About New England Bee
New England Bee is co-owned by Jon Lehr and Brian Labbe. We operate out of Vienna, with a number of bee yards throughout central Maine. In the future we plan to focus on crop pollination and queen production. We currently have comb honey for sale.
One of the largest local agricultural crops serviced
by honeybees is blueberries. We are fortunate enough to have a few commercial blueberry growers in right here in town. These, along with cranberries,
apples and raspberries, keep our bees busy and allow us to offer locally harvested varietal honey. We do still have a
limited number of hives available for pollination in 2009. We are
currently working on expansion.
Our hives remain in Maine throughout the year. Although they
may build slower than hives wintered in the warmer southern
states, northern wintered bees have many other advantages- such
as no exposure to africanized bees, no small hive beetle, and
cold tolerance. We feel that ultimately, our bees have the
advantage.
Next year we will begin an aggressive campaign to triple the number of our hives. We do not anticipate having excess queens or nucleus hives in 2009. However, in the future we will have northern bees available. The honeybees we raise are bred primarily from Italian crosses for temperament and honey production.
This year our honey crop ranged from 90 to 170 pounds per hive, despite unusually high amounts of rain. We are very happy with our bees, they are prolific producers and a real pleasure to manage. I really don't know what else to say.
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