Bee trivia Honey bees are not native to North America. They were first introduced in Jamestown in 1622 and gradually spread on their own throughout the colonies and eventually westward. The Native Americans called them “white man’s flies.” By the early 1900's, the US was the largest honey producer in the world and NYS was the largest honey producing state in the country.
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More Bee trivia: Did you know many churches still require 100% beeswax candles and the Catholic Church requires candles used for mass be at least 51% beeswax? (Excerpt below from Catholic Magazine, 1991)Light, as the New Catholic Encyclopedia notes, signifies “joy, optimism, goodness, purity, beauty, festiveness, dignity and life. It is opposed to darkness, which signifies sadness, gloom, desolation, death, ignorance, error, and evil in general.” We find that by Jerome’s time, “In all the churches of the East lights are lit when the Gospel is to be read, even though the sun is rising, but the purpose is not to dispel the darkness but to give a visible sign of joy.” When the meaning of the beeswax candle was pondered, particularly in the Middle Ages, a rich and detailed symbolism emerged. Christ had declared, “I am the light of the world” (John 9:5), and the candle’s light came to be the symbol for his presence. The pale wax of the candle symbolizes Christ’s flesh, his sacred humanity. The wick, embedded in the center of the candle, represents his soul. The flame, as it burns down the wick, consumes the wax to give us light. It burns, expending itself, sacrificing itself, just as Christ sacrificed himself. The burning candle is aesthetically pleasing, and it gives a sweet aroma as it burns, another reminder of the presence of our Lord. The wax produced by the honeybee is considered the sweetest and purist, the most appropriate for symbolizing the humanity of Christ. It is produced by the bees actually consuming honey. Honey itself is a symbol for the superlative in sweetness, the sweetness of the Word of God.
If you are interested in beekeeping classes in the spring shoot us an email and we will provide details.
Comments from Bob!
October 30, 2025 When you stop at the Sun Mountain Honey Store you will notice something different - honey from other producers! This year we are supporting “Honeys of the Valley,” an initiative by Mohawk Valley Beekeepers Club to showcase the honey of smaller producers. In the store you will find displays with honey for sale from beekeepers representing a four-county area, each with unique honey based on their local flora. This event will provide you with a rare opportunity to buy and sample a multitude of exquisite honeys from the smaller craft honey producers of the Mohawk Valley all in one place! All are pure, local honey and perfect for gift giving. Some have even created gift baskets to make it even easier. Each producer has contact information on their display if you would like to purchase more directly from them. All monies collected on the sale of their honey goes directly to the beekeeper with no commissions or fees. You may notice some flyers around in local stores as well as road signs and news of the event in local media. While this is the first year in attempting such an event, it has received enthusiastic support from many quarters. “This is a great collaboration among the area’s agribusinesses. It is this type of collaboration that will both benefit consumers and strengthen the resiliency of our small ag producers. I am thrilled that they are collaborating to bring their wonderful local honeys to market.” Caroline Myran, Schoharie County Agricultural Development Specialist. “Honeys of the Valley” will run from November 1 through December 31 at the Sun Mountain Honey Store. Keep in mind these are smaller producers, so stock is limited. See attached flyer and it would be appreciated if you posted it in your local store if no one has done so yet. Save The Date: Reminder Saturday, November 8 from 10-3pm is the Holiday Craft Fair at the Gallupville House. We will be exhibiting our honey, beeswax candles and lotion bars. This is a great chance to meet a number of local producers and artisans. Flyer attached.
Bee Trivia: The USDA just announced that demand for honey has hit an all-time high in the US with 2024 consumption hitting a new record high of 2lbs per person (up from 1.6lbs). The National Honey Board has done extensive polling on this and there are a number of compelling reasons why honey has been the number one preferred sweetener since 2020:
It is the only sweetener with additional health benefits such as antioxidants, vitamins and minerals
It is the only sweetener that is naturally available directly from the bees without processing
Only honey provides societal benefits in terms of supporting bees, floral diversity, beekeepers, and agriculture in general through pollination.
