Behind the Scenes at Brittany’s Bees: A Small Farm Grants Story

Farming is an exercise in patience. On average, it takes three years for a new fruit tree to bear fruit. Even fast-growing vegetables, like spinach and radishes, typically need at least 25-30 days to mature before harvest. As I read the mid-year updates we just received from The FruitGuys Community Fund’s grantee farmers, their patience really stood out to me.

TFGCF’s Small Farm Grants

The FruitGuys Community Fund (TFGCF) awards grants to small farms for sustainability projects every spring. This year, we gave grants to 20 farmers. Their projects can have different timelines, but we ask that they all share progress reports with us in August. Now, those midyear updates are in!

As I read through the updates I was struck by how many farms (at least four of the twenty) are dealing with drought and/or extreme weather this season. Other farms, like Dear Native Grapes in Walton, New York, had to modify their projects due to obstacles along the way. There, the farmers completely changed how they were installing their deer fence due to the rockiness of their soil.

Farmers are constantly adapting to changing conditions in their ecosystems, and sometimes responding to those changes takes patience. That really stood out to me in the update from Brittany’s Bees in Mitchell, Oregon.

Behind the Scenes at Brittany’s Bees

I was first drawn to Brittany’s Bees during the grant application review process because of this picture.

I mean, talk about being brave and knowing your craft! Letting bees surround you like that is not for the faint of heart. In the spring, TFGCF gave Brittany a $4,800 grant to work on making her bees more resistant to Varroa mites. She used some of that money to buy 155 Varroa mite-resistant queen bees.

When the grantee updates came in, I was excited to see if the queens had an impact on the health of Brittany’s bees. But alas, we have to wait! Brittany won’t know how many mites are bothering her bees until she “does a sugar shake” in a few weeks. And she won’t know how much the new queens reduce her bee loss until next spring. You can read the full update we received from Brittany here.

Curious about what a “sugar shake” is? So was I. Apparently, it involves capturing bees in a jar and sprinkling them with powdered sugar. The sugar makes it impossible for the mites to stick to the bees—so they fall off. Then, the beekeeper can count the number of mites they’re dealing with and decide if any treatments are needed.

I’ve never seen a sugar shake, but years ago, The FruitGuys had our own beehives at our office/warehouse in South San Francisco. We weren’t professionals like Brittany. So, we asked beekeepers to help us tend the hives. We didn’t get much honey, but the liquid gold we gleaned had a slight licorice aftertaste. Eventually, we realized its unique flavor came from the wild fennel growing in our immediate area. It’s fascinating how the bees’ diets can impact the taste of the honey—ah, Mother Nature!

See the Grantees’ Project Progress

We are extremely grateful to our grantees for updating us on how their projects are progressing. It’s exciting to see the progress they’ve made with the funds from their small farm grants and enlightening to hear how they’ve adapted. You can read more updates from Brittany’s Bees and the rest of our 2024 grantees in this TFGCF blog.