May 9 2024

We did the first complete hive inspections the other day, Pics and explanations, a find the queen pic too. All are busy and have honey supers on. We split the winter survivors that were running out of room and overflowing. They were making new queens in preparation to swarm, so we caught them just in time.

We have lots and lots of lettuce always fresh picked and available at the farm self serve

Our overwintered hives were full and overflowing with bees, definitely time to do splits before they swarm and split themselves

There's a sealed queen swarm cell on the bottom of this frame. They were definitely preparing to swarm and split themselves

Beautiful shades of pollen. See the girl with pollen on her back legs. She collects it like this, it's removed and stored in cells as beebread to feed young larva

just beautiful sun shining through a frame

we removed 2 frames of beautiful finished honeycomb. Some to cut and package for market

building more swarm cells on the bottom of this frame

A rock star laying queen with an almost solid brood pattern. This is sealed worker brood in the metamorphosis stage from larvae to adult worker girls

this frame is mostly female worker sealed brood and the dome topped row on the bottom is drone (males) brood

March 4, 2024

Just a little farm update. Jerry, I and Sophia spent the day yesterday thinning our strawberry patch. Sophia is a delightful young lady who's worked for us for nearly a year. She's a hard working teenager who loves nature, bugs and crafts, a perfect fit here. We're so fortunate she found us when she and her mom picked up strawberries and we showed them around.

Peas are sprouting, bugs were active and and early spring is definitely on the way. One of the wild strawberries that found it's way into the high tunnel had blossoms and white berries already.

More warmth and sunshine are in store for us today also. Enjoy!

Sophia releasing ladybugs in the high tunnel. Native ladybugs seek out and devour plant eating bugs.

Spiders are welcome in the high tunnel. They also seek out and eat the bad bugs. This one is on a volunteer Lupine we let grow and spread the seeds. Lupines are the host plant for the endangered Karner blue butterfly.

February 13, 2024

We have some greens stocked in the Farm Self serve. The over-wintered plants are slowly showing new growth. We’ve also planted seeds for new starts to go in the high tunnel soon. More sun would be great for all of us! In a few weeks, we’ll do more starts for the other veggies.

We opened and checked the bees last week. Added some food reserves to some and checked the towels on top for moisture control. Some of the girls were out flying and stretching their wings. It was good to see them.

New this year, we’re excited to offer CSA shares. Check out the “CSA Subscriptions” tab at the top of the page to learn more about it and sign up for first choice of all of our fresh produce. Take care, we’ll check in again real soon.

1/17/2024 - Hope everyone’s new year is going well so far. We’ve had some single digit temps for a few days and everything in the high tunnel is pretty frozen. No greens are being picked right now.

However, plant starts will be happening very soon and we’re planning for spring.

The bees are well insulated under all of this snow , we hope to see them all out flying when we get our next 45 to 50 degree day.

Our farm stand is still open if you need to stock up on lip balms, lotions, comfrey salve our our honey lemon lollipops (perfect for sore throats).

Take care and see you soon

Nov. 20, 2023

We have the bees all wrapped up for winter and they have plenty of honey stored for themselves. It was 17 degrees out this morning so we’re glad they’re all cozy in they’re hives. They were super productive this year and gave us over 600 lbs of honey from the 11 hives. We’re almost sold out, thanks to all of you supporters. We do still have some naturally creamed honey available which is super fine crystallization making a wonderful spreadable consistency.

The Summer crisp lettuce is done but we still have the hardy greens available and should for a while. Romaine, Tatsoi, arugula and more. Etsy orders are picking up and the holidays are upon us. We wish you all a happy thanksgiving, Merry Christmas and Happy New year. It’ll be seed starting time before we know it. I’ve already received a seed catalog in the mail.

Farm Update, July 13, 2023

I’s been a busy spring and beginning of summer. Here are some recent pictures around the farm with captions.

The girls are bringing in lots of nectar and pollen

The various plant pollens come in so many shapes , sizes and textures

The cherry tomatoes are so sweet and the plants are loaded

The tomato plants are already taller than I am and still growing

Dug the first giant garlic bulbs, lots more to go

progression of our granddaughters garden beds, freshly built

a monarch in one of the milkweed patches

achillea (yarrow) in so many shades, and daisies

we repurposed a truck topper to make a coop

the young hens are happy with the new topper coop

we're seeing baby mantises around the yard

we work all day and then go on walks in the woods or on bike rides to unwind. Living and loving life.

This is our relaxing beautiful view a lot of evenings

March 12, 2023

Farm Update as winter comes to a close and Spring is knocking on our door.

