Our Philosophy

At Peaceful Valley Honey, we believe in allowing our bees to live their lives as closely as possible to the way they would have lived on their own. For this reason, we still use wooden frames and beeswax foundation instead of the plastic frames and plastic foundation that many beekeepers use today. Our hives are wooden and sized to accommodate the recognized "bee space" that bees utilized in the hives they once built in hollow trees.

Until about eight years ago, because of mites that were discovered in the mid-1980's, like everyone else we medicated our bees. During those times, it was the only way beekeepers could find to keep their bees alive. Being avid organic gardeners, we never felt good about this.

In time, we tried various methods of raising bees with lower doses of medications and alternative medications. As research came to light about races of more hygienic bees and other integrated pest management practices (IPM) we decided to stop medicating our bees all together. The first year we did this, we lost about two thirds of our colonies.

After getting over the initial shock of our losses, we took the colonies that we had left and began raising our own queens. We made spilts of the hives that remained to replace some of the colonies that we had lost. Since these bees had been able to survive, we wanted to raise bees with these genetics.