Everyone needs a little breather, even our honey bees! While we love living and working in Jacksonville, Florida, the summer months are particularly hard on our hives.

We had a conversation with our hives this year on how we could help during the summer months. They shared some of the difficulties of being in Florida during the heat of June and July. Our Queen Bees told us how rampant pests, like varroa, wax moths, and hive beetles, are in the hive during the summer. How there are no flowering plants due to the intense heat.

So we made a plan.

We decided to send our hardworking bees to a small town in upper Michigan for a little summer vacation!

This past Thursday we split up our hives for their summer vacation. We sent half of our hives off to upper Michigan and half of our hives to the Black Mangroves (about an hour and a half south of Jacksonville). Don't worry, we'll have them swap trips next year!

We are looking forward to welcoming back stronger hives from Michigan this fall. With better temperatures, and better natural pest control because of those cooler temps, they will be able to weather the winter even better. The hives headed to the Black Mangroves will yield a great crop of Black Mangrove honey, one of our favorite honey varietals, and will be ready to start collecting our signature Jacksonville, Wildflower in the fall! 

Our team has been hard at work preparing for our beehives to set sail. There have been hundreds of bee boxes to organize, honey to spin, and more. During all that, we sat down with our hives to chat about their upcoming vacations, read more about our hives here. 

Then, we waved them off in style. Good luck ladies, we'll see you in a few weeks!