EMBERBLOSSOM HOney Co.
PENNSYLVANIA HONEY
Our Bees
The tiny workers behind every jar of EmberBlossom Pennsylvania Honey.
Honey bees, scientifically known as Apis mellifera, are vitally important pollinators for many food crops and flowering plants. Every hive is a living community, working together to raise young bees, gather nectar and pollen, build beeswax comb, and create the honey we harvest with care.
The Bees We Care For
In the fields of Pennsylvania, our honey begins with the bees we steward and the land they forage. Our colonies began primarily with Italian honey bee lines that have been here in Pennsylvania for several queen generations, giving them time to adapt to the local seasons, blooms, and climate. Known for their steady temperament and strong honey production, these bees remain the heart of EmberBlossom. We’ve also begun introducing a couple of Buckfast queens, a line valued for its calm nature, strong colony buildup, productivity, and hardiness, along with a Hawaiian-raised queen selected for vigor, strong brood production, and fresh genetics within the apiary. Together, these colonies gather nectar from the fields, forests, gardens, and seasonal flowers surrounding our hives.
Together, these different queen lines bring a mix of traits to the apiary, from the steady temperament and productivity of our Italian bees to the hardiness and strong buildup associated with Buckfast stock, along with the vigor and fresh genetics of our Hawaiian-raised queen. Over time, we’ll see which characteristics prove best suited to our Pennsylvania seasons and forage.
- Natural forage: We keep our hives near diverse native blooms to ensure a healthy, varied diet.
- Small-batch care: Each hive is checked by hand with patience and respect for the colony's space.
- Winter protection: We insulate hives and leave enough ofthe bee's honey to keep them strong through cold PA winters.
- No harsh chemicals: We use approved methods to keep our bees healthy and our honey truly raw.
Bee Basics
The Queen
The mother of the hive. A strong queen can lay up to 1,500 eggs a day during peak season.
Worker Bees
Female bees that clean cells, feed young, build wax, forage, and make honey.
Drones
Male bees whose main role is to mate with a queen to ensure hive survival.
Summer Colony
A strong hive can contain 40,000 to 60,000 bees during the height of summer.
Flower Trips
A honey bee typically visits 50 to 100 flowers during one collection trip.
Tiny Lifetime
The average worker bee may make only about 1/12 teaspoon of honey in her lifetime.
Flight
Honey bees are swift flyers, capable of reaching speeds up to 15 miles per hour.
Buzz
A honey bee’s wings beat thousands of times per minute, creating their familiar buzz.
Life Cycle of a Honey Bee
Queen Bee
- Egg – 3 days
- Larva – about 5.5 days
- Cell capped – around day 8
- Adult emerges – about day 16
Worker Bee
- Egg – 3 days
- Larva – about 6 days
- Cell capped – around day 9
- Adult emerges – about day 21
Drone Bee
- Egg – 3 days
- Larva – about 6.5 days
- Cell capped – around day 10
- Adult emerges – about day 24
Worker bees live about 6 to 8 weeks in spring and summer, but winter bees can live for several months.
Honey
One of the most well-known gifts bees give us, made from flower nectar and carefully stored in beeswax comb. It is a natural sweetener with a rich flavor that reflects the blooms, seasons, and land around the hive. For us, every jar of Pennsylvania Honey is a small taste of the bees’ hard work.
The Goodness Bees Give Us
Beeswax
Produced by worker bees and used to build the beautiful comb that holds honey, pollen, and developing young bees. Beyond the hive, beeswax is valued for candles, balms, soaps, wraps, and natural handmade goods. It is a reminder that bees create more than honey, they build the very foundation of the hive.
Safety note: Honey should never be given to children under 1 year old. People with allergies to pollen or bee products should use caution with honey, propolis, royal jelly, and bee pollen.
Honey and other bee products have been valued for generations, but they should be enjoyed responsibly and not treated as cures.
