Peeking Bees Apiary

Where They Rest, Life Continues...

An All Souls' Day Reflection.

As we remember our departed loved ones this All Souls' Day, we also remember the companions who shared our homes, our ordinary days, and our lives.

Some of our beloved dogs now rest here at Peeking Bees Apiary.

We chose this place for them because we wanted them to remain close to the land, surrounded by the trees, plants, flowers, and the little creatures that make this place their home. Here, they can return to nature in their own quiet way, becoming part of the soil that nourishes new life.

Perhaps, in a way, they are still keeping watch over us. No longer running around the house or waiting for us at the gate, but resting peacefully in a place they will always belong to.

An apiary is a place of work and life. Bees come and go, flowers bloom and fade, and the seasons continue their cycle. It feels right that those we loved should have a place here, too.

We may no longer hear their paws on the ground or their familiar barks, but their presence remains in the memories we carry and in the place they now call their resting ground.

May they rest peacefully, and may the land that shelters them continue to flourish.

This All Souls' Day, we remember not only those who have gone before us, but also the little lives that made our own a little fuller.

Forever part of our home. Forever part of this land.

🚨 SCAM ALERT: UNORDERED COD PARCELS

We received a parcel addressed to me, even though I never placed an order.

Since I was working, my mother assumed that I had ordered something and paid the ₱183 COD fee. We only discovered afterward that I had no corresponding order in my Shopee account.

After asking around, I also found other people reporting similar experiences.

Parcel details:

- Sender: Healthy Essentials
- Address: 6608 Eranos St., Pio del Pilar, Makati City
- Courier: J&T Express
- COD amount: ₱183

Please be careful, especially if someone else in your household receives your parcels while you're away.

Always verify your orders before paying COD. Don't assume that a parcel addressed to you means you actually ordered it.

Sharing this so others won't experience the same thing.

Rice fields used to be a common sight here in Santa Rosa, but they're gradually disappearing as the city develops. I even remember when there were fireflies here, but sadly, they're nowhere to be seen anymore.

The Queen Dilemma: More Than Just a Beekeeping Problem

Sharing this insightful post by my mentor about one of the challenges facing the growing Apis mellifera industry in the Philippines: producing enough quality queens to sustain our colonies.

Reading this made me think about something beyond the apiary itself: the connection between queen production, sustainable honey supply, and the price of honey in our market.

A healthy, properly mated queen is essential to maintaining a productive colony. Without reliable access to quality replacement queens, beekeepers may struggle to recover from colony losses, maintain strong colonies, or expand their operations.

And this matters to consumers, too.

Where does our honey come from? How reliable is our supply? And what happens when demand increases but sustainable production cannot keep up?

In the Philippines, wild honey harvesting remains an important source of honey for many communities. However, wild harvesting is seasonal, dependent on the environment, and not always a reliable or accessible option. We also need to consider the long-term sustainability of wild bee populations and their habitats.

Managed beekeeping can help contribute to a more dependable supply, but it requires more than simply distributing hives and encouraging people to become beekeepers. We need healthy colonies, suitable forage, good management practices, and a reliable supply of quality queens.

And yes, these factors can influence the economics of honey production. When supply is limited relative to demand, prices may rise. Of course, honey prices also depend on seasonality, floral sources, weather, labor, transportation, quality, and authenticity.

This is why I find the discussion about local queen production so important. Investing in the reproductive health of our colonies is also investing in the future capacity of our honey industry.

I'm glad to see discussions like this happening in Philippine beekeeping, especially with the possibility of a Queen Rearing Workshop this December.

Perhaps the future of our honey industry depends not only on how many people we can encourage to become beekeepers, but also on how well we can sustain the colonies they establish.

Because before we can talk about producing more honey, we need to talk about producing and maintaining healthy bees.

THE QUEEN DILEMMA
(A long read)
L. GTN

The growing Philippine Apis mellifera industry and the challenge of producing its next generation of queens

We are encouraging more Filipinos to become beekeepers. But are we prepared to produce the queens needed to sustain them?

