Award-winning
Certified Naturally Grown
Raw Honey
Our bees visit a variety of wildflowers native to the lower Connecticut River Valley such as dandelion, purple loosestrife, asters, clover, and goldenrod, along with flowering trees including maples, willows, sumac, tulip poplar, and locust, to create a wonderfully unique, light honey with an exquisite taste.
And best of all, our raw wildflower honey is made using organic management methods. That means we use no chemical pesticides to treat our hives, and our apiaries are located away from commercial farms and industrial sites to minimize pesticide residues. It takes more work to keep our hives healthy, but we believe it's better for our bees, environment--and you! Why's our honey SO GOOD? It's the combination of our area's floral sources. While we have no control over where our bees forage we can say that here in southeastern Connecticut there are no large-scale agricultural or industrial sites that could contaminate nectar and pollen collection. Our honey is harvested throughout the growing season, giving it a varietal character all its own: Our first harvest occurs in late June/early July and is very delicate in flavor--and very white to almost clear, thanks to the abundance of such sources as black locust and clover. We get a second crop with the addition of summer and nectars, including wild raspberry, golden rod, japanese knotweed, and aster and has a darker and bolder flavor.
We are members of Connecticut Northeast Organic Farmers Association (CT-NOFA) and have signed the FARMERS PLEDGE to follow organic principles. Our honey is CERTIFIED NATURALLY GROWN. This program "maintains a more strict adherence to the original ideals and principles of organic agriculture even as USDA Organic comes under constant pressure to water down standards to accomodate large agribusiness corporations." To learn more about our organic methods click here.
Sometimes referred to as the Bordeau of Honeys, Three Sisters Farms honey is excellent in your favorite tea, drizzled on warm buttered toast or, better yet, eaten alone by the teaspoonful!
If you've tried our honey you know it's delicious. Never heat treated, always in demand. We try and reserve stocks for our best customers--will you be one, too?
Three Sisters Farms local honey production
8 oz. jar -- $6.50
12 oz. -- $9.00
1 lb. jar -- $12.00
2010 Crop still Available. Delicious!!
Order Honey
The hive is also reconfigured to enhance the powdered sugar method (also known as the "DOWDA Method", after the Florida Apiary inspector who initially devised the idea). The traditional wood bottom board of the hive is replaced with a screened bottom board. The construction mesh screen allows the mites to fall through and away from the bees, making it much harder for the mites to return to their hosts. These boards cost about twice as much as a traditional bottom board but should prove their value over time in reducing the mite pressure on the bees. Removal and freezing of drone brood is another method that successfully reduces the level of varroa, as the mites prefer to lay eggs in drone comb.
We have nearly completed conversion of all our honeycomb and foundation to natural beeswax in order to meet National Organic Standards that are currently under development. "Foundation" is the base upon which bees build up or "draw out" honeycomb. Bees build honeycomb using wax they produce from glands behind their wings. It takes about seventeen times as much honey to build the honeycomb as it does to fill, so you can see that honeycomb is quite valuable to the bee and the beekeeper. As a result, we do not produce 'comb honey' for sale. We've now replaced 95% of our foundations with natural beeswax. To assist the bees, the beekeeper can feed the bees sugar syrup which is consumed by the bees like nectar, their traditional carbohydrate source.
Fighting Varroa, the parasitic mites that have decimated the beekeeping industry, is a challenge. We're introducing varroa resistant queens into our hives that produce workers with enhanced hygenic traits for removing the mites from larvae and capped brood. Just one more tool we use to improve the survivablity of our hives.