Attack here!" and next thing I knew my glove was getting stingers stuck all over it (all of the little white specks). I left, let the bees calm down, and then returned wearing another pair of gloves and was able to finish. The really good news, though, is that there's a good chance, if the girls keep bringing in nectar like they are, that we'll have some honey to harvest!

Another hot summer day, and tons of activity on the thistles!
07/13/2026

Another hot summer day, and tons of activity on the thistles!

Things dried back out after the rain the other week, and foraging really seemed to drop off. But we had over an inch and...
06/24/2026

Things dried back out after the rain the other week, and foraging really seemed to drop off. But we had over an inch and a half of rain to start the week, and foraging has resumed! The thistles have been slow to bloom, almost as if they were waiting for rain before opening up, but they're opening now and all sorts of bees and bugs are on them. And the milkweed seems to have reloaded, with so many bees and bugs on them that I caught this bug crawling over the back of a honeybee to get to a different part of the flower!

This morning I found some of the girls foraging on Mom's spirea. This afternoon I found bees of all sorts, butterflies, ...
06/10/2026

This morning I found some of the girls foraging on Mom's spirea. This afternoon I found bees of all sorts, butterflies, and even beetles all over the milkweed. Meanwhile, since the bears can't get to our hives, they have had to content themselves with digging up all of the ash tree stumps around our yard and woods. Even ones less than 50 feet from the house. But the first blackberries are ripening, so they'll probably ignore the stumps for awhile.

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5075 Mount Hope Lane
Keezletown, VA
22832

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