Usually available locally to support agribusiness in their immediate area
Local sources are generally assumed to provide pure honey
We hope to see you at our "Honeys of the Valley" event and/or craft show! Bee well, and bee safe! Bob Bob Muller Cornell Certified Master Beekeeper
October 7, 2025 The weather is definitely switching into full “fall mode” and evidence is all around from the changes in nature to the number of seasonal events being posted. The bees will form a cluster to stay warm once the temperature drops below 50F so their activities will be much reduced these coming days. The animals are also busy fattening up for the winter ahead. Several of my beekeeper friends have reported seeing bear or unfortunately experiencing bear attacks on their hives. A bear is strong enough to rip the wooden boxes apart to get at the brood and honey and can quickly do a great deal of damage. The timing is horrible for the bees right now and often fatal as if the queen is killed in the melee, it is too late in the season for them to raise a new one or for her to mate. By now bees have also used propolis to seal up their hives for winter. Propolis is a glue the bees manufacture from tree resins to seal unwanted hive openings from weather or invaders. If that seal is broken now, the bees have neither the warmth nor resources to restore it. Either way, a hive attacked by bear faces a multitude of challenges. Most beekeepers (us include) in the area fence their yards with electric fences to deter the opportunistic bear. I have had several folks notice that the oak trees in front of our store were LOADED with acorns this year. They hung like grape clusters and were more plentiful than I have ever seen. They have not gone unnoticed by the local wildlife either. Photo by R. Muller from honey store window We repeatedly get this family of deer feeding on them in the middle of the day right in front of the store! Most of the fruit and nut trees on the farm have been equally loaded. My mom used to say watch out, as it is nature’s way of taking care of the animals prior to a bad winter. If that’s the case, we are in for a doozy!! Store New
Large sizes continue to sell very quickly although we still have a good stock of 1-4 lbs. Linda is adding to her pure beeswax candle inventory and lotion bars. With cold weather the lotion bars will really start to move.
Mark your calendars for November 8 and the Gallupville Annual Artisian Craft Show. It will be 10am to 3pm at the Gallupville House, Rt 443, Gallupville (Just 3 miles from honey store). We will be there along with many local artisans. See attached flyer.
In conjunction with the Mohawk Valley Beekeepers Club, we will have some very exciting news to announce in the next week or so that we think you will love! Stay tuned.
Bee Trivia One of the lesser-known substances produced by honey bees is the propolis I referred to earlier. Propolis is a type of adhesive that bees use to construct their hives and keep unwanted invaders out. It is also used to “mummify” and unwanted critters that happen to get in the hive. A mouse that enters a hive just prior to a warm spell may find itself overwhelmed by angry bees. They can’t carry the mouse out but they can completely encase it in antibacterial propolis to the point it looks like a cacoon. Every beehive produces differing amounts of propolis. Some hives will create little to no propolis, while others will produce so much you can hardly open the hive with how well the bees have “glued” things together. Like honey, propolis has been scientifically proven to have various medicinal properties and is useful for treating topical injuries as it is highly antibacterial. It also contains a myriad of important vitamins and minerals and has undergone clinical trials to determine if using it as a medicine is scientifically viable. While research on this topic is continuing, the generally positive trial outcomes indicate potential for using propolis as a medicinal substance. There are a wide variety of products already on the market containing propolis including tinctures, lotions, and salves. Sun Mountain Honey Store is open 9-5pm daily on a self-serve basis until sold out. Visit us at 127 Marcus Rd, Delanson, NY. Bee Well and Bee Safe! Bob October 8,2025
The fall is a busy time as customers come out to our valley to buy some of the great vegetables grown in the area, eat at one of the many fall favorites like the Apple Barrel or Wayward Lane Brewing, or take in the fall foliage. We are a week or so ahead of Albany and the trees are starting to turn rapidly. The reds and yellows are somewhat less vivid this year due to the drought, but the colors remain noticeable and still very pretty. Our store has been busy, especially on the weekends as the weather has been perfect for getting out. Photo by Bob Muller (You can see one yard of bees behind barn) We are still well stocked although there are only a few 5# jars left and the 6# jars are selling very fast. Linda has been making candles too and you will find a wide selection of beautiful beeswax candles now available as well as her renowned lotion bars. Bee Trivia – It’s tough to be a drone! Nights are getting