Propolis
Propolis is a sticky plant resin bees collect from trees and buds to seal, protect, and strengthen the hive. Often called “bee glue,” it helps bees close small gaps and keep their home defended from outside threats. It is one of the many ways bees show how resourceful and protective a colony
can be.
Bee Pollen
Gathered from flowers and carried back to the hive, bee pollen is an important food source for the colony. It provides protein and nutrients that help bees raise healthy young and keep the hive strong. Every colorful pellet of pollen tells the story of where the bees have traveled.
Royal Jelly
A special food made by worker bees and fed to developing larvae, especially future queens. It plays an important role in the life of the hive and helps support the growth of new generations. Like so much of what bees create, royal jelly shows the care, organization, and teamwork inside a colony.
10 Wild Facts About Honey Bees
Strange, unbelievable but actually true!
Queen Bees Toot
and Quack!Did you know young queen bees make sounds called tooting and quacking? When a virgin queen emerges, she presses her thorax against the honeycomb and vibrates her wing muscles to produce a series of piping sounds. Rival queens still sealed inside their cells may respond with shorter, quacking signals. These vibrations travel through the comb and help the colony coordinate the emergence of competing queens. Workers may even keep certain queens confined in their cells, preventing several rivals from emerging simultaneously. It's an unusual royal conversation, and one that can influence whether a colony sends out another swarm!
Bees Understand the Concept
of Zero!Did you know honey bees can understand the idea of nothing? In a remarkable experiment, scientists trained bees to choose images containing fewer objects in exchange for a sugary reward. When presented with a completely empty image, the bees recognized it as having a smaller quantity than images containing one or more objects, even though they hadn't been trained on empty sets! This demonstrated a basic understanding of zero, a surprisingly sophisticated numerical concept. With brains containing fewer than a million neurons, honey bees are challenging our assumptions about how much brainpower is needed to understand numbers. Tiny brain, big mathematical potential!
Tired Bees Give Terrible Directions!
Did you know honey bees need sleep just like we do? When a forager discovers a valuable food source, she performs a waggle dance to communicate its direction and distance to other bees. Scientists discovered that sleep-deprived honey bees perform these dances with less directional precision, potentially making it harder for their nestmates to locate food efficiently. Interestingly, their ability to communicate distance wasn't significantly affected in the same experiment. Bees also exhibit recognizable sleeping behaviors, including periods of stillness and reduced responsiveness to disturbances. Apparently, even nature's hardest workers need a good night's rest before giving directions!
Honey Bees Can Taste With Their Feet!
Did you know honey bees have taste sensors located on their feet? These specialized sensory structures allow them to detect certain chemicals simply by standing on a surface. Receptors on their tiny claws are particularly sensitive to sugar, while other structures on their feet respond strongly to salts. When a bee lands on a flower, these sensors can help it assess what it's touching before extending its tongue-like proboscis to drink nectar. Honey bees also have taste receptors on their mouthparts and antennae, giving them several ways to investigate their surroundings. Imagine being able to taste a cupcake just by standing on it!
Angry Bees Smell
Like Bananas!Did you know an alarmed honey bee can release a chemical signal that smells remarkably like bananas? One of the main ingredients in their alarm pheromone is isoamyl acetate, a compound also associated with the familiar scent of ripe bananas. When a worker bee stings or detects danger, this chemical can help recruit nearby bees and prepare them to defend their colony. It can also help direct their attention toward the source of the disturbance. The alarm pheromone is actually a complex mixture of dozens of chemicals, allowing bees to coordinate their defensive behavior. So, if your beehive suddenly smells like banana candy, it might not be in a particularly sweet mood!
For Male Bees, Love Is a Death Sentence!
Did you know a male honey bee, called a drone, dies shortly after successfully mating with a queen? Drones gather in special areas high above the ground, waiting for virgin queens to arrive. During mating, the drone's reproductive organ, called an endophallus, is forcibly everted and eventually tears away from his body, causing fatal injuries. The queen, however, can mate with numerous drones during her mating flights and store their sperm in a specialized organ called the spermatheca. This stored sperm can fertilize eggs throughout her reproductive life. For the successful drone, mating is quite literally a once-in-a-lifetime experience. Talk about going out with a bang!
