Connecting people to pollinators
Part of our mission is to educate the next generation of beekeepers. Join us today to support them!
Adopt-A-Hive
Most people agree that our pollinator populations are in decline.
Bee Huggah invites you, your organization, or your municipality to become part of the solution.
Our Adopt-A-Hive program is an opportunity to join us in creating a dynamic, passionate community of local Bee Huggahs. Our goal is to partner with you, sharing fifty years of experience, and uniquely crafted products and services designed to give pollinators a place to live and thrive.
Adopt-A-Hive includes
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A six month mentorship with Andrew MacDonald, a lifetime beekeeper
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Hand crafted Bee-Osk (arbor)
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Live bees and equipment, including protective gear
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Local honeybee byproducts, including honey
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A custom sign for your organization proudly displaying your partnership with Bee Huggah
Here at Bee Huggah,
our goal is to connect people to pollinators!
Please join us !!!
Our story
To Andrew MacDonald and his family, honey bees are an ever present reminder of how people are to live in community with one another. Andrew was literally born into beekeeping on a honey bee farm in upstate New York. It was there that Andrew learned the value of being a part of something much bigger than himself. At five years old, he received his first bee hive as a birthday gift from his parents. This was the beginning of a life long relationship with bees. Working alongside his parents and three siblings, Andrew helped MacDonald’s honey become one of the largest honey producers in the state of New York during the late 70’s. Andrew observed how these fascinating creatures banded together for the good of the community, (hive), in which they lived. Very much like a hive, the MacDonald family worked closely as a unit to keep MacDonald’s honey flowing from farm to table across the Northeast.
When Andrew left the bee farm in his early twenties, he took with him, years of valuable experience with colonized insects. These experiences led him to start a business managing and controlling colonized structural pests. Throughout his 30 years of operating his own business, he still maintained a strong relationship with bees by returning to the bee farm again and again to work with them. Much of this work involved loading and transporting the bees to Florida to help pollinate the orange crop.
It was on one of these trips to Florida in 2018 that Andrew had an experience that would lead him to change his thinking about the future of bees and his own role in securing the health for the future of all pollinators. During that trip he noticed a radical decline in the overall health of the honey bees. They looked nothing like the healthy strong hives he remembered from years before. This affected Andrew deeply.
He began to dream of ways to help others understand these fascinating creatures and ways to help pollinators thrive. It was at that point that Andrew made a decision to find a way to bring his expertise and experiences to others to educate and encourage our local community to help secure the future of our pollinators.
Working closely with his wife, Heather, and their two children, his dream took shape and Bee Huggah was born in the Spring of 2019.
Bee Huggah’s programs and services are uniquely designed to grow and strengthen a relationship between people and pollinators. Here at Bee Huggah, our goal is to “connect people to pollinators!”
Please join us!!!