Humboldt Honey Mpls is expanding! This last year has been an exciting one as Joanne and I explore beekeeping for the first time. Learning about the rhythm of the seasons and what bees need, watching the honeycomb as the queen lays eggs, and seeing hundreds of bees coming out to gather nectar and pollen. Watching the honey production over the course of spring and summer and harvesting it in the fall. Experiencing living with bees and being trusted as their human caregiver to help keep mites away. Increasing their home hives so more honey drips from the comb is a deep and rewarding role. Still being new beekeepers, Joanne and I were excited to watch our bees survive winter!
When bees live through the season, it does not mean that their queen lays less eggs. This in turn will often create too many bees in the hive and not enough room. So it is time to split the hives and double our production. This is a very exciting time (and I’ll be honest a little nerve wracking for a newbie beekeeper) knowing we will now have four hives under Humboldt Honey Mpls.
A couple weeks ago, a group of 10 neighbors came to Northend Hardware to build two new hives for our second location at the Northend Garden located on Penn just south of Lowry. It was such a beautiful Sunday morning watching more and more folks come to help invest in this community project and resource. And that is truly what it is. Bees are a critical element to our survival and knowing them, being in relationship with them, and understanding what they need is so important for all our ecological balance. Inviting neighbors into this relationship with the bees and their honey is medicine for us, and is one way we can create stronger ties to the earth and the wild creatures we share her with.
The Story Garden will remain the homestead location for Humboldt Honey Mpls while the Northend Garden will become our Education Lab where we can do demonstrations, classes and bee explorations for neighbors and youth that are interested.
This also means, hopefully if all goes well, we will have more honey to sell to our neighbors since we sold all ours within five weeks of extraction last year. We are so grateful for all the support and humbled by the need to connect to local medicine that we want to do our best to keep nurturing and fostering a community around this knowledge and experience of beekeeping.
You know, beekeeping wasn’t ever really a dream or goal of mine. Learning about bees didn’t even cross my mind until recently, and I wasn’t even sure if it was for me. But now that I am here and in it, I can’t help but see all the ways my life was bringing me to this point to learn about this extra special pollinator and all the ways the honey bee colony is a living example of care and purpose in a society.
Thank you to all those who came to help with the construction of our two newest bee hives to be placed in our education lab! We are so excited to share more as the season continues. Remember to plant flowers and be gentle around honey bees. For more info about Humboldt Honey Mpls or The Story Garden, contact us at danielle.tietjen@gmail.com.