Honey Bees Make Their Own Antimicrobial Coating!
Did you know honey bees collect sticky plant resins to create a remarkable substance called propolis? Sometimes called "bee glue," propolis is used to seal cracks, reinforce the hive, and coat the interior of their home. In natural tree cavities, bees can create an almost continuous propolis envelope along the walls. The antimicrobial compounds found in these resins contribute to a form of colony-wide protection known as social immunity. Research has even shown that colonies with a propolis envelope can experience reduced signs of certain bacterial diseases. While it isn't a cure-all, propolis is an important part of a colony's natural defenses. Nature's very own protective coating!
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Bees Hold Dance-Offs to Choose Their Next Home!
Did you know honey bees use a remarkable group decision-making process when searching for a new home? After a colony swarms, scout bees investigate potential nesting sites, evaluating features such as cavity size, entrance location, and overall suitability. Each scout returns to the swarm and performs a waggle dance advertising her discovery. Particularly promising locations inspire more enthusiastic dancing, encouraging additional scouts to investigate and recruit support. Scouts can even interrupt rivals with tiny vibrating stop signals! Eventually, when enough scouts gather at one location, the swarm prepares to move. It's an elaborate house-hunting competition involving hundreds of bees, with no single bee making the decision for everyone.
Some Honey Bees Cook Their Enemies Alive!
Did you know Japanese honey bees have developed a remarkable defense against giant hornets? When a hornet threatens their colony, hundreds of bees can swarm around the intruder, forming a tightly packed living ball. By activating their flight muscles, the bees generate heat while simultaneously increasing the concentration of carbon dioxide inside the cluster. Together, these conditions can kill the trapped hornet in less than ten minutes! The bees can tolerate temperatures that become lethal to their attacker, giving them a narrow but powerful defensive advantage. This specialized behavior is particularly associated with Japanese honey bees, rather than the Western honey bees commonly managed in American apiaries. Talk about a bee-powered oven!
Honey Bees Are Electrically Charged!
Did you know honey bees can build up a tiny positive electric charge as they fly through the air? Flowers and their pollen often carry a different electrical charge, creating an electrostatic attraction between the bee and the blossom. As a charged bee approaches, this invisible force can help pollen grains leap onto its body without requiring direct contact. When the bee visits another flower, electrostatic forces can also assist in transferring pollen to the flower's reproductive structures. This fascinating interaction helps make pollination more efficient and demonstrates how insects and plants use physical forces we rarely notice. It's nature's version of rubbing a balloon against your hair, only much more useful!
Flowers Bees Prefer
Honey bees are generalist foragers, but they prefer flowers with good nectar and pollen rewards.
Early Spring
maple, willow, dandelion, fruit blossoms
Late Spring & Early Summer
black locust, tulip poplar, clover, berry blossoms
Summer
milkweed, bee balm, mountain mint, herbs, wildflowers
Late Summer & Fall
goldenrod, asters, knotweed, late blooming native plants
When Our Honey Flows Happens
Early Spring
The colony builds strength and raises brood.
Main Spring Flow
Nectar is abundant and strong hives can fill comb quickly.
Summer Slowdown
Heat and dry weather can reduce nectar.
Fall Flow
Goldenrod, asters, and late flowers help bees prepare for winter and may produce darker, stronger flavored honey.
Exact timing changes each year depending on weather, rainfall, bloom timing, and hive strength.
The Honey Harvest
Honey production depends on local weather patterns, available forage, colony strength, swarming behavior, pests, and the critical amount of honey the bees need to survive the winter.
A healthy hive can produce a surprising amount of honey, but every season is different. Some hives may produce little or no harvestable honey in a difficult year, while strong colonies in a good location can produce much more. We always leave the bees what they need first.
