3bh - Three Bees Honey

3bh - Three Bees Honey We are a micro-apiary in Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania. We specialize in hive to table honey products.

03/14/2026

Turn up the sound and enjoy a calming 30-second meditation!







These are piles of dead bees outside the entrances of some of my hives. This is alarming to many new beekeepers, but it ...
03/14/2026

These are piles of dead bees outside the entrances of some of my hives. This is alarming to many new beekeepers, but it is the reality of overwintered hives. In the working season, most field bees die outside of the hive. Those that don’t are removed by mortuary worker bees and deposited away from the hive. Few dead bees are seen around a healthy hive. However, in the winter most bees die inside the hive. Mortuary bees cannot carry the deceased far from the hive or risk their own death from the cold and elements. So they are deposited right outside the entrance for the sake of the entire hive.

Another thing that alarms new beekeepers is when a pile like this appears suddenly. One of these piles was not there last week. But there can be long stretches where mortuary bees are not able to leave the hive at all or very much to carry out the dead due to the extreme cold. The dead pile up at the bottom of the hive. Then once the workers can venture out, they clean out a huge quantity of dead bees.

So what you see here is just normal hygienic hives!





It’s not even March and the 2026 beekeeping season has begun! On the few warm (above 45F) days we’ve had, I’ve seen my b...
03/02/2026

It’s not even March and the 2026 beekeeping season has begun!

On the few warm (above 45F) days we’ve had, I’ve seen my bees flying about, so I knew they were making it through winter. But there is not much to eat available right now, and the queens likely started laying small quantities of eggs several weeks ago. The pressure on the workers to find food is high and winter stores are at the lowest. Good beekeepers will check on their hives. If the cluster is high in the hive, an emergency feeding is called for. Since we had nice weather on Saturday, I went out to do some quick checks on them and evaluate them for emergency feeding.

The fact that my two main hives survived winter isn’t surprising. They had great stores and were well-prepared in the fall. I have always focused on survivor queens to head the hives. But what was surprising was the bustling colony I found in a nuc! This was actually two nucs I combined into one in the fall. I also gave them frames of honey that I had stored. But, notoriously, the small size of a nuc doesn’t bode well for winter survival in Pennsylvania, and this winter was brutal by all measures. We had weeks of temperatures well below normal, below freezing, and sometims days below zero. But these girls not only survived, they thrived! I did find them at the top of the frames in the uppermost box. A sure sign that winter stores had run low! I found the same in the main hives, too. They were all given some pollen and dry sugar on parchment as emergency food. Later in spring, I will use this nuc for splitting to raise new queens for their excellent winter survival genes!!

Hives will be checked in 1-2 weeks as the weather avails to see if they need more food. There is a bunch of warm weather in the forecast so I may do some early inspections to make sure each has a laying queen. However based on their dulcid temperaments when I cracked each of them open and the number of bees observed, I infer they are all queenright.

There are so many unexpected things that I love about beekeeping, and this is one of them. I opened a nuc to check on th...
04/29/2025

There are so many unexpected things that I love about beekeeping, and this is one of them. I opened a nuc to check on the progress rearing their queen. Now, 5 frames fit in my nuc boxes, but since the queen cells are large and stick out of the face of the frame, I have to leave extra space so I usually leave out one frame until the queen has returned and taken the reins. Well, there is a great nectar flow on in my area right now and the little cheeky buggers are making tons of wax. So they started filling that gap with brand new honeycomb and filled it with nectar. I can’t leave that there because I need to put a frame in the space they built it in, so we feasted on a chunk of their hard work! Officially, it is not honey because it’s not fully dehydrated and capped, but it was still delicious for snacking.







And the nectar flow has begun! The girls are storing excess nectar in the honey super. This is hive Cerulean.
04/24/2025

And the nectar flow has begun! The girls are storing excess nectar in the honey super. This is hive Cerulean.





04/20/2025

My hives still fill me with wonder. Just when I think it’ll just be a routine inspection, something amazing happens. Today I saw a virgin queen emerge from her cell! I wish I had recorded it but I was just me mesmerized and didn’t think to grab my phone!

Queen rearing is going well, obviously! This is my favorite time of year. I love raising my queens. Nectar is also coming in plentifully, so I placed honey supers on each hive. The bees will need time to clean it to their liking and get all the cells waxed before starting to fill it, so this will give them a head start for when the nectar flow really gets going.

Enjoy your one minute meditation. Turn up the volume! Check out the drone (male) I point to. Lots of drones coming and going!







