A year in the bee yards.

OUR SEASON

Most people picture beekeeping as one job. It's twelve months of them, and only a few weeks of it look like the photos.

Commercial beekeeping on the prairies runs on a calendar nobody sets but the weather. Here's what a year actually looks like on our farm — from opening the hives in spring to closing the season at the end of September.

01 - SPRING

Finding out how the winter went.

Some of our hives spend the winter indoors and some stay outside under wraps. Either way, you don't know what you've got until you open them.

So the first job of the year is counting. Every colony gets looked at. The strong ones get room to build. The ones that didn't make it get cleaned out and made ready to start again. Everything that happens for the rest of the year is decided by what we find in those first few weeks.

02 - MOVING DAY

We move at night, when everyone's home.

Bees fly by day. Move a hive while they're out and you leave half the colony behind in a field with nowhere to come back to. So hives get moved after dark, when every bee is inside and the entrances can be closed.

That means loading flatbeds by headlight and forklift, often well past midnight. It looks strange from the road. It makes perfect sense to a bee.

03 - THE BLOOM

The part we don't control.

Canola, alfalfa, clover and wildflower come on through the summer, and the bees work whatever is closest to the yard. This is where the flavour comes from, and it changes with the year.

A wet spring, a hot dry stretch in July, a hailstorm in the wrong township — the season writes itself and we find out what it wrote when we start lifting boxes. Every crop tastes a little like the summer it came from.

Most of what ends up in the jar starts here.

04 - SUPERS ON

We stack the boxes. The bees fill them.

A honey super is just an empty box of frames that sits on top of the hive. When a colony is filling faster than it has room, you give it another one. Then another.

Judge it right and they keep working. Judge it wrong and they run out of space and slow down. Getting that call correct, one hive at a time, across every yard we run, is most of what the middle of the summer is.

05 - HARVEST

The loudest few weeks of the year.

In August the full supers come off. A blower moves the bees off the frames and back down into their hive, the boxes get stacked and strapped, and the truck goes home heavy.

It's hot, it's awkward, and there are a great many bees in the air. This is the part people picture when they picture beekeeping — and it's a few weeks out of twelve months.

06 - EXTRACTING

Our own plant, start to finish.

The supers come back to our own extracting plant. Cappings come off, the frames spin, and the honey runs straight into drums.

Nothing gets added and nothing gets blended in from anywhere else — no bought-in honey, no other farms. From there it goes into the jars, tubs, bottles and pails that carry our name. What ends up on the shelf is what our bees made.

07 - WINTER

Putting them to bed.

By the end of September the season is closed. The bees get fed up, checked over, and sent where they're going. Some get wrapped and left out on the land to take whatever the prairie gives them.

Then it's quiet for six months. And come spring we go out and open them up, and find out how it went.

The rest winter indoors, in the dark, until spring.

ONE MORE THING

That's the year. This is the honey.

If you'd like to support a working prairie bee farm, the best thing you can do is put a jar of ours in your cupboard.

See our honey

Where to buy

Beautiful Plains Honey

Beekeeping since 1973

A year in the bee yards.

OUR SEASON

Most people picture beekeeping as one job. It's twelve months of them, and only a few weeks of it look like the photos.

Commercial beekeeping on the prairies runs on a calendar nobody sets but the weather. Here's what a year actually looks like on our farm — from opening the hives in spring to closing the season at the end of September.

01 - SPRING

Finding out how the winter went.

Some of our hives spend the winter indoors and some stay outside under wraps. Either way, you don't know what you've got until you open them.

So the first job of the year is counting. Every colony gets looked at. The strong ones get room to build. The ones that didn't make it get cleaned out and made ready to start again. Everything that happens for the rest of the year is decided by what we find in those first few weeks.

02 - MOVING DAY

We move at night, when everyone's home.

Bees fly by day. Move a hive while they're out and you leave half the colony behind in a field with nowhere to come back to. So hives get moved after dark, when every bee is inside and the entrances can be closed.

That means loading flatbeds by headlight and forklift, often well past midnight. It looks strange from the road. It makes perfect sense to a bee.

03 - THE BLOOM

The part we don't control.

Canola, alfalfa, clover and wildflower come on through the summer, and the bees work whatever is closest to the yard. This is where the flavour comes from, and it changes with the year.

A wet spring, a hot dry stretch in July, a hailstorm in the wrong township — the season writes itself and we find out what it wrote when we start lifting boxes. Every crop tastes a little like the summer it came from.