noticeably cooler, and the days are getting shorter. What’s that mean? It’s a girl’s world again! Drones are the male bees of the honeybee world and do provide a critical role in the spring and early summer by mating with new virgin queens. As the summer progresses fewer queens are produced so by fall, the drones work is done. So what do the female worker bees do with these couch-bound, tv watching, honey consuming boys now that they are just a demand on their resources? Boot them out! Since they no longer contribute to the colony’s productivity and are just a drain on the stored honey, no need to keep them on. This time of year, you can find several hives at any given time forcibly ejecting the drones. Several workers will grab the drone, drag him to the entrance, and once there either push him off, or commonly a worker will grab him and fly off the landing board taking him to the ground where he is left. He is usually blocked from re-entering or will be shortly ejected again if he does. Occasionally the drone may also be stung or have appendages removed. Drones are large but defenseless as they are not capable of stinging. In the picture below you can see the larger drone being eyeballed by his sisters in the box shape. In the area I have circled, a drone is being attacked by multiple worker bees. The drone is the larger bee on the very bottom of the circle. In this picture a worker has grabbed the drone and although she can’t carry him far, will at least carry him enough to have him tumble from the hive. After several days of this intensive activity, the drones are gone and it’s a girl’s world again until spring. If you want to see this whole process in action, here is a short YouTube video. I tried to video mine, but not having good equipment and shaky hands, this is much better! https://youtu.be/nXuaNyrnNHs?si=r4lUGnNjtT7xwp9q
Odds -N-Ends NOTE TO ALL: We do not use AI, a mail service, or any app to generate these emails. The misspellings and grammatical mistakes are all mine! If you want to unsubscribe, just do it the old-fashioned way and shoot me an email asking to be dropped. It’s easy! One last request…. If you enjoy our emails and store, would you leave a quick review? We have had several out-of-state folks stop this year after seeing these. Please help spread the word! It takes less than a minute to rate us on Google; just click https://g.page/r/CfCJvoWkPQbTEAI/review Thank you and bee safe! Bob
September 12, 2025 The honey extracting is done, the extracting equipment is washed up and put away, and all the honey supers (boxes) are stored away in the barn. The last bee tasks are to add insulation to the hives and add mouse guards. Mice don’t dare go into the hive when the bees are active, but they will happily do so once it gets cold enough for the bees to cluster. They like the dry, heated house the bees provide and can feed on dead bees, larva and seeds they gather while building a nest in the lower frames. It doesn’t take them long to create quite a mess in the hive and compromise the hive’s health if you aren’t careful. Fortunately, between mouse guards and the fact we keep all our hives on stands making them a little less accessible, we haven’t had an issue with them for quite a while. Our harvest this year was a bit better than we expected given the cold, wet spring and very dry conditions of most of the summer. Last year we had one of our best years ever, but this year we were down about 40% from that. While not great, it still beat what I was forecasting given the weather. This provides a bit more breathing room as far as the length of time our store will be open prior to selling out. It will still be sooner than normal, so don’t wait too long to stock up. Large sizes continue to sell fast and in fact all 12llb jars we put out were selling out either same day or the next day. You have probably noticed that all our jars are priced such that the larger the size, the lower the price per pound. This is a factor of both the labor it takes to fill them, the cost of labels and mostly the cost of the jars. I need to buy a case of 1# jars to hold the same amount as one 12# (gallon) jar that is a quarter of the cost. Remember, we provide a $1 deposit on all jars <4# and a $2 deposit for all jars 4# and above. PLEASE, honey jars ONLY and make sure honey is washed out before returning them. You can leave the labels on even if they are from another producer (again only honey jars). Inside of our original kiosk by the road. We have come a long way! Bee Trivia – Baking with Honey It’s that time of year when cookies and pies come into their own with the fall season. Here are some tips for baking with honey. To bake with honey, you must adjust the recipe to account for its higher sweetness, extra moisture, and acidity. Honey is a natural humectant, meaning it retains moisture. This added moisture will make baked goods softer and stay fresh longer than with sugar. You already know honey is the healthier alternative! To account for the increased sweetness, use ½ to ¾ cups honey for each cup of sugar called for. Raw honey (like ours) is stronger than store/pasteurized honey so start lower and work up to your taste.