Production Fact
Typically, a productive colony yields 50 to 80 pounds of surplus honey each year. In ideal conditions with plentiful local forage, strong hives can exceed 100 pounds while keeping enough stores to thrive through the winter.
What Threatens Honey Bees?
Modern honey bees face many pressures from environmental factors, parasites, and land-use changes. Beekeepers work hard to manage these risks and support colony health through careful monitoring, sustainable management practices, and seasonal interventions. Understanding these threats is the first step toward effective conservation.
Varroa Mites
Varroa mites are one of the most serious threats honey bees face. These tiny parasites attach to bees and developing brood, weakening them by feeding on their fat bodies and spreading harmful viruses through the colony. If left unmanaged, varroa mites can cause a hive to decline quickly, especially heading into winter. Beekeepers monitor mite levels and use careful treatment plans to help protect the colony.
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Small Hive Beetles
Small hive beetles are pests that can move into a hive and cause problems, especially when a colony is weak or stressed. Their larvae can damage comb, ruin stored honey, and create a mess inside the hive. Strong colonies can usually keep beetles under control, but weaker hives may struggle to defend themselves. Good hive management, strong bee populations, and beetle traps can help reduce the damage they cause.
Wax Moths
Wax moths are insects that lay eggs in or near beehives, and their larvae tunnel through old comb. They are usually not a major problem in strong colonies because healthy bees can defend and clean their hive. However, weak colonies, deadouts, or stored comb can become heavily damaged by wax moth larvae. Beekeepers help prevent wax moth issues by keeping colonies strong and storing empty comb properly.
Diseases
Honey bees can face several diseases, including American foulbrood, European foulbrood, chalkbrood, nosema, and different viruses. Some affect developing brood, while others weaken adult bees or spread through the colony over time. Diseases can be caused by bacteria, fungi, parasites, or viruses, and they are often worse when a hive is already stressed. Regular inspections help beekeepers catch warning signs early and protect the health of the colony
Poor Nutrition
Bees need a steady variety of nectar and pollen to stay healthy and raise strong young bees. When flowers are limited, weather is poor, or the landscape lacks diverse forage, colonies may not get the nutrition they need. Poor nutrition can lead to weaker bees, slower brood growth, and a colony that is less able to handle pests, disease, and winter. Planting a variety of blooming flowers from spring through fall can help support bees and other pollinators.
Harsh Weather
Weather plays a major role in the health and success of a honey bee colony. Long winters, cold snaps, heavy rain, drought, extreme heat, and sudden temperature changes can all create stress inside the hive. Bad weather can also limit the bees’ ability to forage, which affects how much nectar and pollen they can collect. Beekeepers watch food stores, hive ventilation, and colony strength to help bees through difficult seasons.
Pesticide Exposure
Pesticides can harm honey bees when they come into contact with treated plants, contaminated water, or chemicals brought back to the hive. Exposure may kill bees directly or weaken them in ways that affect navigation, foraging, brood care, and overall colony health. Even small amounts can create added stress when combined with mites, disease, or poor nutrition. Using pollinator-safe practices and avoiding pesticide application when flowers are blooming can help
protect bees.
Weak or Failing Queen
The queen is the heart of the colony because she lays the eggs that keep the hive growing. If she becomes weak, injured, poorly mated, or stops laying well, the colony can quickly lose strength. A failing queen may lead to spotty brood patterns, fewer young bees, and a hive that struggles to defend itself or prepare for winter. Beekeepers watch the brood pattern and overall colony behavior to make sure the queen is healthy and productive.
The specific conditions we monitor for in our apiaries include American foulbrood, European foulbrood, chalkbrood, nosema, and a variety of viruses often transmitted by parasites.
Bee Updates Coming Soon
We’re not quite ready to send seasonal updates yet, but this is where you’ll be able to sign up when it’s live. Check back soon if you’d like to get news from the hives and hear when fresh EmberBlossom honey and merch are available.