Honey

At Heritage Farms we keep up to 3 hives going through the year. The primary intent is pollination of all of our crops and the hope that the bees have produced enough surplus honey that we can harvest some as a bonus. We leave large amounts of honey for the bees for themselves for the winter. We only sell off excess honey above what the bees and our family needs to get through another year. Our wildflower/forest/vegetable pollination honey is a mixture of whatever the bees are keen to at the moment. Apple trees, buckwheat, squash blossoms, maple trees, clover patches, golden rod, and more. A veritable mix of the Maine outdoors landscape.

We currently have three different hive that we work with. For those of you who are familiar with hives, we run a traditional 10 frame deep Langstroth hive with shallow supers, an 8 frame medium only hive, and a home built Horizontal Top-bar hive. All hives have various configurations of foundation, including beeswax coated plastic, beeswax, thin strips, half pieces, full pieces, or no foundations at all. Often times the combinations are all in the same box! Due to our constant need to tinker and try and see how the bees respond, we do not have any standardized equipment. This often means running to the wood shed and building what we need in a pinch. Due to this reason, our hives are not handled as efficiently as you might find on a commercial, large scale operation servicing hives into the hundreds or beyond.

The bees have turned out to be a great aspect of the farm and are incredibly amazing to watch and study. They are truly fascinating social members of the insect world. If you would be interested in honey, please contact us either by phone, email, or when we see you next and request to be put on our honey list. We maintain a list of members who are interested in honey when we have enough to sell off.

Honey is sold by wide mouth pint jars and half pint jelly jars. For our honey pricing, see our price list.

Spruce boughs around the hive to protect from winter winds.

A wild bee tree.

Honey at the top, brood at the bottom.

The bees just started building this comb.