Jan 2, 2023

I took a stroll outside this morning. Reflecting on the past year, we are so appreciative of the community support and we’re looking forward to another great year.

The garden beds outdoors we don’t clean up until spring, because lots of pollinators and good insects overwinter in the plant stems, seed heads and plant debris.

It was a nice surprise to see the Brussel sprouts that were picked clean in fall have continued to grow since then and I picked a nice little harvest today. This is a first for an outdoor January harvest and a pleasant surprise.

I picked down in the fall and this is what I found today. They grew through December.

Toss with a little olive oil, salt and pepper and air fry. Sooo good.

Spinach outdoors survived under the snow

September 15, 2022

That fall chill is in the air. Below are some pictures and descriptions of current happenings here at Rutherford Farm. We’re still harvesting fruits and veggies. Honey is slowing as the bees stock away for their winter food supply. We’re making deliveries every week, sometimes twice a week to Hubbard Lake General Store. We’re planting for fall and winter and the plants that will produce early in Spring. Before long the cool weather greens will be available for your salads like spinach, romaine and asian greens. We’ve been canning and dehydrating our own food stash, plucking seed heads, pods etc from our hundreds of flowers and plants to plant and share. Picking apples to dry and make cider. Pulling plants in the high tunnel to amend the soil and make room for more. Hundreds of strawberry runners need moved and planted and weeds are never ending. Our Etsy shop craft orders are rolling in and again Summer went by way too fast. We really appreciate everyone’s ongoing support and love what we do as we provide the community with our pure raw honey, chemical free produce and hand made natural lotions and lollipops. We love reading the comments you leave at the self serve stand and talking to our customers at the market. “Why is your honey so good” “ You can actually taste the flowers” The credit goes to the hard working bees, it’s 100% bee gathered flower nectar and pollen. We only gather it, no heating, no sugar feeding, no filtering, no diluting. And it sure is delicious!!

July 24, 2022

We inspected hives today. Out of all of our walk away splits we had one hive where the queen didn’t make it back from her mating flight and and we had a laying worker with 2 boxes of mostly drones. Every frame was shaken out on the ground and all of the workers found their way back. We gave them 2 frames of eggs and brood from another hive to make a new queen.

This is what we saw today! A MASSIVE queen cell. I can’t wait to see her emerge. We did leave another healthy queen cell as well in case the curvature of this super long one makes her deformed in some way.

Edit: We’ve never seen a queen cell like this in our 5 years of beekeeping. Never read of this in my plethora of beekeeping books or heard it discussed at the conferences we’ve attended. But thanks to fellow beekeepers, we are constantly learning. We’re told this cell will be a dud as the larvae has fallen out of the royal jelly and the bees kept extending the cell. We’ll keep an eye on it just in case something hatches alive. Glad we left another queen cell.

June 3, 2022

We have a lot going on at Rutherford Farm right now. Romaine is coming on strong,

The self serve fridge is open

other plants are really growing so look for lots more soon.

We’re having the covered porch enclosed for an all season farm stand/plant starting room.

We’re also tearing up large sections of lawn to plant pollinator habitat. This will be an ongoing task. Our vision is a walk through area with paths and labels so everyone can enjoy the flowers and bees and nature. We all need to be a little closer to nature.

We had 7 of 9 Hives survive the winter and they are increasing so fast we split them and are are up to 12 bee hives. They have plenty of natural forage and are bringing in the pollen and nectar. The end of June we should be able to start fulfilling honey orders from our waiting list.

Self serve fridge is by the pole barn for now

Tearing up lawn to plant pollinator plants

March 7, 2022 - We are getting ready for spring and summer. Over 600 plants are started of tomatoes, peppers, romaines, asian greens and more.

Over wintered plants are showing signs of new growth, peas are sprouting and we’ll have lots to offer in the coming season.

12/16/2021 Merry Christmas to everyone and here’s to a happy and healthy Holiday season!!

09/20/2021 - Last week we had our hardest honeybee extraction on a steep roof in the saddle by a chimney. Normally we don’t do any removals involving cutting of roofing/house materials being removed. But in this special case the owner gave us approval to do what we needed to save the honeybees, and prearranged with her roofer do do the repairs after we relocated the honeybees. It took nearly 4 hours from start to finish and then we went back just before dark to get the bees that were out foraging during the day and clustered where the previous entrance was.

