About Nantucket Honey

Nantucket Honey is located on Nantucket Island, 30 miles out to sea. 100% raw and minimally filtered, our colonies produce a unique flavor thanks to abundant flora and the unique environment. 

These days, bees are having a hard time due to pesticides and poor human management. As a result, Nantucket Honey employs minimally invasive techniques in our bee farming, believing that too much intrusion to the hives causes stress and the colony to eventually collapse. 

A note from Sunny Bee:

I have only been a beekeeper for about four years and, when I started, I did not have a clue of what I was doing. My first hive promptly swarmed and flew away. Bummed out about what seemed to be another failed project, I just left the hive where it was. Then, one day not too long after, I came home from work for lunch and happened to look out the windy and see a huge cloud of bees around the empty hive. As I watched, they all came together like a big funnel and flew in the entrance. A wild swarm had taken over the newly abandoned hive!

From then on, I took great interest in beekeeping, often sitting near the entrance watching them and their behavior. Everything being new to me and with minimal education, it was truly fascinating.

Unfortunately, those bees did not make it through the winter. Once again, I felt I had failed them, and probably did, but I bought more bees in the spring and carried on.

By then I had started reading a beekeeping guidebook and was diligently following along. Over the next couple of years, I still had more failures with the hive with the bees often not surviving the Nantucket winter.

Nonetheless, I kept watching, listening, hoping to gain insight and eventually I followed my instinct to leave the bees “be.”  The bees have been doing their thing forever, so should know best what they are doing. Early on, I would go into the hives and “inspect” them, looking for the queen and brood, removing any new queen cells to discourage swarming. But I felt I was disrupting and upsetting them, so I stopped.

Taking a natural approach to beekeeping these last couple of years has led to much success. I add more boxes when the bees need space and watch their activity at the entrance. If I see any signs of trouble, I may merge the colonies, but ultimately try to leave them alone as much as possible. Sunny Bee Honey bees are only fed honey, never sugar water, and is harvested once a year in the late summer.

This year has been by far the best. The bees have been highly active, always working, flying in and out as fast as they can. They seem to agree as I can hear a contented “hum” coming from the hives. Large groups of bees have been congregating on the front step, cooling off in the summer evening heat.

It has been a most interesting education living with the bees -- mostly intuitive, some constructive. Little by little, I am feeling my way to a good communion with these majestic and mysterious creatures.

I encourage anyone and everyone to become a bee “keeper.” Maybe “host” is a better word, as I feel honored (even reverent) to “bee” a part of their world. Keep your mind, ears, and heart open to the magic that the bees weave every day, creating our healthy and beautiful earth!

Enjoy!

Sunny