My Trip to Arizona

I spent two weeks from September 1 to September 15, 2013, visiting the largest commercial organic beekeeper in the United States, southwest of Tucson, Arizona, near the Mexico border, and received intensive hands-on training and field experience in all aspects of beekeeping, honey production, and marketing without the use of any chemicals, pesticides, antibiotics or artificial products being used to treat or feed the bees.

Arizona Rangeland Honey is a 100% agricultural entity owned and operated by Delores A. Lusby. I learned how such an operation can be successfully carried out in a self-sustaining fashion even while surrounding or neighboring conventional beekeeping businesses are failing and losing their bees to colony collapse disorder while treating them with chemicals and exposing them to pesticides. Arizona Rangeland Honey bees are surviving and thriving without these treatments, managed in a traditional way on small cell foundation and combs which allows the bees to naturally overcome the pests, parasites, and diseases to which larger conventionally kept bees are susceptible.

I experienced working with the largest beehives and the largest and most productive populations of bees that I have ever seen, giving me the confidence that anyone who follows the methods that this beekeeper uses can also keep bees successfully even under harsh and difficult conditions. I also learned field management techniques related to the climate, weather, and environment that allow the bees to maintain themselves and also produce a surplus crop of honey that can be harvested by the beekeeper in good years, besides much more valuable information. I learned from first-hand experience the level of work and dedication that is required to be successful in this agricultural enterprise as well as its importance to the environment and to provide food for the human population.

This entry was posted in Uncategorized. Bookmark the permalink.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

*

You may use these HTML tags and attributes: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <strike> <strong>