MORAL BEES
Moral Bees
High Elevation Microbreeder
Moral Bees’ mission is to improve honeybee health and the overall success of local and northern beekeepers. By maintaining our most hygienic queens at higher elevations we can help reduce beekeepers dependence on chemicals and overall losses. Locally available queens also reduces shipping stress resulting in longer lived more productive queens.
About Me
Hi. I'm Michelle.
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I've been keeping bees on our family farm since 2014. My apiaries are located in the Appalachian Mountains of Western North Carolina above 2,700'. I have a son, husband and mom who I love more than bees and wouldn't have the opportunity to do this without their love and support.
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The first few years were hit and miss. I became very skilled at climbing trees to bring down swarms. Subsequently I became proficient at setting bait hives. I use bait hives to catch my own swarms as well as collect local survivor stock in the area.
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A few years in I was very fortunate to be taken under the wing of Leigh Knott (5 Apple Farm & Podcast). She's been an amazing mentor, sharing knowledge, information and BEES. She's been a huge motivating factor introducing ideas to me bit by bit as I grew enabling me to get better faster and do things I never imagined I could do. Every beek needs bee friends. Our friends, families and partners can only take so much bee talk!
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Early 2020 I was fortunate to be able to apprentice under Sam Comfort of Anarchy Apiaries for a couple weeks. Sam is one of today's most innovative beekeepers and breeders. His design, the "Comfort Hive" or "box hive" as he calls it is the simplest, cheapest method of keeping bees to date, bringing beekeeping back to the average person. Sam has also created a system of queen breeding that can be repeated on a weekly (7 day) schedule so he knows what he's doing every day of the year. Now as part a network of queen breeding friends I am starting my third year of producing queens on a weekly basis.
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I'm a Mountain Region Director for the North Carolina Beekeepers Association where I have completed the Certified and Journeyman Levels of certification. I have passed my Master Beekeeper exam and am working toward my community service credits to complete the certification. Toe Cane Beekeepers are my home club where I have finally fulfilled my dream of being a librarian. I purchase and suggest new titles and get to hold ALL the books. :-D
Currently I am forever growing Moral Bees both in numbers and sales. I overwinter outdoors experimenting with very small unconventional setups. I use these for late season queens to sell and use the following spring so I can have my local high elevation Appalachian and VSH queens available alongside the same timeline as southern breeders.
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