Most of what ends up in the jar starts here.

04 - SUPERS ON

We stack the boxes. The bees fill them.

A honey super is just an empty box of frames that sits on top of the hive. When a colony is filling faster than it has room, you give it another one. Then another.

Judge it right and they keep working. Judge it wrong and they run out of space and slow down. Getting that call correct, one hive at a time, across every yard we run, is most of what the middle of the summer is.

05 - HARVEST

The loudest few weeks of the year.

In August the full supers come off. A blower moves the bees off the frames and back down into their hive, the boxes get stacked and strapped, and the truck goes home heavy.

It's hot, it's awkward, and there are a great many bees in the air. This is the part people picture when they picture beekeeping — and it's a few weeks out of twelve months.

06 - EXTRACTING

Our own plant, start to finish.

The supers come back to our own extracting plant. Cappings come off, the frames spin, and the honey runs straight into drums.

Nothing gets added and nothing gets blended in from anywhere else — no bought-in honey, no other farms. From there it goes into the jars, tubs, bottles and pails that carry our name. What ends up on the shelf is what our bees made.

07 - WINTER

Putting them to bed.

By the end of September the season is closed. The bees get fed up, checked over, and sent where they're going. Some get wrapped and left out on the land to take whatever the prairie gives them.

Then it's quiet for six months. And come spring we go out and open them up, and find out how it went.

The rest winter indoors, in the dark, until spring.

ONE MORE THING

That's the year. This is the honey.

Beautiful Plains Honey​

Beekeeping since 1973

A year in the bee yards.

OUR SEASON

Most people picture beekeeping as one job. It's twelve months of them, and only a few weeks of it look like the photos.

Commercial beekeeping on the prairies runs on a calendar nobody sets but the weather. Here's what a year actually looks like on our farm — from opening the hives in spring to closing the season at the end of September.

01 - SPRING

Finding out how the winter went.

Some of our hives spend the winter indoors and some stay outside under wraps. Either way, you don't know what you've got until you open them.

So the first job of the year is counting. Every colony gets looked at. The strong ones get room to build. The ones that didn't make it get cleaned out and made ready to start again. Everything that happens for the rest of the year is decided by what we find in those first few weeks.

02 - MOVING DAY

We move at night, when everyone's home.

Bees fly by day. Move a hive while they're out and you leave half the colony behind in a field with nowhere to come back to. So hives get moved after dark, when every bee is inside and the entrances can be closed.

That means loading flatbeds by headlight and forklift, often well past midnight. It looks strange from the road. It makes perfect sense to a bee.

03 - THE BLOOM

The part we don't control.

Canola, alfalfa, clover and wildflower come on through the summer, and the bees work whatever is closest to the yard. This is where the flavour comes from, and it changes with the year.

A wet spring, a hot dry stretch in July, a hailstorm in the wrong township — the season writes itself and we find out what it wrote when we start lifting boxes. Every crop tastes a little like the summer it came from.

Most of what ends up in the jar starts here.

04 - SUPERS ON

We stack the boxes. The bees fill them.

A honey super is just an empty box of frames that sits on top of the hive. When a colony is filling faster than it has room, you give it another one. Then another.

Judge it right and they keep working. Judge it wrong and they run out of space and slow down. Getting that call correct, one hive at a time, across every yard we run, is most of what the middle of the summer is.

05 - HARVEST

The loudest few weeks of the year.

In August the full supers come off. A blower moves the bees off the frames and back down into their hive, the boxes get stacked and strapped, and the truck goes home heavy.

It's hot, it's awkward, and there are a great many bees in the air. This is the part people picture when they picture beekeeping — and it's a few weeks out of twelve months.

06 - EXTRACTING

Our own plant, start to finish.

The supers come back to our own extracting plant. Cappings come off, the frames spin, and the honey runs straight into drums.

Nothing gets added and nothing gets blended in from anywhere else — no bought-in honey, no other farms. From there it goes into the jars, tubs, bottles and pails that carry our name. What ends up on the shelf is what our bees made.

07 - WINTER

Putting them to bed.

By the end of September the season is closed. The bees get fed up, checked over, and sent where they're going. Some get wrapped and left out on the land to take whatever the prairie gives them.

Then it's quiet for six months. And come spring we go out and open them up, and find out how it went.

The rest winter indoors, in the dark, until spring.

ONE MORE THING

That's the year. This is the honey.

Beautiful Plains Honey