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Celebrate National Honeybee Day with Gwenyn Hill Farm

By Linda Halley | This coming weekend we are going to celebrate National Honeybee Day with an Open House featuring lectures, lessons and sweet fun, courtesy of beekeeper extraordinaire, Quentin Stedman. He has eight hives here at Gwenyn Hill Farm, most of them high up on Honeybee Hill, the hill above the dairy barn. He recently harvested the first 40 pounds from those hives and he will be giving us, and all our visitors, our first taste this Saturday.

Quentin Stedman, Gwenyn Hill’s beekeeper.

The schedule of events is as follows:

11 am: Welcome to Honeybee Day
11:30 am Observation Hive Experience
12:30 pm Honeybees 101
1 pm: Hands-On Honey Extraction
2:30 pm: Honey Tasting


We have gotten a lot of interest in this weekend’s event and I suspect we will have tons of visitors. After all, Honeybees are a THING now.  They’re a trend. There are urban bees, rooftop bees, backyard bees, bee associations, bee advocates and even Bee Cities (our own Hales Corners and Mequon are two!)

So, maybe bees get all the recognition for being the important pollinators they are, with a side benefit of producing the world’s most sustainable sweetener, but I’ve been enjoying encounters with other pollinators in our garden even more. A few weeks ago we posted a video of the amazing hummingbird moth. They visited the ageratum in “flocks,” it seemed. And, no matter how early I get out to the vegetable garden, the hard working bumblebees are already there, diving deep into the squash blossoms.

This past week, during our field walk, Laurel and I were surrounded by lovely blue butterflies. I captured a photo and looked it up. Oddly, they are called Red-Spotted Purple, though they are definitely NOT purple.

I invite you to celebrate the wonderful honeybee with us this Saturday, but don’t forget to keep your eyes open for all the other important pollinators helping us grow food. In fact, check out this eye candy:

The Hidden Beauty of Pollination

It is an inspiring, short TED talk about pollinators of all persuasions with a spellbinding video at the end.

See you on Saturday!

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