Beekeepers today are faced with an overwhelming number of challenges. Between pests, disease, and environmental factors it gets harder every year to keep a colony of bees alive and healthy. Most of the commercial beekeepers today are in an “all-in” game and feel that they cannot risk losing their bees by not treating them with chemicals for various pests.

In contrast, I have come to the conclusion that getting back to the simple and basic way that my grandfather and great grandfather maintained bees is the best long term solution.

Beekeeping in Chama, New Mexico

The first thing I noticed as a kid was the fact that in larger commercial beekeeping operation it is all about the amount of honey you can produce. I worked in the extracting room (where the honey is removed from the comb) as a child and fondly remember seeing many different colors of honey on various frames. I would always taste them before loading them into the extractor and try and guess the floral source from which they came. Later, after work, I would describe the color and taste to my uncle, and tell him what I thought it was, eager for his confirmation. It was then that I had the idea of keeping all of the honeys separate, which we painstakingly do today.

Our varietal honeys are born out of timing and careful placement of hives. While we obviously can’t control where the bees forage, we can put them within close proximity of certain blooming plants. In addition we produce several different honeys within a particular area as well. Since not all plants bloom at the same time we can remove honey from the hives prior to a second or third bloom of a different plant.

Every year’s crop is different. Different annual climates will make different plants bloom. We produce our light clover honey in abundance, but all of our other honeys change every year. We take the time (unlike most beekeepers) to keep the floral sources separate. So while we may only have 4,000 units of one kind of honey, we have multiple different varieties of honey and something new is always around the corner with the coming season.

We consider ourselves to be migratory beekeepers. We move the bees at different times of the year to keep them in areas with good forage. There have been some critics recently who claim that moving the bees is stressful to them and a cause of recent die offs. However, in 20 plus years of working the bees, I have never seen ill effects from moving bees unless done improperly.

Below are some pictures from two weeks ago in the mountain valley of Chama, New Mexico. Just across the Colorado border. We were supering the bees with more boxes because they had made so much honey.  The plant in the foreground is called Vetch or Loco Weed.  It is a good plant for bees in the spring. It was just finishing blooming. We use to make surplus honey from the Vetch but the dry condition have made the plant more rare and now the bees keep that first honey they make.

There is an old steam train that goes from Antonito, Colorado to Chama. It’s called the Cumbres Toltec Railroad. It goes over Cumbres/La Manga Pass one of the most beautiful passes in Colorado. I really enjoy the trip to Chama to work bees. We always see tons of wildlife and seeing the picturesque train chuggin up the pass is almost surreal.

Some pictures from this week’s honey harvest.

Cutting Honey Comb, Grampa's Gourmet Honey 2010

Harvesting Honey, Grampa's Gourmet Honey, 2010

Harvesting Honey, Grampa's Gourmet Honey, 2010