Apis mellifera beekeeping presents a promising business opportunity for Philippine agriculture. Beyond honey production, it offers opportunities in pollination services, colony multiplication, queen production, and other bee-related enterprises.

Its recognition within the country's livestock sector is no longer merely informal. Republic Act No. 12308 explicitly includes bees in the definition of livestock.

The Department of Agriculture, through the National Urban and Peri-Urban Agriculture Program (NUPAP), is also promoting honey bee production in urban communities. This is an encouraging development, especially for those of us who believe that productive agriculture does not necessarily require hectares of farmland.

But as more people venture into Apis mellifera beekeeping, an important problem is becoming increasingly difficult to ignore.

Where will all the queens come from?

The Growing Demand for Viable Queens

Every productive honey bee colony depends on a healthy, properly mated queen.

As the number of beekeepers increases, so does the demand for queens and not only for establishing new colonies but also for replacing aging or failing queens, recovering from colony losses, and multiplying existing stocks.

Unfortunately, producing a queen and producing a properly mated, productive queen are two entirely different challenges.

Many Philippine beekeepers continue to rely on queen producers in upland areas, where established concentrations of Apis mellifera colonies offer more dependable access to sexually mature drones.

In contrast, lowland beekeepers are often geographically scattered. A beekeeper may maintain several colonies in one municipality, while the nearest other apiary could be several kilometers away.

This presents a problem during queen mating.

Virgin queens mate in flight, commonly in areas where drones from different colonies gather, known as Drone Congregation Areas (DCAs).

A queen normally mates with multiple drones. This is important not only for storing sufficient s***m but also for establishing genetic diversity within her future colony.

Where colonies are widely dispersed and suitable drones are scarce, successful mating becomes less predictable.

Drone congregation is not necessarily impossible in lowland areas. However, without sufficient drone-producing colonies and suitable mating conditions, the reliability of queen production becomes questionable.

The Challenges Beyond Drone Availability

Even in locations where drones are abundant, successful queen mating is never guaranteed.

One challenge is predation by bee-eating birds belonging to the family Meropidae.

These birds capture insects in flight, including honey bees. Virgin queens undertaking mating flights are particularly vulnerable. Losing a queen during these flights means losing the time, resources, and effort invested in producing her.

There is also the question of technical capability.

Queen rearing requires more than learning how to graft young larvae into queen cups. Successful production involves selecting quality breeder colonies, preparing cell builders, managing mating nuclei, maintaining adequate drone populations, and evaluating the resulting queens.

We can train hundreds of people in grafting techniques, but unless they also understand the biological requirements for successful mating, we may simply produce hundreds of virgin queens with nowhere reliable to mate.

Queen rearing is a skill. Successful queen production requires a functioning reproductive environment.

The Genetic Dilemma

Another concern is the genetic quality of our existing Apis mellifera population.

Continually breeding from a narrow genetic pool can increase the risk of inbreeding, reduced brood viability, and undesirable colony characteristics.

We need breeding programs that consider productivity, gentleness, hygienic behavior, disease tolerance, and adaptation to Philippine environmental conditions.

The difficulty of legally importing new breeding stock presents another challenge.

The Philippines has established quarantine and importation requirements for queen bees. These safeguards are necessary to prevent the introduction of pests, parasites, and diseases.

However, when the supply of reliable queens is limited and legitimate importation is difficult or costly, there is a risk that some individuals may resort to undocumented sources.

Queens entering the country without proper inspection and quarantine can introduce biological threats that may affect far more than the colonies receiving them.

The solution should not be to weaken biosecurity regulations. Rather, we should improve access to legally imported, properly screened breeding stock while strengthening our capacity to produce quality queens locally.

Could Metro Manila Become Part of the Solution?

Perhaps one of the most interesting developments in Philippine beekeeping is the growing interest in urban Apis mellifera colonies.

Metro Manila now has beekeepers maintaining colonies in backyards, rooftops, and other urban spaces.

Historically, urban beekeepers have often depended on rural and upland producers for replacement queens.

