Experience something unique at St. Peter's church coffee hours - alongside the customary coffee and donuts, we offer honey! Produced right here at the church since 2015, our honey is a testament to our commitment to nurture and care for creation.
Inspired by our former bishop, Cate Waynick, we ventured into the fascinating world of beekeeping and set up an apiary, now home to three buzzing hives, aptly named Jennifer, Cate, and Rebekah. These names aren't arbitrary - Jennifer and Cate are a nod to our first two female bishops: Cate Waynick and Jennifer Baskerville-Burrows, while Rebekah commends brave and influential Biblical women, in this case, Isaac’s strong-willed wife.
If you want to check in on how our hives are doing, click HERE
An integral part of our mission with the apiary is to offer enriching educational opportunities. Our summer camp sees children interacting with and learning about these paramount pollinators. Our honeybees' hard work culminates into delicious, fresh honey. We offer a select number of honey jars for sale within our community, with all proceeds benefiting our church farm. Get in touch with us to secure your own jar of sweet, locally-produced honey.
Apiary Tours are scheduled on the last Saturday (May through October) of each month from 10am - 2pm. If you have a large group (more than 6 people) please contact the church at 765.482.2322 for availability of space.
Our honeybees stay hard at work!
TEACHING HIVES
Our apiary is a teaching apiary and we regularly invite groups to St. Peter's to see the bees at work. We have built a corral around the hives at a height of 6 feet which allows you to walk up to the hives and look at the bees. The bees have a natural instinct to fly out of the hive, straight up and over the fence and will maintain a flight height of at least 6 feet until they reach their food source.
We have fifteen suits and hoods for those wishing to wear some protection while touring the hives or if they want to go inside the corral. Tours can be scheduled for schools, 4-H groups, scout groups, or adults interested in learning more about beekeeping. Please contact the parish office at 765.482.2322 for more information.
Our Senior Beekeeper, Chuck Dailey, also is the Education Chair for the Indiana Beekeepers Association and regularly gives talks across the state on beekeeping. For the last two years, St. Peter's has presented talks at the Indiana State Fair.
HISTORY
In 2014, three members of St. Peter's, Chuck and Sandy Dailey along with Gary Sanders, inspired by then-Bishop Catherine Waynick, began exploring the idea of raising honeybees on the property here at St. Peter's. Numerous hours of reading and learning about what it would take to raise honeybees ensued and a corral was built in the fall of 2014.
In the spring of 2015, the supers were constructed and the three new beekeepers attended classes offered by the Indiana Beekeepers Association to prepare for this new endeavor. In mid-March 2015, the supers were sent to our bee breeder who returned them in early June 2015.
In 2016, the corral surrounding the hives was increased to a 10’ x 20’ space and four new hives were added. We also planted 70 pounds of Ladino, White Dutch and Crimson clover in the fields to provide nectar for the bees.
In 2017, our apiary became fully instrumented and temperature, humidity and weight sensors were added to help us understand what is going on in the hives at a given time. The addition of a cell tower in the corral allows real-time monitoring of the hives from any device. Click here to see the latest data. Our honey harvest netted around 150 pounds. Proceeds helped to fund our continued apiary research and teaching projects.
After a particularly devastating winter that was extremely cold and longer than normal, 2018 did not start out as a promising year for the apiary. We were down to 2 functioning (not healthy) hives and had plans to purchase four nucs from our commercial beekeeper. We were also gifted a hive from a local beekeeper who was needing to step back a bit from the hobby.
Our hives are named after Biblical women and the “Martha” hive proved to be super-strong and reached a peak weight of over 400 pounds in mid-summer. Labor Day weekend saw about 119 pounds of honey being taken from the Martha hive. Varroa mite tests were done and treatments applied in late October 2018 , which helped the hive winter well. By checking the hive data we can help ensure the brood box temperature stays 92-97F which is optimal for the queen.
2019 promises new additions and learning about the role of the honeybee in our daily lives.
The Hives
While both hives thrived this year and each carried over 100 pounds of honey into the late fall, the true measure of our success will come early this spring; overwintering honey bees in this climate is a tremendous challenge, and many local hives will not survive the winter. To help their odds, all excess honey stores over 80 pounds were removed and will be returned to them for early spring food resources.
Number of hives: 7 (as of 6-9-19)