Bee Boys' Pure Honey
Eat it Raw
Bee Boys' Pure Honey
Eat it Raw
Bee Boys' Pure Honey
Eat it Raw
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Bee Boys' Pure Honey
Eat it Raw
Bee Boys' Pure Honey
Eat it Raw
The Bee Boys’ Story
- Welcome to healthy raw honey! -
- What is Raw Honey! -
Our honey is “raw” which means it hasn’t been heated and contains live enzymes that are beneficial to your health and help prevent your allergies. It also means it will solidify (crystallize). Honey never goes bad and crystallization is a natural process.
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Bee Boys' Pure Honey
The Bee Boys' Pure Honey contains nothing but what the bees put in it but we are committed to the philosophy of giving you the honey right from the hive with minimal processing. - Unheated, Raw Honey -
Sizes
The Bee Boys offer honey in the following size containers:
1/2 Pints
Fancy Hex Jars
Pints
Quarts
Half Gallons
$6, $8, $12, $24, $50
Where can I get it
Our honey is sold at various quality merchants in the Central Vermont area. These businesses are in Randolph, Berlin and Northfield.
Outreach
The Bee Boys have an observation hive and enjoy attending events and schools to answer questions and meet people interested in bees.
Events: Northfield Water Street Park State House Lawn Barr Hill Opening
In the Apiary
Our Mission
The Bee Boys strive to create Apiaries that provide bees with everything they need to be productive and happy. We do this by working in harmony with each hive giving each what it needs to thrive.
We take care to make sure the bees have enough honey over the winter and only havest the surplus, insuring that the bees will survive and produce the best Bee Boys' Pure Honey from season to season.
3/25/2024
The Bee Boys had a tough 2023 after the horrible flood that affected Montpelier, Vermont in July. We managed to save the bees from total destruction in that flood only to have mites take some and a second flood hit in December.
We jumped in feet first in the recovery effort and continue to help our downtown business people by frequenting their establishments that were also flooded. Reconstruction costs are high and there are still bills to pay. If you would like to donate to one such Non-Profit (The Vermont Program for Quality in Health Care) See the QR code or link to donate for their building reconstructions costs. If you do - mention Bee Boys in the donation comments. We don't get anything from it but we always like to practice the "Pay it Forward" concept.
https://www.pledge.to/help-vpqhc-rebuild
2/21/2004
A new year begins for the Bee Boys. Hopefully this will be better than the last with its flooding and poor nectar flow.
9/26/2023
Royal Jelly Bees Knees Cocktail Competition bartender's came to the apiary to learn a little bit about the bees.
We had a good time and only a few people got stung. Sorry. I understand many of the participants were excited about the visit with the bees for the rest of the afternoon.
The bee's enjoyed your company and good vibes also. We opened up Gabecool and checked on their population, honey stores, pollen and brood. We also checked that the queen was present and looked for varroa mites.
Congratulations to Patti from Kuya's Restaurant in Randolph, Vermont who was the winner of the contest.
5/11/2023
Last week all of the blossoms in Vermont popped. We now have Serviceberry, Dandelions, Apple Blossoms, Crabapple trees, Lilacs, and Forsythia all blooming. If you have other species blooming in central Vermont feel free to email us.
The bees are happy and the excitement of spring is here. Our friends from Jamaica are back working at many Vermont farms and locales. Farmers rely on their hands to get the plants all seeded and planted in the fields. Growing season is here. It's nice to see them again even though they are away from their families.
We also replenished some dead hives from the winter with new packages of bees. The Caledonia Spirits Apiary is up and running now with a new electric fence and six hives assembled and painted by the awesome staff during their Summit (Staff Retreat). We are excited about this project even if a bear visited the site before we had the electric fence completed. The fence is on now and hopefully it will deter and further bear interaction.
4/17/2023
Spring is here and although the dandelions haven't popped yet the daffodils are here as well as crocuses and bluets. It won't be long now and everything will spring to life here in Vermont. The buds on the trees are about to burst and the lime green of spring will hit the mountaintops.
3/21/2023
Bee Boys' Bill Marcinkowski worked with staff at Caledonia Spirits to build some bee hives for a distillery apiary. The staff was great fun and there were lots of hammers putting supers and frames together in the afternoon. More to come!
2/26/2023
A year later from the last post in Hawaii but this year the February warm spot was Jamaica. The people I met and hung out with were wonderful. Thanks to all of you who I am indebted to. Happy Birthday to my freind Donald's sister Zerlyn. I was so honored to have met your whole beautiful family. It was a very special occasion for me to be a part of. Beekeeping with FIWI Honey and Rick Dennis was also a highlight as well as teaching some little children to float on their backs at the Harmony Park Beach in Montego Bay. My time in Kingston visiting the Bob Marley Museum and the National Heroes Park and Emancipation Park were great as well as the swim at Hellshire Beach. Thanks to my friend the Captain for that.
