Cole’s Farm NC

09/18/2026

🐝🍯 A FULL FRAME OF FOOD

This is another deep frame from a recent hive inspection—and this one really caught my attention.

This frame came from the top box of this colony, the second deep, and I was surprised to see just how well the bees have utilized the sugar water I provided several weeks ago, along with what I presume are natural nectar resources they’ve been finding on their own.

The result? A beautiful frame packed with stored food. 🍯🐝

For a beekeeper, frames like this are encouraging because they tell us a lot about what’s happening inside the hive. The colony is actively bringing in resources, processing and storing them, and building up reserves for the periods when outside forage becomes less reliable.

But there’s also a management consideration here: food storage takes up space.

A strong colony can fill available comb surprisingly quickly when resources are coming in. If the bees run out of usable space, they can become crowded, which can affect how the colony manages brood production and potentially contribute to swarming behavior.

This hive will likely need additional space soon. I have a couple of options—add another box to give them room to continue expanding, or move some of these food-heavy frames to other colonies that could use the resources.

That second option can be particularly useful as we transition toward the fall nectar flow. Moving established food frames between colonies can help redistribute resources where they’re needed while also freeing up valuable space in a strong hive.

Every inspection is a little bit of detective work. 🕵️‍♂️🐝

A single frame can tell you about the colony’s strength, available food, brood production, forage conditions, and what management decision may need to come next.

And sometimes, it’s simply pretty cool to pull a frame like this out of the hive. 😍🍯

🐝 One link. All the buzz. ➡️ https://linktr.ee/colesfarmnc
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09/16/2026

Back in Andrews to check on the sourwood honey flow… and the results were all over the place 🍯

Some hives crushed it. Others struggled. And I ended up losing a couple more colonies along the way.

This one shows the real side of chasing sourwood—high expectations, mixed results, and everything in between.

🎥 Watch here: https://youtu.be/VNQiuokCfuI

After weeks away, it was finally time to head back to Andrews, Nort...

09/16/2026

🐝🍯 A PICTURE OF A HEALTHY HIVE

Sometimes, one frame can tell a beekeeper quite a bit about what’s happening inside a colony.

This beautiful deep frame came from the brood chamber during a recent inspection, and it shows several of the things I like to see when evaluating the health and strength of a colony.

One of my favorite features is the “rainbow” of capped honey across the top of the frame, surrounded by a strong pattern of capped brood. 🍯🐝

That arrangement is a great sign. The bees are storing their food reserves above and around the brood nest, while the queen is laying and the colony is maintaining a healthy population of developing bees.

Of course, a good-looking frame by itself doesn’t tell the whole story, so I always look a little deeper.

After finding some open cells, I did a quick check for a freshly laid egg. Finding that tiny egg is one of the simplest and most reassuring indicators that the colony is queen-right—meaning a functional queen is present and actively laying.

With a strong brood pattern, plenty of food, and evidence of a laying queen, this colony gave me exactly the kind of picture I like to see.

And once the inspection is complete, there’s no reason to keep the colony open any longer than necessary. Everything goes right back where it belongs, the boxes are put back together, and the bees can get back to doing what they do best. 🐝

It may look like “just a frame of bees” to someone unfamiliar with beekeeping, but to a beekeeper, there’s a whole story here. ❤️

🐝 One link. All the buzz. ➡️ https://linktr.ee/colesfarmnc
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09/14/2026

🐝🌸 THE UNNOTICED WORKERS

Sometimes, you don’t have to look very far to find something remarkable.

Honeybees are incredibly special creatures, not only because of the honey they produce, but because of the enormous role they play as pollinators. Every day, they are quietly moving from flower to flower, collecting nectar and pollen while transferring pollen between plants along the way.

And what’s fascinating is just how easily they can go unnoticed.

A honeybee doesn’t need a huge field of blooming flowers to find something worth collecting. They will forage in practically any place they can find a useful food source—large or small, high or low, cultivated gardens or wild patches of flowers.

