Welcome to the Warm Colors Apiary website. WCA produces and sells honey, pure beeswax candles, and products using honey and beeswax. We provide pollination services to local orchards and farms. Beekeepers can purchase queens and honeybees, equipment and bee supplies, and attend workshops in Warm Colors bee yards. In other words, most activities involving honeybees happen at our apiary.
Warm Colors Apiary was founded in 2000 to produce regional honey in western Massachusetts. Located on eighty acres of woodland, open fields, and wetlands, the land provides a variety and abundance of nectar & pollen plants that bloom from early spring to late fall. Having a location with flowering plants blooming successively throughout the warm months makes our apiary ideal for honey production and the raising of honeybees.
Our mission is to develop, test and use beekeeping methods that improve the health of the honeybee. Through selective breeding, we endeavor to manage a sustainable apiary system that minimizes the use of harmful chemicals and employ the natural defenses and heritable behaviors shown to improve the honeybees mite tolerance and resistance to disease.
Our goals include raising honeybees capable of surviving the rigors of a New England winter and having the individual & social immunities to withstand the stresses associated with honeybee decline. Our work focuses on using the best available breeding stock, providing natural sources of forage and nutrition, and the early detection and prevention of disease and pests. Proactive management that reduces stress and the resulting problems, before they become too serious to correct, is our long-range goal.
Seasonal Information for 2018
Package bee pickup is scheduled for Saturday & Sunday, April 28 & 29. Please call in advance to confirm we have returned with the bees.
We will begin handing out Nucs the first week of May. You will be contacted when your Nuc is ready. Please do not come for your Nuc until you have confirmed it is ready for pickup. Pickups are by appointment.
The schedule may change. Updates will be posted on this website.
Sorry, we have sold out of package bees and Russian Nucs. We are no longer taking orders for 2018. Queens will be available in May.
We recommend you contact Dick Connor – Red Barn Honey to order package bees. Go to his website: www.rbhoney.com or email dick@rbhoney.com for ordering information. Dick is taking over the sale of Russian hybrid and Italian package bees for Warm Colors Apiary. We strongly recommend Dick and are confident that he will transport bees safely and distribute healthy packages.
“Beginning in Beekeeping” enrollment now open. Register online, at the South Deerfield apiary, or by mail. – see WORKSHOPS
“Queen Rearing for Small Apiaries” Dr. Lawrence Connor is returning to present his three-day queen workshop. Learn from an expert the art of raising queens. – see WORKSHOPS
Warm Colors Apiary, South Deerfield, Massachusetts.
For the Beekeepers
Warm Colors stocks beekeeping equipment for pickup at our South Deerfield store. We are distributors for Brushy Mountain Bee Farm, Mann Lake Inc. and Starhart Hollow woodenware and bee supplies. This allows us to mix the best products from each manufacturer, giving beekeepers more choice and lower prices.
WCA continues to offer many workshops and classes that provide training and education to beekeepers at all levels of experience. We have hosted many nationally known instructors combining lectures with hands-on, how to lessons. See the Workshop page for this season’s programs.
Knowledge + Management = healthy bees.