Riverside Honey Bees

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Riverside Honey Bees

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Southern Idaho honey farm in Buhl, offering raw local honey and handmade hive-inspired goods.

Raised with care along the Snake River, our bees produce honey that reflects the land, seasons, and flowers of the Magic Valley. 🌾🍯

11/10/2026

We have a couple of smaller hives with new queens that we're hoping to give the best possible chance of making it through winter.

To help them, we modified a deep hive box with a wooden divider, creating two completely separate spaces, each with its own colony and queen. They will additionally have two separate entrances on opposite sides of the box. We'll also have a divided feeding shim in place for emergency feeding if needed.

Although the two colonies will remain completely separate, they should be able to benefit from the shared warmth between the two sides.

We are taking it a step further though by placing this divided deep on top of a strong double-deep colony, with a double-screen board separating them.
This should allow the smaller colonies to benefit from some of the heat rising from the strong colony below.

3 colonies, 3 queens all sharing one tower!

Of course, beekeeping always comes with a few surprises, and there’s no guarantee this experiment will work. But sometimes you have to try something new and see what the bees teach you!

02/10/2026

Candle season is here! And we have an assortment of pure beeswax candles at Collective Studio, Idaho Artisan Den and CloverLeaf Creamery in Twin Falls. Let me know if you have any requests! We’d love to get you the perfect candle 💛

01/10/2026

October 1st, and another new queen. If the worker bees don’t have confidence a queen will get them through the winter she will be replaced. Meet our newest apiary member. 💗

18/09/2026

Come see us today from 3-8 pm at Eastmans Park in Buhl for Hometown Harvest!

07/09/2026

Sorry we've been a little quiet lately... life has been a lot behind the scenes, and we've needed a little time to regroup. ❤️

But we're getting back into the swing of things, and we're so excited to be a part of a beautiful fall evening of shopping! ✨🍁

Come see us, along with some wonderful local vendors, at Eastman's Park in Buhl on Friday, September 18th, from 3-8 PM.

We've been working on some beautiful things for you, and we can't wait to share them with you! 🤎

We hope to see you there! 🍂

20/08/2026

Every season I spend time with the bees, they teach me something new. I’m not surprised these little insects have survived for millions of years, their determination and resilience are incredible.

A couple nights ago, I discovered a tiny swarm in my bee yard. I watched them land and went to collect them. When I found the queen, she was being aggressively balled and stung by a small group of worker bees. I broke up the ball, and the queen flew off.

About 45 minutes later, the queen returned where the little cluster had settled in the nuc box and I again saw bees trying to ball and kill her in the nuc. I caged her overnight to give everyone a chance to settle down.

Now, two days later, the story looks very different. I released the queen and the bees are feeding her, fanning around her, and showing a tremendous amount of interest in her. So far, everything looks good.

I’ve been thinking about what could have happened that first evening. One possibility is that she was a rejected or old queen and was being replaced and driven out by her colony. Some loyal bees stayed with her. But another possibility is that this was a tiny, stressed swarm that attempted to land or enter an occupied hive. The resident guard bees may have intercepted the swarm queen and attacked her, essentially driving the swarm away. Perhaps only a small group of guard bees were involved in the balling while the rest of the swarm remained nearby, eventually reorganizing in the trees. Once the threat was gone, the guard bees would have returned to their hive, while the swarm and queen continued trying to regroup.

That could explain why I saw only a small golf-ball-sized group aggressively attacking her rather than the entire cluster. It could also explain why she flew away, yet returned to the same group of bees later.

Of course, I’ll never know exactly what happened that evening. That’s part of what makes keeping bees so fascinating. There are always more questions than answers, and sometimes you get to witness a tiny piece of their incredibly complicated social world.

09/08/2026

Beautiful, quiet morning for a quick hive inspection. 🐝

This new queen emerged just 10 days ago, and today I found her looking great with her very first little set of laid eggs. It’s always exciting to see a new queen successfully return from her mating flights and begin her next generation.

31/07/2026

A new season of hand-poured beeswax candles has begun!

23/07/2026

Giving a little support to a colony thats had a tough season. The hive hasn’t had a laying queen since they swarmed on May 17, which set them back significantly by reducing the number of foragers. They finally have a new queen and the extra boost will help them get back on track. I always feed inside the hives and have great success placing feeders directly over the frames this time of year.

21/07/2026

It’s been a rough summer, so I’m celebrating the little miracles. 💗

Four weeks ago, I inspected a hive that was requeening. There was one queen cell that had been torn open on the side. The workers were probably getting ready to eliminate her. I saw movement inside, so I gently opened it the rest of the way. A pale, seemingly lifeless queen emerged. It was obvious she had come out too early.

The hive already had another virgin queen, so the workers ignored her. She fell between the frames into the bottom of the hive. I closed everything up and went inside, but I couldn’t stop thinking about that poor little queen.

So I went back out.

I found her lying on her back on the ground, weakly kicking her legs. The bees had dragged her out and evicted her. I felt awful. Instead of letting her succumb to the elements, I brought her inside. I almost ended her suffering because she looked so hopeless, but instead I placed her in a queen cage and kept her in the warmest place I could think of—my garage.

I fully expected to find her dead the next morning.

Instead, she was alive.

I made her a tiny nuc with nurse bees and some capped brood from another hive. The orginal hive didn’t have enough nurse bees or capped brood. She stayed caged for 24 hours while the bees got used to her. My first attempt at releasing her didn’t go well, she immediately tried to sting one of the workers! Back into the cage she went for a little timeout. 😅

The next day, I tried again.

This time, she was accepted.

She managed to finish maturing, mate successfully and 3 weeks later, she laid her very first eggs.

She went from a pale, lifeless queen lying on the ground after being evicted… to becoming the queen of her very own little hive. I’ve never had luck introducing a virgin queen to bees before. They typically don’t give off enough pheromones to be accepted. But these nurse bees realized she was their best shot.

Sometimes the smallest miracles are the ones that mean the most. 🐝💕

Address

83316

Telephone

+13034068557

Website

https://www.riversidehoneybees.com/

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