As honey is liquid you can reduce other liquids in the recipe by about ¼ cup per cup of honey used.
Honey is naturally slightly acidic. If your recipe calls for baking powder or baking soda, add ¼ teaspoon of baking soda per cup of honey to ensure they work properly
Honey will caramelize faster than sugar so reduce oven temperature by about 25F.
Enjoy this beautiful fall weather and bee safe! Bob
August 26th, 2025 Thanks to all who came to Family Farm Day this past Saturday. By all measures it was a great success. We had a record number of people attend (over 100!) and by all accounts everyone had a great time regardless of age! MANY THANKS to Mohawk Valley Beekeeper Club for putting on the demonstrations, Schoharie Boy Scout Troop 4 for providing an on-site lunch for the busy Farm Day travelers, and to Fox Creek Farm CSA for their outstanding collaboration! With the numbers of visitors, our stock took a hit. The good news is that we have been extracting honey the past few days and bottled today. More is to be done, but all sizes are currently back in stock! We have pulled about half our fall harvest and will be doing the remainder over the next 10 days or so. Fall is coming and Linda has been able to make some of her ever popular all-natural beeswax lotion bars. If you haven't tried these for your chapped hands or lips you are in for one of the best treats you can give your hands! Now in stock at our store.
Bee Trivia: Time always marches on and regardless of your hobbies or job, there are probably seasonal indicators that remind you summer is winding down and you are starting to enter the fall season. For beekeepers, this is a critical time. Not only do bees have to be at peak health to raise "winter bees" and be strong going into winter, but it is the last chance for them to get natural nectar. Most nectar producing blossoms are gone by this time and bees are very hungry. You have to be watchful as "robbing" where a strong hive raids the honey stores of a weak hive is common. Not only does it usually spell a death sentence to the weak hive, it is extremely difficult to stop once started. Nature often comes to the rescue with goldenrod plants. This prevalent plant begins blooming late August and can continue well into September depending on the season.
While asters also bloom this time of year and do provide some nectar, it is the goldenrod that has the potential to provide the last significant nectar flow. It can be temperamental in doing so however. Depending on the year, it can flower and provide little to no nectar, flower and provide a short but very strong nectar flow, or not bloom at all. Usually we have a good flow from it; it can be significant enough that commercial beekeepers will truck tractor trailer loads of bees into our area to catch this last flow. I prefer to catch the front of the goldenrod flow for honey but leaving the bulk of it for the bees. There are several reasons for this. First, I know the bees will have a good stock of honey going into the winter and honey is always better than sugar water (often fed to hives with insufficient stores). The later in the year you pull honey the harder it is - bees are more defensive and aggressive (they know they have to defend their stores as no more is coming!). Honey is also more difficult to process as it gets colder so warm temperatures are your friend. Lastly is goldenrod honey itself. While some enjoy its stronger, sulphury essence, it can be overbearing when it starts to get concentrated. It also granulates faster than many other nectar sources. When you see that goldenrod now, know it will be the last of the nectar producing blooms of the year; fall is just around the corner. Bee well and bee safe! Bob
August 20th, 2025 The weather forecast for Saturday is for FUN and 100% chance of NEW EXPERIENCES! Food, coffee, subject matter experts, multiple tours, honey tasting, kids photo booth and more await!! Plan to attend a few of the open houses available including ours. Family Farm Day - This Saturday - August 23 10am – 4 pm This year we will be joined by a couple organizations to make your visit even better. Here is what we are planning: Mohawk Valley Beekeepers Club: New to Family Farm Days for 2025, this knowledgeable group will have literature, an observation hive and beekeepers of all types to answer any bee/pollinator related questions you might have Food! New this year, the Schoharie Boy Scouts Troop # 4 will be grilling up hotdogs and hamburgers for hungry travelers who want to take a break for lunch at our tables under our shade trees. Ice cold beverages will also be available. Extracting Process: Want to see the magic that happens turning a frame of capped honey into what you see in the jar? We will show you! Hive Tours: Weather pending, we will take groups of up to 5 people for a tour of what happens in the hive. Lots of your friends have had a tour of Howe Caverns, but how many have done a hive tour? Shorts not recommended and we will provide bee veils. Fox Creek Farm CSA will also be participating again this year and are just 3 minutes down the road. Definitely worth the stop to see how some of the finest vegetables you have ever tasted