At ForestBeehive apiary in Central Maine we are right next to a large wildlife sanctuary and we have no pesticides for miles. Instead of a standard manicured lawn, we have here quite a bit of wild clover.

Maintaining standard lawns requires considerable time, money, extensive watering, and the use of polluting human-engineered chemicals like herbicides.

We strive for the cleanest possible habitat for our bees. So we avoid any herbicides, and here we have pure wild clover that pollinators love. And our bees are also foraging now on long-flowering St John’s Wort, or Gold flower. Another favorite for our bees: flowering burdock and sumac.

Earlier major sources of nectar and pollen that our honeybees preferred starting from early Spring included: Red maples, dandelions, blackberries, milkweed.

In the Fall, it would be asters and goldenrods. Many conventional apiaries rely on mono-floral agricultural honey flows and harvest several times a year often artificially boosting their honey yield with supplemental sugar feedings.

Our honey is multi-floral naturally foraged. Here, we practice good old time benevolent beekeeping never stressing the bees to overproduce with supplemental sugar feedings and never exchanging their own honey for sugar.

Our local bee colonies are never subjected to any treatments with human-engineered chemicals or acids or oils. We only harvest surplus honey in the Fall, leaving enough honey for the bees to overwinter. When harvested in the Fall, the honey has fully matured as the bees’ enzymes had enough time to work their wonderful magic.