Whether you are curious about beekeeping or looking for specific information we are happy to help. Please browse our site to learn more about beekeeping in Lancaster County.

Our Mission
The objectives  of the Lancaster County Beekeepers Society are to gain a better  understanding of honeybee biology and behavior, provide public awareness  and services, and to promote honey and other products of the  hive.

March 1876
May 1876
September 1876
November 1876
May 1877
October 1877
May 1878
August 1878
November 1878
March 1879
June 1879
August 1879
November 1879
May 1880
August 1880
March 1881

Our annual dues are $10 to cover meeting and communication costs.

You may attend our meetings free of charge. Please contact an officer below for more information.

It has been 135 years since that first meeting of the Lancaster County Beekeepers Society.  When reading those accounts in The Lancaster Farmer (posted in our History) you realize how little beekeeping has changed since 1876. Today’s Beekeepers are still trying to decide which bees are the best for honey production, winter survival, temperament and resistance to pests and disease.

One thing the founders of our organization were doing that I believe we must bring back is producing our own queens. If not just for the pure joy of raising some of your own queens, making splits and watching them grow into a full honey producing hive, than at least for the savings in your wallet. One queen shipped from Georgia will cost $40; a split or 4 frame Nuc will be $75 and up. The skills are simple; the payback in knowledge and experience, working with your bees, is priceless.

Bees and beekeeping has experienced a real surge in interest in the past few years. Our group has grown, with many new beekeepers getting their first hives and experiencing the joys and challenges of maintaining bee hives. Keeping bees is an ongoing learning process that I do not believe ever ends. Our club has a mix of beekeepers. We have the beginner waiting for their first package of bees to arrive and settle into that new, freshly painted hive. We also have the commercial beekeeper, moving hundreds of hives by truck for pollination services and everything in between. There is a Great pool of knowledge in the Lancaster County Honey Producers members just waiting to be tapped.

Check out our latest newsletter for meeting dates, locations and agendas.

Thanks for your interest in Honeybees,
Jim Pinkerton

John Harbison, originally from Pennsylvania, successfully brought bee keeping to the US west coast in the 1860s, in an area now known as Harbison Canyon, California, and greatly expanded the market for honey throughout the country.

Beekeeping was traditionally practiced for the bees’ honey harvest, although nowadays crop pollination service can often provide a greater part of a commercial beekeeper’s income. Other hive products are pollen, royal jelly, and propolis, which are also used for nutritional and medicinal purposes, and beeswax, which is used in candle making, cosmetics, wood polish, and for modelling. The modern use of hive products has changed little since ancient times.

Western honey bees are not native to the Americas. American, Australian, and New Zealand colonists imported honey bees from Europe, partly for honey and partly for their usefulness as pollinators. The first honey bee species imported were likely European dark bees. Later Italian bees, Carniolan honey bees and Caucasian bees were added.

Western honey bees were also brought to the Primorsky Krai in Russia by Ukrainian settlers around 1850s. These Russian honey bees that are similar to the Carniolan bee were imported into the U.S. in 1990. The Russian honey bee has shown to be more resistant to the bee parasites Varroa destructor and Acarapis woodi.

Before the 1980s, most U.S. hobby beekeepers were farmers or relatives of a farmer, lived in rural areas, and kept bees with techniques passed down for generations. The arrival of tracheal mites in the 1980s and varroa mites and small hive beetles in the 1990s led to the discontinuation of the practice by most of these beekeepers as their bees could not survive among these new parasites.

In Asia, other species of Apis exist which are used by local beekeepers for honey and beeswax. Non-Apis species of honey bees, known collectively as melipolines or stingless bees, have also been kept from antiquity in Australia and Central America, although these traditions are dying, and some of the meliponine species used are endangered.