are grown. Spend the day. From breweries to fields of lavender and petting zoos, there is something for everyone on Family Farm Days so make a day of it! For a list of other farms participating (and to plan your day), visit https://cceschoharie-otsego.org/family-farm-day Bee Trivia You are probably aware that hot peppers are rated as to how hot they are. Using a unit known as Scoville Heat Units (SHU) they are rated from bell peppers (0 SHU) to jalapeno peppers (2,500 - 8,000 SHU) to the ultra hot Carolina Reapers at 2 million SHU! What you may not be aware of is that insect stings are also graded using a unit of measurement known as the Schmidt Index. It is a rating of 1 to 4 based on the intensity of the sting and the length of time it continues to cause pain. LEVEL 1: Described as a slight spark on your arm. Many ants fall into this category. LEVEL 2: A pain lasting 5 to 10 minutes and being likened to "pulling cookies out of the oven with a hole in your oven mitt." Honeybees are on the low end of this level and yellow jackets on the upper end. LEVEL 3: The pain from these stings can last up to 1/2 hour and are much more intense. Many wasps fall into this category. Schmidt considered the sting of the Maricopa Harvester Ant to have a pain level of 3, describing it as such: "After eight unrelenting hours of drilling into that ingrown toenail, you find the drill wedged into the toe." Ouch!! LEVEL 4: The highest level of pain intensity. His example is the Bullet Ant and Schmidt described the sting as "pure, intense, brilliant pain...like walking over flaming charcoal with a three-inch nail embedded in your heel. Pain can last from 5 minutes to several hours.
Hope to see you Saturday! The weather is supposed to be nice! Bob
August 13, 2025 This is going to be a busy week as we will begin gearing up for our second and final honey extraction and Family Farm Day is just 10 days away. Despite the dry conditions, the bees have been doing a little better than expected,mostly due to white clover and trefoil that is prevalent this year in our fields. While we certainly could use rain at this point, having even the 1/2" we got today will renew some of those blossoms and increase the nectar flow. We are in the very final nectar flows in the next four weeks or so as the clover, trefoil, purple loosestrife, and other summer flowers begin to fade and be replaced by the final nectar producing blossoms of asters and goldenrod. We are temporarily out of some of the large honey sizes but they should be replenished by the end of the month.
Family Farm Day, August 23 10am – 4 pm This year we will be joined by a couple organizations to make your visit even better. Here is what we are planning: Mohawk Valley Beekeepers Club: New to Family Farm Days for 2025, this knowledgeable group will have literature, an observation hive and beekeepers of all types to answer any bee/pollinator related questions you might have Food! New this year, the Schoharie Boy Scouts Troop # 4 will be grilling up hotdogs and hamburgers for hungry travelers who want to take a break for lunch at our tables under our shade trees. Ice cold beverages will also be available. Extracting Process: Want to see the magic that happens turning a frame of capped honey into what you see in the jar? We will show you! Hive Tours: Weather pending, we will take groups of up to 5 people for a tour of what happens in the hive. Lots of your friends have had a tour of Howe Caverns, but how many have done a hive tour? Shorts not recommended and we will provide bee veils. Fox Creek Farm CSA will also be participating again this year and are just 3 minutes down the road. Definitely worth the stop to see how some of the finest vegetables you have ever tasted are grown. Spend the day. From breweries to fields of lavender and petting zoos, there is something for everyone on Family Farm Days so make a day of it! For a list of other farms participating (and to plan your day), visit https://cceschoharie-otsego.org/family-farm-day Bee Trivia (well not really honeybees) In the past couple of weeks we have had a number of inquiries that all go "We just discovered a nest/hive of bees in our tree/deck/woodshed and don't you want to come and get them?" While I don't do "cut-outs" of bees anyway, these invariably this time of year are not honey bees. They are yellow jackets. While honeybees overwinter as a full colony and grow rapidly in the spring from pollen and nectar, yellow jackets have a different life cycle. For yellow jackets, ONLY the queen lives through winter. She burrows in the ground or old log in the fall to emerge in the spring. She finds a nesting site and builds enough of a nest to begin laying eggs which are sterile and mostly females. She feeds the initial colony until emerging yellow jackets are able to help build more of the nest and feed the young. Unlike honey bees which feed solely on nectar and pollen, yellow jackets are omnivores; they will feed on nectar, some plant material and protein sources including fruit, other insects and even meat. In late summer she will lay fertile male and female eggs who will emerge and mate with just the mated queen overwintering like her mother.
