Bell Farm

Bell Farm Iowa source for locally raised and wintered queens, bees, and honey. Ellen manages anywhere from 50-500 colonies of bees, depending on the time of year.
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Ellen Bell founded Bell Farm in 2014 when she and her family moved from the city to the country with 2 beehives and a dream. Over the years, we have raised chickens for meat and eggs, grown a variety of produce for local restaurants, operated a CSA program, and grown our beekeeping operation significantly.
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Today, we still operate our business on our 10 acre farm, about 12 miles southeast of Des

Moines, Iowa. While we do still keep chickens (thus the origin of our logo), our primary line of business continues to be beekeeping. We teach a variety of beekeeping classes, raise our own queens, and sell bees to beekeepers around the midwest.
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If you are interested in beekeeping, local food, or small-scale, sustainable agriculture, we hope you'll follow along with us on our journey.

06/17/2026

An easy trick for getting bees to draw wax on those outside frames!

06/16/2026

When the swarm finally decides to move into your trap! 😍🙌🐝 Huzzah!

🐝

Thanks so much to the East Central Iowa Beekeepers Association for having me as the featured speaker at their Summer fie...
06/15/2026

Thanks so much to the East Central Iowa Beekeepers Association for having me as the featured speaker at their Summer field day yesterday. I had such a great time talking about Queen rearing! We discussed assembling and managing a cell builder colony and even did a live grafting demo! 🐝❤️🤓

Clover honey! ☘️🍯 Before I was a beekeeper, I never really knew what clover honey was, or why it was so common. There ar...
06/12/2026

Clover honey! ☘️🍯 Before I was a beekeeper, I never really knew what clover honey was, or why it was so common. There are lots of different types of clover plants, many producing a strong nectar flow collected by bees and used to make clover honey. Here are two of the clover varieties that we look for and our bees love!

The first is sweet clover, which comes in both yellow and white varieties. It’s tall, growing 3+ feet in height! You’ll see it in fields, ditches, and along roadsides. It produces a lot of nectar that goes into our main honey crop each year!

The second is white Dutch clover. This is low growing with small white flowers, commonly found in yards and parks. Bees love this one too, and collect lots of nectar from it that’s used to make honey. 🐝❤️🍯

If you see either of these plants in your yard or garden, please let them grow! The bees and other pollinators will thank you.

06/12/2026

POV I’ve never had a dog that would walk with me, loose leash without pulling. It’s AMAZING! 🤯😍🐶

I’m suuuper excited to be presenting on my favorite topic this weekend! Can you guess what it is?? Big thanks to the Eas...
06/10/2026

I’m suuuper excited to be presenting on my favorite topic this weekend! Can you guess what it is??

Big thanks to the East Central Iowa Beekeepers Association for having me at their summer field day! If you’ll be there on Saturday, I look forward to seeing you! 🐝😍☀️

If you can’t or won’t be able to make it, don’t forget that we have a comprehensive online queen rearing class that you can order on our website anytime! https://www.iowabees.com/product-page/queen-rearing-zoom-class

When the farm dog has a run in with the bees… 🙈😬😢 Plus a pic of what she normally looks like for comparison! 🐶(Don’t wor...
06/08/2026

When the farm dog has a run in with the bees… 🙈😬😢 Plus a pic of what she normally looks like for comparison! 🐶

(Don’t worry, this happened a couple weeks ago, and some Benadryl fixed her right up!)

Have your pets ever been stung? 🐝

06/07/2026

Our family of wood ducks hatched last week and jumped from the nest! 🦆 It was the most amazing spectacle to watch!

If you are listening to the audio of the second video, it’s worth noting than we weren’t sure where momma duck was at… she had left the nest several hours earlier. Turns out she was in the tree! You can see her if you follow the large branch up and to the left of the nest box. After all the babies jumped, she flew down to the ground to join them. She then led them away into our woods. A final count revealed that she had 11 babies in total! 🐣

duckling

📣📣🐝 EXTRA NUCS!! 🐝📣📣If you’ve been anxiously awaiting our nucs to be back in stock, today is your lucky day! We have a l...
05/25/2026

📣📣🐝 EXTRA NUCS!! 🐝📣📣

If you’ve been anxiously awaiting our nucs to be back in stock, today is your lucky day! We have a limited number of extra nucs and we are taking deposits NOW! These nucs will be ready for pickup beginning next weekend (we’ll contact you to coordinate a specific pickup date after you place your order).

Go! Order now before they’re gone:
https://www.iowabees.com/product-page/spring-2026-5-frame-nuc-deposit

We’ve got some REALLY nice queens going out in this year’s nucs! 🔥😍🐝
05/22/2026

We’ve got some REALLY nice queens going out in this year’s nucs! 🔥😍🐝

Address

10458 SE Vandalia Drive
Runnells, IA
50237

Telephone

+15159669348

Website

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