Frequently Asked Questions

All the Answers to Your Questions

Do honey bees sting you?

Yes!

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It is best to avoid getting stung. When a honey bee stings, their stinger is left in their victim and the bee eventually dies. 

To avoid getting stung, we wear personal protection gear (PPG) like a head veil, jackets, suits, gloves, and/or smokers when our bees' attitudes require them.

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Some of the bees may have an attitude problem some of the time. This can be caused by the weather, protecting their honey, or many other known and unknown issues. When we detect an attitude, we wear our PPG. We also use smokers to prevent them from communicating with their alert pheromones.

Is your honey produced chemical free?

We are using management practices that help eliminate the need to use chemicals. We do NOT treat our bees when they are producing honey. If needed, we use naturally occurring products, like oxalic acid or hops, to treat varroa mite infestation early in spring or fall before honey supers are added or after they are removed.

The area ranches around where we keep our bees raise cattle. They do not have crops that need to be protected with chemicals.

How do you process your honey?

We remove full frames of bee-capped honey from hives, cut caps off of each frame, and use a spinning extractor to remove the honey from the honey comb in a frame.  Then we freeze all the honey until we are ready to bottle it. Freezing preserves the natural water content (`17%) when the bees capped the honey cells.