Usually you don't notice the nests until this time of year when they start to hit peak populations and become voracious hunters in search of food. While honeybees are primarily defensive in their use of their stinger and die in the process of stinging, yellow jackets are far more "proactive" and aggressive in nature and can sting repeatedly without sacrificing their life. That sting is also "hotter' than a honeybee sting. While yellow jackets are generally just a nuisance in beekeeping, if populations get too high they will take over a bee hive and devour bees, young, and stores of honey. That generally is not the case in our area however although just south of us it can be an issue where they have a longer season to build larger populations. It's not all bad as they do help control aphids, caterpillars and other garden pests as well as serving as one of nature's "garbage collectors."
Thanks and see you soon! Bob
August 7th, 2025 It has been a busy week at the store with significantly more traffic than normal. To be expected I guess as we were delayed in opening due to the spring weather. A few sizes of honey are already sold out temporarily, but we will be extracting again in about three weeks to replenish. We did want to let you mark your calendars for this year's Family Farm Days to be held August 23rd from 10 am to 4pm. This year there are a number of new events for the family to enjoy! Upcoming Events – Family Farm Day, August 23 10am – 4 pm This year we will be joined by a couple organizations to make your visit even better. Here is what we are planning: Mohawk Valley Beekeepers Club: New to Family Farm Days for 2025, this knowledgeable group will have literature, an observation hive and beekeepers of all types to answer any bee/pollinator related questions you might have. Food! New this year, the Schoharie Boy Scouts Troop # 4 will be grilling up hotdogs and hamburgers for hungry travelers who want to take a break for lunch at our tables under our shade trees or for the road. Ice cold beverages will also be available. Extracting Process: Want to see the magic that happens turning a frame of capped honey into what you see in the jar? We will show you! Hive Tours: Weather pending, we will take groups of up to 5 people for a tour of what happens in the hive. Lots of your friends have had a tour of Howe Caverns, but how many have done a hive tour? Shorts not recommended and we will provide bee veils. Fox Creek Farm CSA will also be participating again this year and are just 3 minutes down the road. Definitely worth the stop to see how some of the finest vegetables you have ever tasted are grown. Spend the day. From breweries to fields of lavender and petting zoos, there is something for everyone on Family Farm Days so make a day of it! See you soon! Bob
July 30th, 2025 Finally… ! The honey has begun flowing out of our extractor this week and after the cold, rainy spring it was delightful to see that beautiful gold liquid gradually filling the tanks. We are still bottling, labeling and preparing the store but the great news is we will be opening this Friday, August 1! We should have all sizes of honey in stock as well as Linda’s famous lotion bars. Same as previous years, we will be open daily 9am to 5pm, seven days a week until sold out. Keep in mind the harvest this year is significantly less than last year so we will likely sell out much sooner. Upcoming Events – Family Farm Day, August 23 10am – 4 pm Much more on this next week. Honey Trivia Many customers travel 45 minutes to an hour to visit our store. While there are many beekeepers and honey producers much closer, they swear our honey is some of the best they have ever had and worth the trip. We hear this enough that there must be something to it and we are often asked what we do differently to make our honey stand out from others. I don’t think it is any one thing, but a combination of practices and techniques that in combination make some of the best honey you will taste. Bees and nutrition: Great honey starts with healthy bees. Keeping bees these days is much more difficult for the casual beekeeper than most realize. Hive assessments, disease prevention, well timed interventions, winter hardy, productive queens and highly diverse floral all play significant roles in colony health. It doesn’t hurt to have gentle bees as well and our girls have been great this year. Wood Frames: This can start a knife fight in some circles, but I am a traditionalist, and we have only wooden frames in our honey supers. We already have so much plastic around us we don’t need to expose our bees and honey to even more. Further, for years we have let our bees make their own wax/foundation instead of buying commercially prepared wax in the frames. Rather than putting in wax that has been recycled many times over and likely exposed to many chemicals, we prefer the bees make wax from our surrounding