Bees and Honey

Bees N Blooms has between five and ten colonies of bees working to pollinate the flowers on the farm and produce honey. Our organic farm and the local environment  provides safe foraging for the honey bees, native bees, monarch butterflies, and other pollinators—free of pesticides and with plenty of food most of the year.

If you are interested in purchasing honey from Bees N Blooms, stop by the farm stand. Check the schedule on the Home page for open dates and times. Prices are $5 for 1.5 oz jar, $10 for a 4.5 oz jar, $15 for a 6.2 oz jar, and $20 for a 9 oz jar. We have found a talented artist to paint the honey jars with lovely pictures of the flowers the bees have gathered nectar from to make the honey. After all the honey is gone, you’ll have a lovely jar for something else special! We also sell honey from other beekeepers in Sonoma County, including the Secret Garden Apiary in Petaluma and Leisen’s Bridgeway Farm near Mark West Springs.

Meet the Beekeepers who provide honey for the event and the Bees N Blooms farm stand.

Check out our blog post to see how we harvest honey.

Our bees are a mix of two types: Russians and local survivor bees. We purchase Russian queens from Coy Bee Company, a member of the Russian Honey Bee Breeders Association. They start with bees of diverse Russian genetics and select queens every year from the most mite-resistant colonies with the best honey production. Bees N Blooms also has queens from local survivor bee stock that are well adapted to the Santa Rosa climate and have developed mite resistance on their own. We have two feral bee colonies on the property that provide good local survivor genetics to breed with our managed stocks.

When the bees are doing particularly well, we occasionally sell nucleus colonies (nucs), with a proven young queen. These small starter colonies will grow exponentially in spring and early summer and are a great way to start beekeeping or add to an existing apiary. We have both top bar hives (made by BeeThinking) and Langstroth hives. Contact us if you are interested in a Bees N Blooms nuc.