Tag Archives: Pesticide Free Apiaries

Chasing Honey Farms: Spring Update

© J.N. Urbanski

© J.N. Urbanski

The three pesticide-free beehives that were installed last May on Chasing Honey Farms natural apiary in Fleischmanns have survived the winter. Moreover, the bees have been collecting pollen for the last two weeks. When it was 80F in the middle of March, all three hives were active.

Proprietor Chase Kruppo had to start his beehives from scratch again a year ago because the bees he had installed the previous year had died over the winter. Once the new bees were installed in their hives on May 2nd last year, they were left to their own devices with wax foundations in the hives.

Chase is opposed to doing any artificial feeding of established colonies, but to start them last year, he said they definitely need a little boost. They arrived before the blossom, so they got one serving of sugar water for a week or two, in a one gallon bucket via the drip method. Chase noticed that the bees had stopped using the sugar water a week or two after going in the hive so he removed it. The carniolan bees had already surprised him with their industriousness, because they had formed a patty of wax comb inside the box in which they were transported.

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Chasing Honey Farm: Preparing for Winter

Upstate Dispatch now has a YouTube Channel for all our video content. Please take a look around. We are in the midst of uploading video taken at the tops of all the Catskills mountains, doing farm tours and reporting on food and the arts in our region. Above is our 20-minute short of the day we spent with Chase Kruppo while he inspected his beehives and prepared them for winter. Chasing Honey Farm is a pesticide free apiary in Fleischmanns in its first year of business. He installed his bees in May of this year and after the summer, he harvested 147.625lbs pounds of raw honey comb plus 10lbs of liquid honey for his CSA members.

Honey Harvesting at Chasing Honey Farms

© J.N. Urbanski

© J.N. Urbanski

Chase Kruppo of Chasing Honey Farms in Fleischmanns has been harvesting the honey from his pesticide-free apiary recently. Chase operates a honey CSA which is more like a club membership where customers “buy-in” on a hive and reap the benefits come harvest time. They can either keep their share of the produce of the hives, or Chase will sell it for them. This year is Chasing Honey Farm’s first harvest from the bees he installed earlier this year. Many beekeepers I know lost some or all of their hives last year due to extremely cold weather and Chase lost the bees he installed in 2013. This morning I joined him for what he thinks might be his final harvest of the year and will be interviewing him later for an update. By the time he had harvested the first hive and opened the second, the bees were quite agitated and one dive-bombed me in the face, so I beat a hasty retreat. The farm property is dotted with very old apple trees, a thick carpet of blackberries and strawberries and a field of waning golden rod. His product will be raw and unfiltered. You can’t call honey organic because you can’t be sure where your bees have roamed, but you can use chemical-free hives and operate completely without pesticides. The honeycomb (pictured above) melted softly in my mouth: light and delicious. Find Chasing Honey Farms’ website here and check back for a harvest update.

© J.N. Urbanski

© J.N. Urbanski