This photo is a perfect example. 🌿🐝

While looking around our own property, I happened to notice several honeybees working the variegated liriope. These plants may not be the first thing that comes to mind when you think about honeybee forage, but their small purple flowers provide a source of pollen that the bees seem more than happy to collect.

They may only spend a few seconds on each flower, but multiply that by thousands of flowers, thousands of bees, and countless trips throughout a season—and you begin to appreciate just how much work is happening all around us.

Most of the time, we simply walk past.

We don’t hear them.
We don’t notice them.
We may never even realize they were there.

But they were working.

That’s one of the things I love most about keeping bees. It gives you a reason to slow down and pay attention to the little things. A patch of flowers that might otherwise go unnoticed can suddenly become a busy little workplace.

So the next time you see flowers blooming—even the small, ordinary ones—take a closer look. 🌸

You might be surprised who is already there doing some very important work. 🐝

🐝 One link. All the buzz. ➡️ https://linktr.ee/colesfarmnc
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09/11/2026

🐝☀️ WHEN THE BEES NEED A LITTLE AIR

If you’ve ever seen a hive covered in bees on a hot summer day, you’re looking at a behavior called bearding.

This single-deep hive is a great example. With the recent heat wave and temperatures reaching the upper 90s, a large cluster of bees has gathered around the entrance and is hanging from the bottom corner of the hive.

It may look alarming, but this is often a completely normal response to extreme heat.

🐝 So why do they do it?

A honey bee colony generates considerable heat simply from the activity of thousands of bees living and working together. When temperatures rise, bees will move outside the hive to reduce congestion and help improve ventilation.

Bees positioned around the entrance can also fan their wings, moving air through the colony. Other workers may collect water, which is used for evaporative cooling inside the hive.

Think of it as the bees’ version of stepping outside on a hot day to cool off. 😎🐝

Bearding can sometimes be confused with other behaviors, including swarming or congestion, so beekeepers have to consider the entire situation—weather, colony strength, available space, brood, queen status, and overall hive activity.

But when you combine a strong colony with extreme temperatures, seeing a large number of bees hanging outside the hive isn’t necessarily a sign that something is wrong.

Sometimes, the bees are simply telling us, “It’s hot in here!” ☀️🐝

🐝 One link. All the buzz. ➡️ https://linktr.ee/colesfarmnc
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09/09/2026

It’s been 5–9 weeks since I last inspected these overflow yard hives… and let’s just say, a lot can change in that amount of time 👀🐝

From what looks like a robbed-out hive, to a booming swarm that needs space, and even a possible Swarm No. 21… this inspection had a little bit of everything.

Sometimes I feel more like a “bee haver” than a beekeeper this time of year—but that’s the reality of balancing projects and bees.

Watch the full video here: https://youtu.be/Qv-NbTweruA?is=bcJPuhMg7qaZ0TTY

It’s been far too long since I last inspected the overflow yard hiv...

09/09/2026

There are some things you just don’t expect to find on a family vacation… and a honey bee conservation display at SeaWorld Orlando was definitely one of them. 🐝💛

While visiting SeaWorld Orlando with my family, I was excited to stumble across this beautiful display featuring a pair of brightly painted honey bee hives and a sign titled “SeaWorld Honey Bee Conservation Program.”

It’s always encouraging to accidentally come across displays like this because they do something incredibly important: they bring awareness to honey bees and the role they play in our world.

Honey bees can be easy to overlook. They’re small, they’re busy, and most people probably pass by dozens of them without giving them a second thought. But when you stop and watch them for a moment, it’s pretty incredible to think about what that little bee represents.

Pollination • Food production • Biodiversity

And an entire colony working together to accomplish something far greater than any individual bee could do alone.

The display itself caught my attention immediately, but naturally, the honey bees around the park caught my attention too. 😂🐝

I was even treated to an unexpected close encounter with one in the parking lot, and throughout the day I noticed local honey bees taking advantage of the sweetness around the soda dispensers.

