By Page H. Gifford
Correspondent
After leaving corporate America and returning to her Virginia roots in 2021, Amanda Sweeney knew going back to a corporate job wasn’t for her. With generations of her family farming in Virginia, she felt it was her turn to steward the land and carry on their legacy.
“I see my journey into beekeeping as an evolution. My family’s homesteading roots inspired us to move away from refined sugar, embracing honey as our main sweetener. My love for honey sparked a deep curiosity about its varieties and origins.”
The 112-acre farm is mostly forested, rich with tulip poplars, a primary hardwood nectar source for the bees. Fluvanna forests are rich with hardwoods, where spring blooms progress from maple buds to magnolias, redbuds, oaks, black locusts, and tulip poplar by late April and May, signaling the nectar season.
Wildflowers and other trees also support bees and pollinators during this period.
“Many consumers do not know how important hardwood trees are to supporting honeybees. They know wildflowers are important. On our Fluvanna-based farm, we recently planted six acres in wildflowers which bloom in late June and July backed by a desire to obtain a second nectar flow or minimally ensure the bees have a food source during that time frame.” Since bees forage up to five miles from their hive, their bees benefit from the abundant forested areas surrounding them. Like most non-migratory beekeepers in Virginia, they rely on the local environment for nectar.
“Each year, weather plays a significant role in bee health and honey production, with beekeepers balancing when to assist the bees or let them work their magic,” she said. “Too much rain or drought can disrupt nectar flow, impacting the types of honey bees can produce. Ultimately, nature is the ultimate guide.”
She added that there are a few migratory beekeepers across the state of Virginia who do move their bees to support pollination crops or to go after certain high-value sought-after nectars, like sourwood honey. Some may even move their bees out of state for the same reason. Sweeney does not.
This is her full-time job; both beekeeping and running the apiary business. She works seven days a week. She has three apiary yards – two in Fluvanna and one in Powhatan. And she is in the process of setting up three more – onne more in Fluvanna, one in Cumberland, and one in Halifax.
“We currently take care of about 100 colonies and next year hope to successfully grow that number to 150, primarily in the different locations mentioned where we can harvest different nectar varieties or increase our wildflower and tulip poplar varieties.”
They keep a variety of honeybees which she calls Virginia bees. They started with Italian genetics and then added Russian and Carniolan. Worker bees live for 42 days, longer in the winter months. They spend the first 21 days working within the hive and then the following 21 days foraging.
“With a focus on honey production, we manage our bees in ways to incentivize the colony size to be very large and to keep the queen bee from swarming.” They do not sell bees and utilize every opportunity to increase their colony counts so that with each incremental year they can produce more honey.
As a state, Virginia does not produce enough honey to satisfy the needs of our per-capital consumer base. Over 4 million pounds of honey is imported and bottled here.
“We aim to help transform this situation by not just growing our apiary, but by aggregating and distributing honey produced in different areas of the state by other beekeepers. This provides an avenue for other beekeepers to access infrastructure, premium branding, and revenue more quickly allowing them to re-invest into growing their apiary,” she said. Their focus on Virginia honey producers allows them to offer the consumer complete transparency regarding where their honey comes from and more details on their types of nectar. Their new labels even contain a QR code with a message from the keeper of the bees of the honey in that particular jar. “No one else is offering this type of transparency to the consumer nor this level of advocacy for the Virginia beekeeper. This is where we’ve been able to differentiate ourselves and stand out in the marketplace.”
