Geist Valley Bees craft natural raw honey from flower blossoms surrounding Geist Reservoir near Indianapolis, Indiana.
GVB honey is harvested in small batches resulting in unique seasonal honey from Indiana wildflowers & garden blossoms. Please send a message to receive current availability and pricing.
LOTS going on inside this hive…
My favorite queen is doing a great job of laying eggs and there are full frames of brood ready to emerge.
A few workers are making bee-bridges in the gap left from the frame I pulled out. There is speculation that the bees use "bee length" to measure the empty space - perhaps in preparation for comb building.
Spring beekeeping tasks… looking for the queen… found her!
This GVB honey bee hive is full of chock full of worker bees & drones! They have kicked out the old queen and are raising a new one. I will check back in a couple weeks to make sure that a new queen has been accepted, had gone on her mating flight, and is laying lots of eggs in her new queendom. There are so many bees in this hive that I have added 5 supers to hold nectar that will be converted to honey. Looks like a good year for bees and honey!
This Pink Lady is a brand new 2023 queen. The beekeeper did a particularly good job of getting a paint spot on her ;) Other beekeepers will be surprised to see a pink spot because red is the official paint color for 2023. Beekeepers can keep track of the queen's age by the paint color (years ending in 0 or 5 are marked blue; 1 or 6, white; 2 or 7, yellow; 3 or 8, red; 4 or 9, green) But I only had a pink "bee safe" marker and it looks great on her.
Blue pollen, baby! 💙👍 Only one of the honey bee colonies found the Siberian Quill flowers, the source of early spring blue pollen. The foragers in the colony tell each other the location, but the bees in the other hives will have to find it on their own. (I don't have any idea where these flowers are.) Honey bees need to have a variety of pollen sources - just like we need a variety of foods. 💐🐝
It’s always a welcome sight to see the bees bringing in early spring pollen. This slo-mo video shows the heavy loads (called pollen pants by beekeepers) make for not so graceful landings.
Local Peeps, Can the bees help with your Christmas gift needs? Squeeze bottles $11, honey pots $9 and $13, cinnamon and regular. Private message Pat for availability and pick-up!
While the bees are busy in the hives, the beekeeper is busy in the kitchen. It’s been a very good year for honey. Great bees, good weather, and maybe the beekeeper is getting the hang of the art of beekeeping which goes back 6000 years.
New Queen in the house! This 2022 queen first spent some time in the GVB queen castle proving her egg laying ability before being moved to her own big hive. She was raised from one of my favorite GVB colonies with proven survival genetics and good temperament. 🐝
She’s a beauty! Queen Elizabeth is the first queen to emerge in the new GVB queen castle. She is marked yellow for 2022, the year of her birth. She already has a new queendom assignment waiting for her in a hive that needs a new queen.
It's swarm season! I am carrying a Swarm Kit in the Bee Mobile in case I stumble upon a honey bee swarm that needs to be safely relocated. If you see a swarm, let me know. If I can't get to it, I have beek friends that can and they will provide a good home for those honey bees.
My swarm kit contains: gloves, veil, old sheet, tape, a bee brush, and an old comb to encourage the bees to follow the queen in to the box. Just like that, the bees can be relocated to a new home.
Started this Queen Castle a couple weeks ago to raise honey bee queens with the best genetics from my hives... calm bees, resilient, and great honey producers. The queens have emerged from the queen cells in two of the partitions but I don't know if they have returned safely from their mating flights which will be evident if there is good egg laying. Stay tuned! If so, these queens will be used to either replace older queens in the full size hives or start new nucleus colonies.
Another winter activity... making Geist Valley Bees lip balm with almond oil, vitamin E, and of course GVB beeswax.
After the storm... I need to clean off the hive entrances to allow ventilation for my tiny friends. 🐝🐝
Beekeeping is a year round activity… raising new queens, bee colony husbandry, and harvesting honey are a big part of it, but also other activities like carpentry, accounting, sales and marketing, and working with electricity adds to the fun. Here’s my fancy top-secret patentable wire embedding system.😉
Bees and Beekeepers must prepare for winter.❄️ The bees will use sugar syrup as a critical energy source to help them get through the cold winter months. Beekeepers feed quarts of syrup in the fall so there will be fat "winter bees" to heat the colony. Seriously. It's a big job prep'ing syrup for a couple weeks... but it pays off with colonies that are alive in the spring. 😃
Early morning beekeeping on a cool morning. Quiet, peaceful apiary. Strong healthy bee colony. All is good here!
Today's visitor is a Hickory Tussock Caterpillar (Lophocampa caryae). It is known as a toxic caterpillar because the hairs can cause a severe rash on some people. This species is found primarily in eastern North America and they forage on hardwood trees. Very pretty but I am wondering if she would make good bass bait 😊
Hive to Table honey... an excellent year for the bees and this beekeeper!
A new 2021 queen. Fresh wax. Her eggs. I've been searching for her and there she is. In beekeeper lingo this hive is "queen-right."
It’s time to put the supers on! Spring flowers are blooming and the bees are looking for more room to store pollen and nectar.
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Fave queen. She produces calm bees that over-winter well and produce abundant honey.
Spring beekeeping tasks… looking for the queen… found her!
It’s always a welcome sight to see the bees bringing in early spring pollen. This slo-mo video shows the heavy loads (called pollen pants by beekeepers) make for not so graceful landings.
While the bees are busy in the hives, the beekeeper is busy in the kitchen. It’s been a very good year for honey. Great bees, good weather, and maybe the beekeeper is getting the hang of the art of beekeeping which goes back 6000 years.
New Queen in the house! This 2022 queen first spent some time in the GVB queen castle proving her egg laying ability before being moved to her own big hive. She was raised from one of my favorite GVB colonies with proven survival genetics and good temperament. 🐝
Today's visitor is a Hickory Tussock Caterpillar (Lophocampa caryae). It is known as a toxic caterpillar because the hairs can cause a severe rash on some people. This species is found primarily in eastern North America and they forage on hardwood trees. Very pretty but I am wondering if she would make good bass bait 😊
The Queen in Hive B doing her job! Her attendants are cheering her on! Honeybee queens can lay 2000 eggs/day. More bees = more honey + pollination!
These Geist Valley Bees have been visiting the redbuds, myrtle, and dandelions that have recently popped. This hive has a good queen and it should be a great year for honey!
The amazing honey bee takes on a series of roles during her life: housekeeper, nursemaid, comb builder, food distributer, undertaker, guard, and lastly forager. Here an undertaker bee does the important work of tidying up the hive by removing a few dead bees on a warm winter day.
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GVB Raw Honey is harvested in small batches resulting in unique honeys from Indiana wildflowers and garden blossoms of each season.
To purchase honey or to talk about beekeeping you can contact me anytime using the message link, email, or shout out when you see me. -Pat
