Harvest Honey, inc.
North Dakota has Never been Sweeter
A Brief History of Harvest Honey
Started in 1993, Harvest Honey is the big sister in our family of operations. It began with a move by our founders, Randy Verhoek & Roberta Verhoek, from South Dakota to Kansas to purchase 500 hives from Roberta’s grandfather and begin an apprenticeship with him. As the business grew, they took an opportunity to buy a beekeeping operation from a retiring beekeeper based out of Bismarck, North Dakota.
In the years since, we have heeded her grandfather’s advice: Take care of the bees and they will take care of you.
This advice has been our guide as the business has grown to include the formation of a sister company, integriBees, and between the two we operate 5,000-10,000 colonies annually. Each year our focus is to raise and maintain quality hives that help sweeten the world around us.
Burleigh county has been home to Harvest Honey for over 20 years. We love the community and are proud to support it through sponsoring local events and school activities. Additionally, we have partnered with the Dakota Zoo by donating an observation hive to facilitate raising awareness of honeybees and their importance to our eco-system.
Home in North Dakota
Our bees typically begin arriving in North Dakota at the end of May, just in time to begin enjoying the bloom of wildflowers, especially sweet clover, along with managed fields such as canola and alfalfa.
Throughout the summer, we ensure our hives are monitored for health and availability of honey and pollen. Then after our bees have worked hard throughout the honey season, we remove any excess honey stores and begin extracting the fresh, sweet honey crop and preparing our bees for fall by providing additional pollen and medicinal treatments to ensure they are up to optimum health for winter.
Once October arrives, we prepare our hives for wintering in an indoor temperature controlled facilities that allow our bees to “hibernate” much like bees in the wild used to. This allows our queens an opportunity to rest from laying eggs which in turn gives the hives time to be broodless which can help combat the varroa mite, and provides our team much needed time to rest from the busy season before heading into almond pollination.
For a complete year in the life of our happy, healthy bees see under the Our Story tab “What We Do.”
Home Sweet Home
If you are interested in providing a temporary “home” to our bees during their stay in North Dakota, please contact us at bees@harvesthoneyinc.com
Below you will see where the Harvest Honey corporate headquarter’s is located as well as the current counties our happy bees reside while in North Dakota.