Back in VT and looking at a 12" snowstorm tomorrow but that how we roll in the 802. Bee Well and take care of each other.
2/23/2022
Spring is not quite here yet although we hit a high temp of 57 degrees today. Sounds great although tomorrow the bees will have to contend with a high of 25 degrees and a low of 9 degrees. Still they did get out for a brief cleansing flight today. That is a good thing for them. Next items in the apiary when it gets warmer are to clear their bottom entrances and possibly the bottom boards and see if they need a frame of honey to help them get through March and April.
ps I went to Hawaii in February 2022. I met some fellow beekeepers at Maui Bees see their website at https://mauibees.com/. Nice people and great philosopy on beekeeping.
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Bee Biology
- The three sexes -
The Queen (Mother of the Hive)
The Queen is the grand organizer and Mother to all in the hive. If a hive does not have a Queen it usually isn't very happy and the hive must make a new queen from an available egg that is in the hive in short order. The Queen will lay all of the eggs in the hive. Fertilized eggs will become workers while unfertilized eggs will be males. A new queen is made from a fertilized egg that is fed royal jelly for five days rather than just three like the other workers.
Worker Bees (unfertilized Females)
The Workers provide the hive with all that is needed to sustain itself. They start as nurse bees feeding the eggs. Next they become house bees who clean out dead bees in the hive and polish and prepare the cells for a new egg to be laid by the queen. Finally when they are mature they become field bees where they leave the hive and gather nectar and pollen from the flowers.
Drones (Male Bees)
The males in a bee hive are a bit lazy just like in the human realm. They hang around and eat but when a new Queen emerges she must be mated. They will fly after her high up into the air where the mating will occur. She will mate with several males and will use the sperm gathered for the rest of her life to fertilize eggs. The males are a burden to the hives resources in the winter so they are kicked out of the hive and left to die in the fall.
Pesticides
Please! Oh please don't use them! They quite often will kill more than the pest you are trying to rid yourself of. Please do your homework and seek out an alternative method to deal with unwanted pest in your gardens. Remember everything is food for some other thing and if we disturb this web it will continue up the food chain and most likely affect us. You may not like mosquitos but leave them for the birds and the bats.
Diseases
There are many parasites and diseases that affect the bees. Some of the worst are Varroa Mites, Tracheal Mites, Israeli Virus. Our goal at Bee Boys Pure Honey is to give the bees a fighting chance by ensuring good nutrition and using natural methods to limit the level of infestation in our hives. Some of these methods are Integrated Pest Management (IPM), drone comb, powdered sugar, screened bottom boards. We look at the hive to determine if it needs help and then we try to listen to the bees and provide what we feel is best for THEM.
Helping the Bees
There are many things you can do to help the bees. You can plant a garden with flowers that are beneficial to the bees at different times of the year. Buy local honey to support a local beekeeper. Don't use pesticides and become informed about problems affecting the bees survival. Let you dandelions grow and go to seed before you mow them.
Bee Helpful Plants
I encourage you to plant my favorite tree for bees; "the American Horse Chestnut Tree." Once you have experienced some time under one that is in bloom you will want one of these ALSO! The biggest thing you can do for the bees in my opinion is to not use weed killer on your lawn. Let the dandelions go to seed in the spring before you mow your lawn for the first time (your neighbors will love you). Early Spring is a time when the bees are in desparate need of food. Dandelions, Bluets and Snowdrops are usually the first nectar the bees find. It is crucial for them in the early spring.
Mindfulness
The Bees teach us to be humble and mindful. Personally I never do anything in the apiary with out a plan and an objective. Sometimes the bees are very friendly and easy to work with and sometimes they are downright ornery. The next step if they are ornery is to figure out why? Have I not paid attention to the signs that a skunk has been visiting at night? Do the bees have an issue I can help them with? Are they queenless or is there a queen cell about to hatch? We must use all of our human intellect and observe nature closely.
Swarms
We enjoy catching swarms of bees. You always get a good story when you go out to catch a swarm of bees. This is the bees natural way of propagating themselves. If the hive has the right conditions the bees will feel crowded and the queen will lay a new queen in a special queen cell. Half of the bees will align with the old queen and half with the new queen. Once the time is right the bees will leave the hive in mass following after the queen. This is very exciting in deed.