Adding Honey Production to our farm

One of the decisions we came to the Mother Earth News Fair to explore was "should we raise our own bees?".  The decision is a resounding YES!

Bees are of course a necessary part of any plant growing operation. You simply cant have productive plants without the helpful work of bees to pollinate. Bees also generate an income stream in the process of doing work.. honey, beeswax, and propolis. Each of these is valuable in the market today, especially if you abandon conventional thinking and follow the practices of sustainable and organic beekeeping.

We will be installing 3 to 5 bee hives this year, and hopefully being in production by next summer (it takes about a year to have sell able products from new bees). Our hive of choice is Top Bar Hives, Kenyan style. These hives are as close to nature as we have today, and allow for mostly unattended, organic, chemical free, disease free, parasite free beekeeping. The health of the bee and hive is preserved through the natural defenses and systems of the bees, by allowing them to do their work their way. As everything else we have learned in farming, the more man has tried to improve on nature, the more delicate and unhealthy the results are. Bees are no exception.

Have you heard of and followed the controversy over Colony Collapse Disorder? ( The recent and disturbing "disappearance" of bee colonies for no apparent reason). Well, while the scientist are scrambling to find the "one reason" for this phenomena, it seem perfectly clear and natural to wise beekeepers what is going on. It is simple, man has corrupted beekeeping in a number of ways in our attempts to increase production and profits, resulting in generations of non-sustainable bees, Much like hte poultry, swine, and cattle industries, the bee industry has fallen prey to nature trying to destroy the defective result of years of man's faulty wisdom. I will be putting more  details on this in the coming days. The bottom line is simply this, there will not be found a single reason behind this, because it is a combination of man's "improvements for selfish gain" that causes the conditions whereby bees can not survive.

So, once again man has corrupted nature in our selfish attempts to improve on it for financial gain. This, in turn, has opened a door for small scale farms to actually benefit both financially and morally by returning to the natural methods to "save the world" and produce a superior product in the process. It is very fulfilling to be part of the segment of society called "sustainable farming" that takes on the mission of fixing what is wrong in the world while others are trying to understand it in their limits model of things. The "niche" market we serve as a small scale farm is actually regular people like you seeking to find decent food that improves health instead of degrades health. Is that a niche? If it is, it will not be for long. More ad more people are learning that their own health and quality of life is directly tied to the foods consumed. And ONLY small scale farmers are capable of producing that food.

Bees are coming to Little Sprouts!