New Honey Bees have Arrived!

Visitors to Nordic Ware’s headquarters in Minneapolis, Minnesota will discover bee themed bakeware, a bee themed park & picnic area, and NOW, a real live bee hive!   The bees moved in on May 31st. Their new home is at the south side of our buildings, west of our Community Garden and east of the Nordic Ware tower.  The bees came to us from the University of Minnesota’s Bee Lab, where research is taking place to help bees make a comeback: http://www.beelab.umn.edu  

Ours began as a very small hive — only 15,000 bees and two stories high to start– but it’s already doubled in size.  We’ll continue to add boxes (also known as “supers”) as the colony grows and more honey storage space is needed.  We hope our bees will need a high rise hive by summer’s end!

There are a many things blooming along the bike trail that runs near the hive and our community garden has lots to offer as well, so the bees are happy & well supplied with nectar. They’re busy foraging in a 2+ mile radius every day.  If all goes well, this single hive of bees will make enough honey between now and September to last them through a long Minnesota winter, with an extra 40+ pounds of surplus honey to share with us.  They’re generous and amazing little creatures.

If our bees continue to thrive we’ll post news of our honey harvest later this summer!