Bob's Bees

"Bob's Bees; The honey that's got the Hudson Valley Buzzin!"
My Apiary outside of Port Jervis, NY offers Unfiltered, Unheated, Raw, Unadulterated, Liquid, Creamed and Chunk Honey. Bob’s Bees Honey: The Journey from Backyard to Business

Bob’s Bees Honey started as a small-time backyard project in Goshen, NY—just five hives, a hobby, nothing too serious. Over the years, I built it up to a solid 45-

hive operation, on track to becoming fully self-sufficient. Then one summer afternoon, I looked over and saw my neighbor, mowing his lawn… with a bee veil on. No matter how many times I reassured him that the bees were too busy to care about his lawn care routine, the man just wasn’t convinced. I had officially overstayed my welcome in the village. Time for a change. That summer, I started building a new bee yard out in Greenville, near Port Jervis, NY. My son and I went full DIY mode—clearing trees, brush-hogging overgrown areas, setting up cameras, and installing an electric fence. That fall, I moved about half the colonies over, and by the next spring, all of the hives had a new home. The transition wasn’t all smooth sailing. One winter, a bear broke through the electric fence and demolished a dozen colonies—crushing hives and ripping apart frames like a buffet. Later that summer I lost 30 colonies to chemical poisoning. Even the wax moths had a feast one fall. Things have finally settled down. It’s all about maintaining the apiary, harvesting and selling honey, and slowly growing the bee population again. It’s been a wild ride, but that’s the life of a beekeeper—always adapting, always learning, and always covered in a little bit of honey.