Hives in the snow

Winter is hitting hard. It has been snowing and sleeting all day. The bees, however, are tucked in and cozy, clustering in their boxes. It'll be a while before they get to come out to stretch their wings again.

Plans for 2026

 

As I enter my fourth year as a beekeeper, I'm looking to step up my game a bit in 2026.

The first step will be expanding my apiary. I started a new yard last year in Crimora, which is about an hour from my house. While the two colonies currently there seem to enjoy the space -- and there are loads of flowering trees and other plants for them -- I have struggled to get my electric fence to work properly. Too many rocks to drive the grounding rod in deep enough, I theorize. 

Also, it's a several-hour adventure to get out to Crimora and back, which means I can't do it as often as I'd like. So I may relocate those colonies to my home property and set up a new yard on another corner of our land where I can add more full-sized hives and maybe develop some nucs for sale in the future.

The second step will be trying a Demaree Split for the first time. I was going to try this maneuver in 2025, but chickened out. It's a bit complicated to set up, but will stop swarming in its tracks and provide a larger amount of honey than a hive can do normally. This fixes with my third step.

The third step is to increase honey production and sales this year. In 2025, the bees produced 135 pounds of honey and four pounds of wax out of three hives, more or less. One of my strongest hives (White) collapsed due to a run-away mite infestation and subsequent hive beetle invasion. I'm hoping to prevent a repeat of that while relying on another three to four colonies for honey. All told, I'm shooting for six or seven honey producing colonies in 2026, with the rest being splits and swarms that will grow into honey producers in 2027.

The fourth step will be to introduce new bee-derived products. I'm going to buy a couple pollen traps to add bee pollen to my market stall along with waxed fabric wraps for food and container coverings. In 2025, I experimented with making beard balms, which I liked but didn't sell, and lip balm, which I used and gave away, and candles. All include beeswax in their recipes.

I also made holiday gift boxes, which I sold quite a few of to my friends but failed to sell at the market. I think there's a chance to try those again this year, although I may have to work on finding the right market for the beard balm -- maybe the Archwood Green Barns market at The Plains. It's a haul, but honey sold well there last year.

But first, we have to make it through winter. So fingers crossed that our existing colonies come out the other side healthy and abundant and ready to harvest. Let's go, 2026!