Homestead in the Hood

09/22/2026

Mandatory fall drive photos 🍁🍂

Happy first day of Fall, everyone!

If you’re in Colorado, I hope you are taking time to enjoy these crisps mornings. We’ve been long over due for em.

09/19/2026

Farm bees! 🐝

Every cutting of alfalfa this season, we’ve been taking of one super box of honey every time. Next week if the final honey harvest (most are already down to their winter size).

Then after this last cutting, what alfalfa sprouts again and blooms the bees will have to feed on and back fill their two boxes they need for winter.

One final push. Then treatments for the mite.

Crazy how much longer this location is pushing back the honey harvest season, but we are so incredibly thankful for it!

09/18/2026

Please be on the look out. 👀

09/16/2026

Tis the season. 💁🏽‍♂️

09/10/2026

It just. Keeps. Coming!

Harvest #5 from the Keenesburg hives with my guy Brian Laudenslager putting in a full day of baking in the sun and playing with bees!

Just about every other week we are pulling 30-40lbs of honey for these girls.

And what’s great is, it’s mutually beneficial for the farmer as well as they are getting an extra 5th cutting of alfalfa this year. Even with the crap water year we’ve had.

After every cutting of the alfalfa we’ve been taken just one more box off each colony. Slowly down-sizing to get them closer and closer to their winter deep boxes.

One-to-two more weeks and the last honey super boxes will come off and we’ll get our final last harvest from this yard. Then we will let the ladies round off their winter deep boxes and backfill them off the remainder of whatever alfalfa comes back and blooms after their final cutting.

Not having to feed a single ounce of sugar water to 26+ hives. Saving us literal thousands of dollars.

Now, we are back to Homestead in the Hood Mercantile to spin it all out and get it bucketed and bottled.

09/07/2026

Check out our new website for Homestead in the Hood Mercantile (hint, we now offer shipping!!)

We’re so excited to announce that shipping is now available for orders placed on the (much improved) website for our Mercantile. Just select “Shipping” at checkout to have your order shipped to your home. Placing an order helps support our business and over 30 other Colorado small businesses so we can keep serving you!

Click here for an update from Homestead in the Hood!

09/06/2026

Feeding the bees for winter.

We feed 2:1 (two parts sugar to water) this time of year in order to ensure the colonies are up “to weight” and have enough to make it through winter. Here’s a few numbers we live by.

🥶A colony will consume 1 deep frame of honey on average, every 2 weeks of winter. So take the first and last frost dates from the previous year to find out how many frames you need for your area.

🍯 One deep frame holds 7-9lbs of honey. 1gal of 2:1 makes roughly 10lbs. So calculate how many frames short you are of your target weight, then use this to estimate how many gallons of 2:1 this colony needs to be at that weight.

🪳O-1 mites is the number we are looking for in our mite washes this time of year. No longer is a count of 6/300 acceptable. Mites will quickly outpace the rate of birth for the bees this time of year. So get those counts as low as possible.

🪨 your top deep box should feel like a box of rocks. It should make you audibly “humph” when you pick it up and set it down. Maybe even need to use the buddy system? Perfect.

Questions? Let me know!

09/05/2026

Life has been a bit frantic lately.

But we are getting there. Healthy, but hungry hives. Honey supers off. Mite treatments are coming off, feeding going on, elusive queens finally getting marked and robbing season woes starting. Heat stroke still going on.

But we’re getting there.

09/03/2026

👋🏼💁🏽‍♂️🫶🏻