We get asked a lot if we sell at the farmer’s market, a road side stand or from our home. The answer is “not quite”. We do sell in bulk to other, locally retailing beekeepers. It’s a trade that allows all of us local producers to keep our customers in locally produced honey consumers can trust. We also sell to friends and family from time to time. And we, much to our kids’ chagrin, tend to bring honey as a host gift, a thank you note, a teacher’s appreciation – you name it. Honey makes everything sweeter, after all!
We are working on getting our production (really, processing) set up to retail on a much bigger scale by the end of this year. Meanwhile, we have bees to set up for the spring which is around the corner, after all.
We do sell bees this year in the form of nucs, nucleus colonies that are ready to grow into a full production hive by late spring/early summer. These are different from packages since they contain locally raised bees with locally adapted genetics. They don’t start out with the stress of being shaken from colonies recently returned from the almond flows and other pollination contracts. Most sources will tell you that a nuc will survive (and thrive) at at least twice the rate of a package. Combine that with our desire to have locally adapted genetics and we are pretty sold on nuc colonies as much as we are selling them. Lastly, we went into business because we enjoy the challenge of the bees, to stay closer to home, and to produce excellent local products. Driving down several states to pick up unknown genetics just to turn around and sell them at a mark-up defeats the purpose behind what we do.