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WELCOME TO THE VERMONT BEEKEEPERS HOMEPAGE,

As you drive the gravel of Vermont’s country roads and enjoy the scenic beauty of the many lush pastures which dot our countryside, keep in mind that many of these fields that feed Vermont’s dairy herds also provide a significant portion of the “bee pasture” so vital to the state’s honey bee industry.  Vermont bees work within villages and city limits to provide honey and pollination to Vermont’s “urban” beekeepers.

    The Vermont Beekeepers Association represents over 1200 beekeepers that raise bees for the love and honey.  We’re as divers as the 246 towns in Vermont, but are unified in or fascination with and affection for bees.  Most of us are hobbyists, but there are some “side liner” who try to make a bit of extra income from their 25-200 hives as well as a hand-full of full-time professionals.  In total, our 9,000 hives produce about 700,000 pounds of honey per year.

    “(Many) native Vermonters have ingrained respect for the nutritional wisdom of the bee, which goes into the fields and selects the materials for the making of a perfect food.  With bees there are no new way of checking the quality of the flowers it visits to obtain nectar.  It knows if and when flowers aren’t up to its standards and move along to others.  In Vermont one sometimes hears the saying, ‘We’ve got to trust someone—why not let it be the bee?’  The saying is more truth than poetry.”  As quoted by Vermont Doctor, D.C. Jarvis, M.D. Folk Medicine.

Queen Honey Bee

Drone Honey Bee

Drones are male Honey Bees.

Varroa mites on bees.