THE HIVE
We proudly serve the Northwestern Alabama and Northeastern Mississippi with our Honey and Honey Bees . We currently have over 100 hives spread throughout Franklin County.
THE BUSY BEES OF ALABAMA
Ted & Angie LeMay, Founders First and foremost, my wife and I are Christians! We believe in Christian values. We believe in treating people the way we like to be treated. That being said when you do business with us, expect to be treated well.
We have been keeping Honey Bees in Northwest Alabama since 2010. We started as hobby beekeepers with 3 hives in summer of that year which was tough but we pulled it off. We quickly saw the need and demand for Honey as well as Honey Bee sales in and around our area. We have grown our apiary and are now ready to meet as much of that demand as possible. Our intentions are to continue to grow and expand to meet the needs of a much larger area.
In 2018 we saw a need to add beekeeping supplies to our farm. We have slowly grown adding a little more each year.
For 2020 we are now Distributors for MANNLAKE and SOUTHEAST BEEKEEPING SUPPLIES. We now have access to quality beekeeping supplies at fair prices for all our customers. We have also added an ONLINE STORE that we continue to add to each year.
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Our Goals
Currenting we run Italian and New World Carniolan, primarly Italian. The NWC is a line we are experimenting with to see how they adapt to our area. We will continue to try different bees in order to keep the best bees possible. (We have put the NWC project on hold for now.) This year (Oct. 2015) we checked our mite counts with sticky boards then double checked with alcohol washes on the same hives. We also compared hives with solid bottom boards to those with screen bottom boards. There was a significant difference in mite counts between the two. There are many pros and cons between solid bottom boards verses screen bottom boards. Just do your research and decide which way you want to try.
Our Nucs
In the Spring our hives will be just bursting at the seams with bees. As a producer you try to carry your hive right to the point of swarming (sometimes to the edge of swarming) before you make the split. This insures both the split and the hive are at maximum population so both will have the best shot at survival.
We get a lot of questions like which is best, a package of bees or a nucleus hive? A lot has to do with the situation but for a beginner who especially wants that extra jump a nuc would be your best bet. Why? A nuc is an established hive. It has 5 frames of comb, all the bees native to it and the Mother Queen of that hive. We have had customers purchase nucs in the spring and pull a honey crop that year. This is not always the case and maybe not even a good idea to pull honey the first year but it certainly can happen. How many nucs should I buy? We recommend you start with at least two. That gives you another hive to compare to. Gives you a better idea if something may be wrong with one. The most important is resources! If one hive goes queenless and is unsuccessful in raising another, you can pull frames (eggs, brood, larvae) from the other hive to keep them strong until they can raise another Queen.
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OUR HIVES
At T & A Bee Farm we strive to provide the best quality Honey Bees possible. We started out buying Queens from various locations through out the United States to obtain the quality bee we were looking for. We currently run over 100 hives in North Alabama with plans to expand every year.