Apparently, even on vacation, I can’t stop looking for bees. 😂

And honestly, I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Whether it’s an educational display, a honey bee visiting a flower, or a little bee searching for a sugary drink in a theme park, every encounter is another opportunity to notice and appreciate these remarkable little pollinators.

Sometimes conservation starts with something as simple as getting people to notice the bee. 🐝

🐝 One link. All the buzz. ➡️ https://linktr.ee/colesfarmnc
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09/07/2026

🐝🇺🇸 THANK YOU, HOLLY RIDGE! 🇺🇸🐝

What a weekend! We want to take a moment to say THANK YOU to everyone who came out to the Holly Ridge Liberty Festival and stopped by the Cole’s Farm tent. Whether you purchased a jar, asked questions about our bees, talked beekeeping, or simply stopped by to say hello—we truly appreciate you taking the time to visit us!

Unfortunately, Mother Nature had other plans. 🌧️⛈️ With the inclement weather moving in, we made the decision to pack up early, along with several other vendors. While we certainly would have loved to stay longer, the safety of our family, customers, and fellow vendors always comes first.

🍯 If you missed us at the festival, you don’t have to wait for the next farmers market or festival to get your honey!

Our Spring Honey is still available, but our supply is getting low. This is the honey our bees produced from the diverse spring blooms here in Eastern North Carolina, and once this batch is gone, it’s gone until next season.

And there’s more honey on the horizon… 🐝🌿🍯

Our 2026 Summer Sourwood Honey is currently being prepared and should be available within the next few weeks! This year’s Sourwood harvest came from our colonies working the mountains around Andrews, North Carolina, and we’re excited to finally share this special harvest with you.

Whether you’re looking for a jar of our Spring Honey now or want to keep an eye out for the upcoming Sourwood release, you can visit our website anytime to see what’s currently available and place an order.

You don’t have to wait until we set up our tent at the next market or festival. Our online store is always open! 🛒🍯

Thank you again for supporting our small, veteran-owned family farm and, most importantly, for supporting local beekeeping and local agriculture. Every jar purchased helps us continue caring for our bees and growing Cole’s Farm. ❤️🐝

🐝 One link. All the buzz. ➡️ https://linktr.ee/colesfarmnc
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09/04/2026

🐝 Sometimes, you have to make decisions today for the bees you want to have tomorrow.

After pulling the honey supers from the hives, I decided to do something different this year.

Rather than immediately putting the medium supers back onto the colonies, I’ve set them out on our newly cleared land and am letting the bees rob them clean.

The reason? I’m transitioning back to double-deep colonies for overwintering—something I haven’t done in easily six or seven years.

There has been nothing wrong with overwintering colonies as a deep and a medium. That setup has worked very well for me. But my goals for the apiary are changing.

When I was primarily focused on maintaining my colonies, early-spring splits weren’t a major priority. Now that we have the space to expand, I want to create a system that gives me more opportunities to increase our colony numbers.

By overwintering in double deeps, my goal is to have stronger colonies and more flexibility when spring arrives, potentially giving me more colonies that can be split early in the season.

It’s something I’ve mentioned occasionally during my inspection videos, but this is the bigger picture.

In beekeeping, you’re always planning ahead.

Right now, we’re still in summer. Fall hasn’t even arrived yet, but I’m already making decisions based on what I want the apiary to look like next spring.

That’s one of the things I love about beekeeping. Every season builds upon the next, and the decisions you make today can have a major impact on what you’re able to accomplish months down the road. 🐝

🐝 One link. All the buzz. ➡️ https://linktr.ee/colesfarmnc
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09/02/2026

The beeyard expansion is officially underway! 🐝

Over several days, I worked through the full process of turning newly cleared land into a protected apiary space—installing T-posts, running polywire, setting up the gate, and getting the energizer fully up and running.

This is a big step toward making this space fully functional, and I’m excited to share the progress with you all.

🎥 Watch here: https://youtu.be/ts7nh-Chad8

From July 13th through July 18th, I’m bringing you along for daily ...