Spring is in full swing at 3bh! Two hives came out of winter strong. In yesterday’s inspection, the queen was back-layin...
03/30/2025

Spring is in full swing at 3bh! Two hives came out of winter strong. In yesterday’s inspection, the queen was back-laying. This means brood has emerged, the cells cleaned up, and she is laying eggs in those cells again. This means she started laying eggs about a month ago. They’re starting to have a little excess nectar. Queen Nancy made her appearance, and I saw hatched drones walking around. I’m making some physical changes to the apiary this spring, so it’s a busy time. You’ll see those changes later this spring. But next, since im already seeing hatched drones, is to start raising queen cells!






02/24/2025

On my lunch break today, I was greeted by the happy sound of buzzing and clouds of bees around my hives. You see, it's been bitterly cold here in Pennsylvania for weeks now. It's been several weeks since I've seen my bees and more like 7-8 weeks since seeing them in any significant number! I have not posted about it, but I've been very worried this whole time. If you have not already heard, beekeepers are reporting very significant hive losses this year, around 62%, with many reporting 70-100% losses! The latest reports I'm hearing point to the possibility of a mutation of a virus that is spread by varroa mites, making it more deadly. Of course, I am always managing varroa mites in my hives, but the problem is that this is always a non-zero number. All hives in the US have varroa mites. Since all of this is a big unknown, it is possible that I had not done enough to protect my bees. All of my hives are traceable through a single line of queens I got in a swarm my first year beekeeping, something that I'm very proud of. The loss of my hives would have been emotionally devastating. At this time, it does appear that one hive is a loss. This hive was weak going into winter, and I did not expect it to make it unless it was a very mild winter. So this loss, if indeed it is a loss, is probably unrelated to the current issue in the beekeeping community. It looks like our weather is finally turning! I'm hoping to enter the hives for the first time this weekend for a quick check from just the top, and to feed them some pollen for a boost. I should have more to report soon! In the meantime, enjoy your 30-second meditation! I will post a link to an article about the losses in the comments. bee

These videos are a rare and absolutely fascinating look into many of the daily tasks that take place inside a bee hive. ...
12/27/2024

These videos are a rare and absolutely fascinating look into many of the daily tasks that take place inside a bee hive. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did! You can see the honey making around 3:45.

Good morning! I have a little surprise for you! As the days have turned colder, we hope this warms you up a little bit! ...
12/07/2024

Good morning!

I have a little surprise for you! As the days have turned colder, we hope this warms you up a little bit! We have a small quantity of honey available for sale! This was harvested and bottled at the beginning of October, but as a lot of you know, we had a new little addition to the family at that time as well. We had to dedicate a little time to her to get her settled in and used to the family routines.

We don’t think this supply will last long, but before you jump in, you should know this may not be everyone’s cup of tea (ha! See what I did there?) This honey is dark, and dark honey is known for bold, robust flavors. This one is no different, and if you want to eat your honey on a spoon right out of the bottle, this may not be your favorite. It’s very sweet like molasses and dark caramel merged together, thick and syrupy. This honey is a great sweetener, though! I’ve been using it in my oatmeal, baked goods, and in other dishes. It’s wonderful! It made an appearance throughout our thanksgiving dinner in cornbread, cranberry sauce, and an alcoholic beverage. It would be great for using for glazing your holiday turkeys and hams! Great for BBQ! And it is a great honey for sweetening tea and other beverages, too!

These are 16oz inverted squeeze bottles, $12 each. Cash only, please. Exact change is appreciated. PM me to make arrangements for pickup. Pickups available most evenings and other times on weekends.

Have a wonderful day and thank you for supporting our bees!

https://3bh.buzz



The under-appreciated part of our honey production is probably the bottling! But we put a lot of effort into our bottlin...
10/23/2024

The under-appreciated part of our honey production is probably the bottling! But we put a lot of effort into our bottling so I wanted to spotlight it a little bit! Anyone that knows me knows that I’m fastidious about food safety. To bolster this, early in my career, I was chief bottle washer (yes this really is a thing!) at a research laboratory. There were very strict rules about how the animals were cared for and this included a very specific regimen for washing their water bottles. I have carried this with me and now use that knowledge in our honey bottle preparations. Our bottles are pre-soaked in a disinfectant solution for several minutes. They are then rinsed thoroughly for at least one minute with the hottest running water you can imagine. The bottle rack seen in this image was probably one of the best gifts I’ve ever gotten from my husband. It holds enough bottles for an entire harvest. It is also washed before we begin and the bottles are dried on it. The caps come sealed from the manufacturer and they come with the tamper evident seal already mounted inside so they do not get washed. Once filled, the tops are immediately put on each bottle and tightened firmly, which seals them. After all the bottles are filled, the labels are manually applied. And that is how our bottles get from our hives into your hands!




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Mechanicsburg, PA

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