fields and forests where we know chemical exposure is very low. Wax is a lipid that readily absorbs and retains chemicals, so it gives us some peace of mind limiting that exposure. This year alone we have rotated out over 100 frames from our stock. Once they get 5-6 years old they get replaced with new ones just to ensure they are fresh and have minimal to no contamination. Being just wood and wax they make great fire starters versus plastic which just adds to the landfill. May not affect the honey but does a bit to help the world around them. Inspections: Being a NY Grown and Certified Honey Producer we have our apiary inspected every year. We not only can talk about what we do for our bees but have third-party verification to back it up. There are less than a handful of NY Grown and Certified Honey Producers in the entire Capital District. Glass Jars: We know that plastic is lighter, more durable, and certainly cheaper than glass. Unfortunately, my feeling is it tends to also impart a flavor into honey. Does a fresh roasted coffee taste as good in a Styrofoam cup? Glass allows the honey to maintain its own exquisite flavor. It’s also recyclable (we offer $1 on all returns <4lb and $2 for 4lb and larger) and can be sterilized at temperatures many plastics can’t tolerate. As I mentioned, there is already enough plastic out there in contact with our food, and we don’t want to add to that. Cleanliness: Whether new or recycled, all our jars are sterilized with a combination of sanitizer and very hot water (160F). All our processing equipment and storage tanks are stainless steel; expensive yes, but best practice for food processing. All our equipment is sterilized at the end of the season AND again before it is put back into service the next season. Many view it as unnecessary work, but we look at it as worth it to make sure everything is as clean as possible to keep your honey just as the bees made it. Raw, pure and only mechanically course filtered: As we have mentioned previously, larger stores and commercial honey producers often both pasteurize their honey and ultra-filter it to prolong its shelf life (so it won’t crystallize). Unfortunately, that removes most of the beneficial enzymes and antioxidants as well as flavors. Worse yet, much of the imported honey has high fructose corn syrup added to it as a cheap extender to increase volume. Our raw honey is NOT heated, and just course filtered to remove bits of wax or the occasional bee. Our honey delivers all the goodness pure, raw honey should. Yes, after several months real, raw honey will crystallize, but that’s just affirmation you have REAL honey. Stop in and see the difference in Sun Mountain Honey! Bee well and bee safe, Bob & Linda
July 8th, 2025 The past few years have put me on several journeys. Some have been very positive and some, not so much. Today I want to share with you the culmination of one of the positive ones. For a number of years, I toyed with the idea of becoming a Master Beekeeper. In 2023 I listened to Carmen Story and her daughter at Capital Area Beekeepers, discuss their experience in becoming Master Beekeepers through Cornell’s Master Beekeeping Program. It was the impetus for me to decide now or never. I signed up in November of 2023 for the two-year program that Cornell offers. They are one of about five accrediting universities and organizations that offer such a program in the US. There is a limit of 35 students and in my class only about four were from NY. There were quite a few Canadians, a person from Australia, Tobago, and Trinidad with the rest being scattered across the US. A handful were large commercial beekeepers (>500 hives) and the rest a mix of sizes and experience although you need a minimum of three years’ experience to enroll. I both learned a great deal from the class and my fellow students and made some new friends I correspond with on occasion who bring unique perspectives from their country/region. After the final session this spring (most were about 5-6 weeks) it was time for finals. Not sure other’s experience with it, but it consumed a huge chunk of time this spring in preparation. There are three equal components to passing the finals. A field exam where you need to identify about three pages of information about a hive and diagnose any issues. An oral exam which is a combination of a research project and timed oral presentation. I did mine on “The Land, Water and People of NY and The Confluence That Created Honey Empires.” It basically covers how the Erie Canal and buckwheat allowed for three beekeepers in NY to become the world’s largest in the years 1825 to 1925. It was actually a very interesting project, and I had some great local resources to tap. Lastly was the written final exam. It is the most difficult of the three with only a 60% historical pass rate. Fortunately, I did well on my field exam and written exam and