Cole’s Farm NC

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 ...

09/02/2026

🍯 The Next Chapter: Let the Science Begin

The last frame has been harvested. The honey has been extracted. And now, two small sample tubes are making their way to the Penn State University Honey and Pollen Diagnostics Lab.

These little tubes may not look like much, but they represent the next—and very important—step in the story of our 2026 Sourwood honey crop. 🐝🍯

After moving 20 colonies to Andrews, North Carolina, specifically to take advantage of the Sourwood bloom, we harvested what we hope will be a very special mountain honey.

But there’s an important distinction between calling something “Sourwood honey” and actually knowing how much of the honey came from Sourwood nectar.

That’s where the laboratory analysis comes in.

The samples I’m sending will be analyzed to help determine the floral composition of this crop. In other words, we’re going to let the science tell us what the bees found.

Because while we may have moved the colonies to Sourwood country, the bees were free to forage on whatever was blooming around them. Sourwood was their target—but they certainly didn’t have a map telling them which flowers they were supposed to visit. 😉

The results should help us better understand just how much Sourwood contributed to this harvest, along with what other nectar and pollen sources may have found their way into the honey.

And I’ll be honest…

I’m really looking forward to seeing the results.

There’s something pretty fascinating about taking a bottle of honey and being able to look beyond its color, aroma, and flavor to understand the botanical story behind it.

So these two little tubes are officially on their way to Penn State.

Now we wait. ⏳

And when those results come back, we’ll finally know what the bees brought home from the mountains of North Carolina.

Until then, the 2026 Sourwood story continues…

🐝 One link. All the buzz. ➡️ https://linktr.ee/colesfarmnc
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08/31/2026

🍯 The Very Last Frame

There’s something bittersweet about holding the very last frame of a honey harvest.

This beautifully filled and fully capped medium frame marks the very last frame of our 2026 Sourwood honey crop—and there’s something special about seeing it resting on the HillCo Roller Uncapper, with “July” carved into the top.

Bitter, because another harvest is coming to an end.

After months of preparation, moving colonies, monitoring the nectar flow, working the bees, transporting equipment, and finally harvesting and extracting the honey, that last frame is a reminder that this particular chapter is now coming to a close.

But it’s also incredibly sweet. 🍯

Sweet because all of that work has resulted in more honey for our customers—and, just maybe, a very special Sourwood honey.

Before we put a Sourwood label on a single bottle, however, there’s still one important step left.

A sample will be sent to the Penn State University Honey and Pollen Diagnostics Lab for analysis. This will help us determine just how much of this crop is truly Sourwood, along with identifying the other nectar and pollen sources that contributed to what the bees produced.

That distinction matters.

The bees don’t read our plans or know that we moved them to Andrews specifically to chase Sourwood. They simply work the flowers available to them, collecting nectar and pollen from the landscape around their colonies.

So now, we wait for the science to tell us exactly what they brought home.

If the results confirm what we’re hoping for, we may soon have something particularly special to share with you—a honey born from the Sourwood forests of the North Carolina mountains and the hard work of 20 colonies.

And that’s what makes the last frame so bittersweet.

It’s the end of a harvest…

…but it’s also the beginning of sharing its story. 🐝🍯

Stay tuned. The next chapter will be finding out exactly what’s inside these bottles.

🐝 One link. All the buzz. ➡️ https://linktr.ee/colesfarmnc
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08/28/2026

🍯 THIS is the moment I’ve been looking forward to for years! 🐝

There’s something incredibly satisfying about walking into the honey house and seeing honey supers stacked high—especially when you know exactly what it took to get them there.

At the end of June, I loaded 20 hives onto the trailer and hauled them from Jacksonville all the way to Andrews, North Carolina, where they would spend the next several weeks working the legendary Sourwood flow. 🌿🐝

Now, around the end of July, it was time to bring the next part of the journey home: harvesting the honey.

What you’re looking at is the result of those weeks in the mountains—a combination of 19 medium supers and 9 deep supers, all packed into the honey house and waiting their turn to be extracted.

For me, this is every bit as exciting as opening a hive and discovering supers packed full of honey. After years of beekeeping, finally seeing this much honey stacked up in my own honey house is a moment I’ve been waiting a LONG time to experience.

And now comes the question…

🤔 How much honey do YOU think is hiding inside these 28 supers?

Take your best guess! 👇🍯

Are we talking 300 pounds? 500? 700? Maybe even more?!

Drop your prediction in the comments BEFORE I reveal the final harvest total. I’ll be curious to see who comes closest! 🐝🍯

🐝 One link. All the buzz. ➡️ https://linktr.ee/colesfarmnc
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08/26/2026

We finally pulled the trigger on something we’ve been putting off for over a year…

Over 3 days, we cleared out 0.65 acres to expand our apiary—and seeing it open up in real time was unreal.

It’s crazy how much space we’ve had all this time without realizing its full potential. This is just the beginning of what’s to come.

🎥 Watch here: https://youtu.be/_Ea5r7ln2yo

Over the course of July 9th, 10th, and 11th, we finally kicked off ...

08/26/2026

There’s something pretty satisfying about seeing the entire apiary back home and sitting on its new stands. 🐝🏡

For the first time ever, I’m running individual hive stands—and I’m really excited about this change.

As I’ve shared previously, my old setup was essentially one continuous hive stand, with multiple 4x4s sharing the same cinderblock bases. That system served me well for many years, but it eventually became a limitation.

Why? Because if I wanted—or needed—to move a single stand, I couldn’t simply move one stand. I would first have to unload 8–10 hives from two adjoining stands just to reposition one.

That’s a lot of extra work, unnecessary disruption, and definitely not the most efficient way to manage an expanding apiary.

With individual stands, I now have much more flexibility. 🐝

It should make routine hive inspections more efficient, give me greater flexibility when moving colonies, and—perhaps most importantly—open up more possibilities when it comes time to redesign and optimize the layout of the bee yard.

Sometimes improving a system isn’t about making a huge change. It’s about identifying the little things that create limitations and finding a better way forward.

After years of using the old setup, seeing all of these hives sitting independently on their new stands is definitely a new view for Cole’s Farm NC.

And I have to say… I really like what I see. 😁🐝

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