Jerry cutting the hole in the roof saddle to access and remove the honeybees

The cut out, showing comb the bees have built

pieces of comb and bees were removed carefully, placed in boxes to relocate to a hive box

The comb pieces were rubberbanded to frames and placed in a hive box

shaking stragglers from the boxes we carried down to join the hive

another large group of honeybees being dumped in the box to join their sisters

There were a lot of honeybees in the roof, this is 2 boxes overflowing, so we added a third box with some of their honey and pollen frames

lots of activity in the relocated hive , all of the hives will be monitored and treated for varroa mites before winter.

7/4/2021 Happy July 4th everyone. Natural remedies such as Mullien (Lamb’s ear) and plantain get flowerbed space on our farm. The pollinators love this also.

Look at those pollen poodle pants on this busy bee

My Mullien patch I harvest leaves and flowers from for winter respiratory ailments is quite popular with the honeybees, mason bees and hoverflies. They all know what's good.

6/24/2021 - It’s been a busy week. We split some of our bee hives, inspected for the mite mauler traits(check out the educational section).We filled store orders from the hoop house produce and picked for market. Baby praying mantises hatched. We took a play day though and drove over to Lavendar Hill farm on the other side of the state. It’s a beautiful farm and They have BEES!
This was a well deserved trip since this week is also our 35 year Anniversary. It’s been a wild ride with my Love, and I love where our journey has taken us. Life is good, My advice is stop and smell the flowers and watch the bees whenever you can.
I never post selfies but here’s one of us. I can’t believe we’re this old!

Around here we let the weeds grow (BEE & BUTTERFLY FOOD) like this milk weed patch we mow around.

Here’s a welcome visitor to our milkweed

These are some current new blooms here on the farm. Wild roses transplanted from just a twig 15 years ago from my moms fence row and a gorgeous lily bloom.

Call, message or pre-order on the SHOP page for pick up at the farm or Saturday at the Alpena Farmers Market. Romaine mix, asian greens, spinach, honey, honeycomb, lotion and lip balm. (989)727-3265 Romaine mix is also available at the Hubbard Lake General Store

Nutrient dense delicious romaine, can't get enough of the crisp fresh salads

All of the different Romaine varieties are so dense and delicious. Snow peas are loaded with blossoms and waist high.

The giant garlic is waist high, Scapes (green garlic) coming soon the bulbs should be enormous this fall

Sneak preview at strawberries ripening, we're filling the pre-orders list from months ago before any go to market

One of my favorite flower scents is the old fashioned lilac

5/24/2021

Here's an apiary update and some new pics (FIND THE QUEENS), read the photo captions for descriptions. We inspected our splits and added 3 more colonies of Northern Michigan bees to our 3 that survived the winter( 4 now, we just split a big colony). We're hoping to improve winter survival and genetics by raising only Michigan overwintered bees

These are the calmest little girls in our split we made from our overwintered bees, they all just lined up to watch us as the roof came off their house

There is a beautiful queen on this frame. She's from genetics that's survived for the past 2 winters in our apiary. She's in the center towards the right of the frame

We picked up three nucs today on the other side of the state and brought them to their new home.

Here's one of the nice fat queens in a nuc we added today. She's a little harder to spot. Right in the center on the bottom half of the pic.

And an easier queen spotting pic from another nuc we added. They sure are beautiful and calm bees! Great additions to our apiary.

This nuc has a queen with a beautiful brood pattern

5/14/2021
You can find us Saturday morning 8am to 1pm (or until sold out) at the *Alpena Farmer’s market* with lots of romaine mix, chives, honey, honeycomb, lotions, lip balms and more
And now you can buy our salad mix at *Hubbard Lake General Store*
**More great news is we are offering DOUBLE UP BUCKS at the farm for our *SNAP, EBT,* and P-EBT customers**

The weather has finally warmed up even though it’s still freezing at night. We will be inspecting our hives and making splits to increase the colonies before they build queen cells like this one from last year in the photo. If they make another queen the older one will leave with half the population in a swarm. Splitting the hive gives them more room so hopefully they won’t feel the need to swarm

Welcome to our new Rutherford Farm website
2021 is all good so far, Honeybees are busy at the dandelions, tulips, hyacinths and other spring flowers.
We’re waiting for our dozens of apple trees, lilacs and other plants to blossom as well

We had some hives die over the winter but the remaining colonies are building fast. Our focus this year will be to split our strong survivor hives and build on the Michigan survivor genetics to expand our apiary. We’re also purchasing winter surviving colonies from another Northern Michigan beekeeper to add even more strong genetics.
The hoop house plants are growing well, we’ve had spinach throughout this mild winter, lots more veggies will follow.
We also have a small greenhouse filled with perennial flower starts to add to our flower beds. Less Grass, More BEE Food!