05/01/2025
Like many beekeepers across the United States, we sadly lost a significant number of our colonies this past year. In fact, the entire United States saw the highest honeybee colony losses ever recorded over the 12mo, and we definitely felt that here in our own bee yards.
Usually, to grow our bee yards, we'd mostly rely on "splitting" swarmy strong colonies into two. But after these big losses, we're putting in extra effort this year to bounce back and get our colony numbers back to where they were in 2024. To do this, we're using a technique called "grafting queens."
How does queen grafting work? We start by taking a frame with very young bee larvae (they look like tiny white specks!) from one of our healthy hives. Using a super neat tool – a tiny scoop made from a turtle shell – we carefully move these larvae into special little cups called queen cups. Now, here's the cool part: these young larvae have the potential to become either regular worker bees or queen bees. It all depends on their diet! By placing them in these queen cups and returning them to a queenless colony, the worker bees there will feed them lots of extra royal jelly triggering their development into queen bees!
By making these new queen bees, we can create entirely new colonies much faster than just splitting existing ones. A strong queen is the heart of a bee colony; she's the only one who can lay the fertilized eggs needed to grow the hive. Having more queens means we can have more healthy, thriving colonies, which helps us recover from our losses and ensures we have plenty of bees to continue pollinating our world and making that delicious honey you love!
We’re really focused on understanding why we had such big losses last year, so we can hopefully prevent it from happening again. Want to help the bees in general? Consider donating to scientists who are researching bee health! We recommend checking out and . If you know of any other great research organizations, please tag them in the comments! And remember, buying honey from your LOCAL beekeepers (it doesn't have to be us) is always a fantastic way to support local bee populations!
