I think it's pretty much a guarantee that youre going to lose some colonies.

But, yeah, last several years have been more extreme than usual.

Close to 60% or even 70% of colonies that got lost.

I've been a big keeper for eight years now.

There are several important days in beekeeping calendar.

One of the important milestones we keep an eye on is when dandelions show up.

That's the first source of food for the bees after a long winter.

We basically had no winter.

The winter was very warm, very dry.

I've been keeping track when dandelions usually show up, which is mid-April.

This year they showed up in first week of March.

Once it warms up, they start flying thinking that there is food available.

There is flowers available.

We don't have anything flowering in the middle of the winter, so they expand all this energy trying to find flowers, but they get no energy back.

They're malnutritioned from not having enough nectar coming in.

They also start becoming disease susceptible as well.

Yeah.

Let's... let's see if there is any honey coming in.

A few of those cells have like a shiny liquid inside of them.

That's a nectar that they're bringing in.

We're starting to see it.

There is not a lot, but I'm seeing several cells which have nectar inside of them.

Bees get honey from nectar.

In order for plants to produce nectar, they need moisture.

We have a huge linden tree right behind us, so that one tree alone can actually produce about 60 pounds of honey in a season.

Linden start blooming usually around mid-June, and they bloom for around two weeks.

The entire tree gets covered in white flowers and that tree is just buzzing.

In our area last year, the lindens only bloomed for about three days, and that that severely impacted honey production.

Down south in places like Castle Rock, there is not as much variety.

We have more than twice as many hives in Castle Rock as we do have over here, and consistently — last year, for example — we produced more honey at this location than the other location.

So there's just not a nice moisture, not enough flowers to produce abundant amounts of honey.

Our honey is raw, unfiltered, unprocessed.

My wife has been running with the business side of it, but we sell pints for $25... we sell quarts for $40.

If somehow we're not going to get any rain in, you know, in May and June, that's going to just... that's going to be devastating.

I think I read somewhere — about a third of every bite we take has been pollinated by honeybees.

Theyre extremely important.