Our Bees
OUR BELOVED BEES
We call them our bees, but in reality they no more belong to us than they do to the entire planet. We are their caretakers and yet they need us far less than we need them. Tierra Mia Organics bees are making the honey and beeswax that is essential to our natural skin care products. Honey is highly potent, and raw honey has been used to heal wounds and burns for centuries. It's filled with skin-saving anti-oxidants and is also great for hydrating the scalp and addressing dandruff. The honey and beeswax added into our products is always raw, meaning it's unprocessed, and never pasteurized. This ensures its amazing properties are packed into all our Tierra Mia Organics goods.
WHO LOVES OUR BEES
Well, we love our bees, but our bees are also loved by the local farmers whose land became their residence. All farmers like bees, but especially farmers who practice organic farming, because without bees much of pollination would not take place and many foods would not be able to grow.
Our hives are kept on pesticide-free organic farms. This is crucial as the health of the hive depends greatly on the environment surrounding them. While there is some debate about colony collapse, many accept that the use of harmful pesticides is the cause of the declining bee population.
HOW WE SOURCE OUR BEES
We rescue bees! Tierra Mia Organics retrieves hives from where they are unwanted, to spaces where they are much needed and welcomed. Bees don't ask if they can move into a place, they simply descend upon it. Sometimes the place they choose isn't ideal for a variety of reasons. Thankfully, people call us when a hive shows up at their house, place of business, or on their property, and then we give those bees a proper home.
We carefully remove the hive and relocate it to a farm. From there, we care for, cultivate, and harvest the honey, never taking more honey than their community needs to thrive. We aren't in the business of bees. We don't resell the honey and we only have a few hives at a time to sustain our needs.
WHAT IS BIODYNAMIC BEEKEEPING?
Not unlike organic farming, biodynamic beekeeping is a practice of keeping bees in a standard that is more natural to their species. Some of these standards include:
- No pesticides or antibiotics are allowed on or near the bees
- Bees are kept in natural materials, such as wood, straw, or clay
- Systematic queen replacement and clipping of queens wings is prohibited
Providing a safe home and the least invasive practices is to us, the only way to treat bees.
A very important part of biodynamic beekeeping is never taking more from bees than the the hive can sustain. Taking honey from a hive means that the bees have to go collect more pollen to make more honey, their food. Honey bees stay in their hives during winter when there are no plants or flowers in bloom to pollinate. If too much honey is removed from the hive, the bees won't be able to make up for it in time for winter, and they won't have enough food to survive the winter months. We only harvest honey in the spring, this way we know we are only taking the surplus at the beginning of their new pollinating season, and we practice the least invasive techniques. We do not wish to kill or harm bees. At this time we do not sell honey to the public, but you can contact us about purchasing honey from our fellow friend beekeepers who do.
Watch our BEE ROLL to learn a bit more about bees.
Want to learn more about how you can help the honey bee?
THE MIGHTY HONEY BEE NEEDS YOUR HELP
Bees are essential to healthy ecosystems and to our food supply at large. Estimates suggest that bees alone pollinate a third of the United States’ food supply, but bees are in real danger. Unfortunately, bees have been dying off at unprecedented rates over the past decade.
The bee die-off threatens nearly 100 commercial crops.
