M & M Bees

M & M Bees M & M Bees is a family-operated apiary where our intent is to inspire, engage and share about honeybees.

M & M Bees took flight in 2024 when Mike and Meredith Weber ventured into honeybee keeping with a desire to cultivate a mutual, newly-found hobby. One hive became four and then fourteen as their apiary care expanded. Their hives can be found in Oak Ridge and Walnut Cove, N.C. Mike and Meredith enjoy sharing their adventures on their M & M Bees page. Additionally, they bottle and share local honey to cultivate healthy living and create beeswax gifts that spark joy.

05/29/2026

Clean me! Clean me! This little girl is likely shaking her honey-maker because she wants a sister to groom her.

Bees dance for different reasons. The most well-known dance is called the waggle dance. The waggle dance is one where bees move in a way to communicate where a good nectar or pollen source is located. The faster they move and more circles they turn indicates their enthusiasm for the source and the distance it is from the hive.

Scout bees may dance to indicate where an excellent location is for a swarm to go.

And sometimes they dance to just get groomed. This isn’t a waggle or scout dance because she isn’t spinning in circles and she isn’t on a bivouac that has swarmed She is vibrating and moving her body to get attention and a bath. Honeybees groom each other and are very hygienic by nature.

Collected by thousands, bottled by two. 💕 M & M Bees

Frame education time! Take a look at this frame and see if you can spot these three things:1. Nectar2. Capped honey3. Ca...
05/27/2026

Frame education time! Take a look at this frame and see if you can spot these three things:

1. Nectar
2. Capped honey
3. Capped brood (baby bees)

The capped brood is tan colored and on the majority of the left side of the frame. The queen is a rockstar. How do we know? She has an incredible laying pattern. No empty cells and the ones that are open are likely from newly hatched bees or may have been chewed open by nurse bees as hygienic behavior. The caps are the same color which means they were finished around the same time. Yet another indication the queen is doing her job.

The capped honey is whiter and along the right side of the frame. Typically the pattern of having honey at the top and sides of the frame is an indication of a healthy hive. Healthy hives keep their brood in the center of frames and in the central part of the box.

The nectar lies between the capped brood and capped honey. It’s dark in color and glistens. It’s being dried by the bees and will be capped soon once it reaches honey consistency.

Collected by thousands, bottled by two. 💕 M & M Bees

05/25/2026

It can be a little nerve-racking to look across your yard and see a BUNCH of bees flying (especially given the fact it’s swarm season). These bees, thankfully, are NOT swarming. It’s been rainy and cool for three days here and today was the first day many new foragers were coming out of the hive.

What you see are hundreds of foragers orienting to their hive. They fly out, turn around and study their box. They each attune their internal GPS system to their box before they fly out and forage for the first time.

Fun fact: honeybees can fly 2-3 miles away from their hive and return within inches of their hive opening.

Another fun fact: if you move a hive more than approximately 6” from where it started earlier in the day, foragers returning home later may not be able to find the entrance!

Say a beekeeper wants to move a hive to a few feet away, it has to be done a few inches at a time and over days OR the hive has to be moved miles away for the bees to recalibrate and then moved back to the original bee yard to the few feet away the beekeeper desired. If a beekeeper moved a hive box a few feet away from the original stand in one day the result would be older foragers returning and having no idea where their hive is. The only bees who would know where to return would be the young foragers who started their foraging journey by coming out that day and doing their first orientation flight before flying off. Any older foragers darting out of the box would have no idea where the box is upon returning. 🤯

Collected by thousands, bottled by two. 💕 M & M Bees

05/21/2026

“Flight-School Flunky” or “Prior to Coffee” would be an appropriate caption for this girl. It’s so fun to slow down the camera and watch clumsy bees coming and going from the hive. 😅

Collected by thousands, bottled by two. M & M Bees

05/20/2026

Drama alert!! This is a newly hatched queen looking for her rival! This virgin queen likely hatched within the last day or two. She is walking the frames and seeking out other hatched (or unhatched) queens.

