Land Partnerships
We partner with landowners in central Indiana who have land suitable for apiaries and/or sugarbushes.
In partnering, we gain additional sites to keep bees and tap trees, to make our wonderful honey and maple. Partners participate for varying reasons, depending on their individual goals. And we build relationships with landowners towards our long term goal of helping preserve increasingly more native areas for future generations through producing our alternative agricultural goods.
Most partners are passionate about participating in helping environmentally minded businesses succeed, promote the keeping of bees, and producing useful value for society off their native lands. Landowners also benefit from free product. And some enjoy hanging out with us as we manage the bees and produce syrup. It all depends on the landowner.
The three most important factors in our choosing landowners are 1) the right kind of people, 2) suitable property, and 3) the closer the better to our Kempton, Indiana headquarters.
Apiary Partnerships
For apiaries, we generally prefer sites within a 30 minute drive of Kempton, Indiana. We prefer rural sites of 5 or more acres, with a good place to site the bees away from primary human activity, with good vehicle access to the apiary.
However, depending on the terrain, adjacent land use, and distance, we do sometimes use sites that are smaller and/or suburban.
Typically we place 10 to 20 hives, in an area roughly the size of a large house.
If you’re interested in talking with us about having an apiary on your property, email us or give us a call, and we will arrange to visit your site to talk about the possibilities.
Sugarbush Partnerships
For sugarbushes, we generally prefer sites within a 10 minute drive of our facility just north of Kempton, Indiana. We prefer woodlands of 10 acres or more, the larger the better. Maple density is a critical factor. The more large hard maples the better, but we do tap soft maples. Seasonal wetland woods is not a problem; in fact many of them have high tap counts of soft maples, and we will tap them. Access to power and water is nice, but not necessary. Typically, we are looking for woods with a minimum of 500 taps or more.
Because maple harvest is from trees throughout a woods, and we use modern tubing systems, sugarbushes have a network of thin tubes strung through the trees year round. And we need a small area with adjacent vehicle access, to site a tank or two, and a vacuum pump, but this doesn’t take more than about the area of a large shed. Tubing is compatible with typical woodland activities including hunting, hiking, and cutting firewood. If your woods has vehicular roads where obstruction is a concern, we can use a variety of techniques to provide seasonal passage (e.g. quick disconnects) or all year passage (e.g. going under the trail).
If you’re interested in talking with us about having a sugarbush on your property, email us or give us a call, and we will arrange to visit your site to talk about the possibilities.