aced the oral exam. This past Friday I finally received my certificate! About the bees… The girls have made more honey in the past couple of weeks than they did the entire month of May. We are still WAY behind in terms of where they should be, but at least they are making progress. If the weather cooperates, I am hoping to open around August 1. At this point we could use a bit of rain and not quite so many 90+ temperatures to really help things along and promote some new blossoms. We lost much of the good blossoms/nectar flows in May with the cold and hard rains we experienced. Upcoming Events Saturday July 1210 am to 3pm 8th Annual “Lily Fest” in Schoharie NY. It is free and fun for the family. See attached flyers. At 10am I am doing an “audio only” version of the “Land, Water, and People the Confluence that Created Honey Empires” presentation I did for my certification. This year's theme for the Lily Fest is "Birds and Bees." The Mohawk Valley Beekeepers will also have an educational booth on site. August 23 10am - 4pm This year we are teaming up with the Mohawk Valley Beekeepers Club who will have an educational booth and demonstrations on site as well as our own displays and hive tours (weather permitting). This is a great outing for the family and Fox Creek Farms CSA is less than two miles away and also participating; this is a great fun and educational opportunity for all! Hope to see everyone at the store soon. Bee well! Bob
June 11, 2025 First, the good news. As I look out my office window, it is not raining (at the moment) and we are slowly building our apiary back up from the winter losses we experienced. Through some purchases, splitting existing colonies and captured swarms (one from in front of the Pro Shop at the Orchard’s Golf Course in Altamont) we are coming back up to strength. The bad news is the weather has really been an issue. We have had well north of 12” of rain in under the past 30 days here at the farm. That is nearly an inch every two days. There have been full weeks where the bees have been unable to get out and work even though there were lots of blooms for them to take advantage of. Besides hindering the bees' foraging, the cold, damp spring we have been dealing with is not a healthy one for bees. While it is a setback for us, it has been really hard on any farm trying to plant crops or harvest early hay. So many fields are saturated, a tractor would get stuck just driving by them! Because of the weather and bees coming out of winter weaker than normal, our honey harvest will be delayed. The bees are easily 2-3 weeks behind where they should be by now so I am anticipating we will not be able to open the store until at least mid-July. It will be very dependent on the weather in the upcoming weeks. Watch for further updates. Several folks have asked for an update on the massive honeybee colony loss across the country. Unfortunately, none of it is good.
Over 1.6 MILLION hives were lost nationally this winter representing a $634.7 million dollar loss.
Losses were the exact opposite of typical winter losses in that the larger the operation, the greater the percentage of loss. Commercial beekeepers (those with >500 colonies) lost 62% of their colonies; “sideliner” beekeepers with 50 to 500 hives lost 54% and hobby beekeepers with less than 50 hives lost 51%.
Research is ongoing, but analysis is indicating the bees were carrying very high virus loads likely caused by varroa mites (these invasive mites are like deer ticks to us – the tick doesn’t sicken you, the viruses it carries does).
Even those with hives that survived the winter are finding that they are significantly weaker than normal overwintered hives.
Crop yields needing pollination are expected to be lower across the boards this year as there are insufficient bees to do the pollination.
Bee trivia: What makes bees such great pollinators? While there are literally thousands of pollinators and some are necessary for specific plants, bees are the work horse of the commercial pollination market. One reason is that they have “floral fidelity,” something most pollinators don’t have. It means if for instance apple blossoms are ready for pollination, the honeybees will generally visit only apple blossoms that day. As they move from blossom to blossom, they are transferring the necessary pollen between the flowers in a very efficient manner. Most pollinators tend to visit a variety of plants in a given time period and may not even visit the same type twice in a day. Photo by Bob Muller Secondly, you have a colony with high numbers that can be kept in hives that are relatively easy to transport. This allows a commercial beekeeper to pollinate almonds in California in April/May and move the hives to Louisiana to pollinate cucumbers or watermelons in May/June throughout the season. Bee well and stay safe! Bob
Sun Mountain Apiary 127 Marcus Road Delanson, NY 12053