Listen and you will hear her “piping.” A queen pipes by pressing her thorax against the comb and vibrating her muscles she would use to fly. This causes a horn-like sound with the purpose of asserting herself against any challenging rivals.

Also note how the other worker bees around her freeze in response to her dominance.

She pipes to draw rivals to her. A hive only has one queen in it, so this queen is drawing any other queens to her. The result? The queens meet, fight and one survives to be the queen of the hive.

Another dramatic and crazy thing is that the worker bees sometimes choose a queen before the fight and help their preferred queen win! If a queen is old and the worker bees are ready for her to “retire” they will help a younger queen kill the older one. Talk about a retirement party you don’t want to have!! 😅

Bees are amazing. Long live the Queen!

Collected by thousands, bottled by two. 💕 M & M Bees

05/18/2026

We had to scrape away some comb that was being built in the wrong place and a hazard to bees when shifting frames. It had some honey in it, so we set it aside while we were finishing the hive inspection. In the meantime, some girls found it and were having a snack. 😍🍯 By the time we finished our inspection, the girls had finished most of the honey from the comb.

Collected by thousands, bottled by two. 💕 M & M Bees

05/15/2026

A few weeks ago we moved a swarm into a more permanent home (hopefully). The “home” is a hexagonal-shaped prism that we will attach to a tree at our apiary in Walnut Cove, NC.

The plan is to close it up and let the bees naturally work and own it. We will treat it for mites to keep the bees healthy, but it doesn’t have frames in it, so our hope is the bees will treat it like an empty tree hollow. They’ll move in and create natural comb throughout the box. This video is of Mike shaking the hive into the prism.

Collected by thousands, bottled by two. 💕 M & M Bees

It’s baaaack! It was a pleasure to bottle honey this past weekend and fill our pantry with some spring 2026 honey. You s...
05/12/2026

It’s baaaack! It was a pleasure to bottle honey this past weekend and fill our pantry with some spring 2026 honey. You should fill yours too! 🥰🍯

Prices:
2 oz mini glass jar: $4
6 oz squeeze bottle: $10
16 oz squeeze bottle: $20
2 lbs, 6 oz quart glass jar: $50

We have very limited quart options, so grab them fast if you want one.

Message or comment below to order. We can ship upon request. Shipping not included in the above pricing.

Collected by thousands, bottled by two. 💕 M & M Bees

05/11/2026

Part 5 (of 5): Failed Swarm

Once we had the hives touching, the bees started marching from their former hive to the new, ten-frame hive we moved their queen into.

It’s such an orderly march and the bees outside the hive are attracted to the queen’s pheromones in the new hive.

We have a queen excluder on the front to prevent the queen from swarming in hopes this hive will not try to swarm again in the next few days. We hope they will draw new comb quickly. Typically, right before bees swarm they fill up on honey so they have energy to draw comb quickly in the new hive where they land. Our hope is they will quickly draw out their new five frames.

Collected by thousands, bottled by two. 💕 M & M Bees

05/09/2026

Part 4 (of 5): Failed Swarm

When combining hive boxes, a great practice is to let the bees find their own way into their new box. And they will!

How do they know where to go?

They follow the pheromones of their queen. In this case, we located and moved the queen in the ten-frame box and pulled the five frames from the nucleus box to put in the 10-framer. We added five new frames to fill it out and give the hive room to grow.

There are bees on the front and throughout the ten-frame box who will fan their Nasanov glands to attract their sisters to the new penthouse.

We put the boxes touching each other so the bees simply have to march from their old nucleus hive to the new ten-framed one. They will typically do this within about 15-20 minutes.

Stay tuned for the next video (and last in this five-part saga) where we showcase the bees marching from their old to their new hive box.

Collected by thousands, bottled by two. 💕 M & M Bees

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Oak Ridge, NC
27310

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+13366013384

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