How Our Bees Spend the Winter Months
You may wonder how our bees survive in the winter, with cold temperatures and a lack of blooming plants to pollinate. While it’s possible to keep beehives going under these conditions, we’ve come up with a different wintertime solution for our bees: Florida!
Each winter, we transport our bees to central Florida’s warm climate. This allows them to continue to thrive in a natural environment, and it allows us to bring back more delicious honey!
It’s no small task to transport our hives to central Florida and maintain them there over the winter months. We load the hives onto a semi trailer, followed by two of our beekeepers hauling a forklift to unload them once we arrive. We set up the hives in various locations, and then every two weeks or so we travel to Florida to make sure they are healthy and multiplying.
We bring our hives back to Indiana in early spring, as temperatures are beginning to rise and apple trees are starting to blossom. It’s quite a challenging winter journey, but we think it’s best for our bees and our customers. Meanwhile, Hunter’s Honey Farm is continuing to supply our gift shop and retailers with the pure natural honey our customers love.