We operate a very small farm located in the Georgia piedmont. In addition to bees and beehive products we also grow a few crops and sell any excess at local farmer's markets. We do not use any synthetically produced compounds either on our gardens or in our bee hives. 

Booger Hill is an area that overlooks the South Fork Broad River. It has many of the qualities that we consider representative of our countryside. The areas where our bees forage encompass a watershed that feeds the Broad and Oconee rivers. This basin contains rolling and steep hillsides, wetlands as well as river bottoms. Here is an enormous range of native trees, shrubs and other flowering plants. The diversity of blossoms provides a rich stream of nectar and pollens throughout the spring and fall.

We also like to believe that the name Booger Hill is symbolic of the nature of our business. Booger Hill  is a community of 'old fashioned', honest, hardworking farming families. It is a place rich in history and, of course, there is the legend.

 We maintain a number of small bee outyards. In addition to Booger Hill, these outyards are located in places with names like Furnace Creek, Roger's Mill, Wolf's Branch and Mill Shoals. We limit their size to10 hives and many have 5 or less. It is our belief that foraging competition between honey bee colonies as well as with native pollinators should be maintained at levels that encourage a thriving community of each.  

While we enjoy relatively mild winters, we get enough cold to keep many pest populations below damaging levels. At the same time our bees, typically, have a number of days each winter month that they are able to leave the hive for 'cleansing' flights. The occurrence of overwintering diseases is negligible. 

The biggest threat to our bees is the Varroa destructor, a small mite that has devastated much of the honey bee population world-wide. We use selected queen bees that have demonstrated levels of tolerance to this mite. Our hives are equipped with screened bottom boards that have been proven to reduce the parasite load on the colonies. Finally, we periodically check the mite populations in each of our hives. On those occasions that a colony requires treatment we use the naturally occurring compounds thymol and sucrose octanoate. Thymol  is an extract from the herb thyme and sucrose octanoate is a plant produced sugar when mixed with water  acts as an insecticidal soap. These compounds are effective. Unfortunately they are also labor intensive, which is why few commercial beekeepers use them.

We are committed to teaching interested people the fundamentals of beekeeping. As V. destructor has become resistant to conventional pesticides, the commercial beekeeping industry has focused on breeding mite resistant bees. This intense selection process will, in our opinion, result in reduced genetic diversity in a large portion of the honey bee population. As with many heirloom plants, without the small backyard enthusiast many heritable traits may be lost.  These could be qualities that are underappreciated in today's narrowly focused breeding programs. The Beekeeping for Beginners series is one avenue we've chosen to help beekeeping newcomers become successful beekeepers.