But what if the increasing concentration of urban colonies could eventually create opportunities for local queen production?

As more managed colonies are established within suitable flying distances of one another, the availability of mature drones could improve. Existing drone congregation areas may become more populated, or suitable areas for mating may become easier to identify.

Of course, simply increasing the number of hives does not automatically create a successful drone congregation area. Drone flight patterns, landscape features, weather, colony health, seasonal conditions, and genetics must all be considered.

But the possibility deserves scientific investigation rather than dismissal.

Instead of viewing Metro Manila exclusively as a market for queens, perhaps we should begin studying its potential as a queen-mating environment.

What Can We Do?

I believe there are several directions worth pursuing.

First, organize urban beekeepers into breeding clusters. Rather than operating completely independently, neighboring beekeepers could coordinate their queen-rearing and drone-production activities.

Second, establish selected drone-producing colonies. The objective should not merely be to increase drone numbers but to maintain healthy, genetically diverse drones from colonies exhibiting desirable characteristics.

Third, identify and evaluate potential drone congregation areas. This is where our universities, research institutions, government agencies, and experienced beekeepers can collaborate. Mapping urban apiaries and monitoring drone activity could provide valuable baseline information.

Fourth, develop specialized queen-rearing skills.More beekeepers need exposure to breeder selection, mating-nucleus management, queen evaluation, recordkeeping, and eventually instrumental insemination for controlled breeding programs.

Finally, establish a coordinated local breeding program. We need a system that measures queen quality and performance rather than simply counting how many queens have been produced.

An urban queen-breeding initiative would also require disease surveillance, community safety measures, suitable forage, and consideration for native pollinators.

A Question for the Philippine Beekeeping Industry

We have become increasingly successful at encouraging people to raise honey bees.

Government programs are introducing new beneficiaries. Training institutions are producing more beekeepers. Urban agriculture is expanding the possibilities of where honey bees can be maintained.

These are positive developments.

However, distributing colonies and conducting training programs address only the beginning of beekeeping.

Sustaining those colonies over the years is another matter entirely.

If we continue expanding the number of beekeepers without developing a dependable supply of quality queens, we may eventually create an industry whose growth is limited by its inability to reproduce its own breeding stock.

I am not suggesting that Metro Manila will replace our established upland queen producers.

What I am suggesting is that we now have an opportunity to explore something that might not have been practical when urban beekeepers were fewer and more widely scattered.

Could the growing urban beekeeping community eventually become a network of coordinated drone-producing and queen-mating sites?

Perhaps it is time for our research institutions, government agencies, beekeeping associations, and individual beekeepers to investigate that possibility together.

Because if we are serious about expanding Apis mellifera beekeeping in the Philippines, we must be equally serious about developing the capacity to sustain it.

We cannot keep producing more beekeepers without also producing the queens their colonies will eventually need.

We at Pia’s is considering to schedule a Queen Rearing Workshop in December.

When Beekeeping Meets Geology, Physics, and a Little Curiosity

I came across this interesting video showing copper wire arranged in a Tensor configuration with quartz in the middle, placed near honeybees.

The creator says that the arrangement creates a resonant field believed to be close to the “energetic signature” of a queen bee.

And of course, my beekeeper brain immediately went:

“Okay... but what are the bees actually experiencing?”

Are they genuinely attracted to it?
Are they simply curious about a strange object?
Could they be responding to vibrations or an electrical field?
Or could the stimulus actually be confusing or disturbing them?

Instead of guessing, I asked a friend who is a geologist and knows much more about the science behind minerals and their properties.

His response was really interesting...

He explained that although quartz has piezoelectric properties, a quartz crystal doesn't simply produce a useful frequency by having wires wrapped around it. For quartz to function as a crystal oscillator, its physical form, electrical connections, and the frequency of the applied AC signal all matter.

But what really caught my attention was his last point:

Bees are also sensitive to electrostatic fields.

That opened another rabbit hole for me.

We already know that bees can detect and respond to vibrations, sound, and electrical fields. So perhaps the more interesting question isn't simply:

“Does quartz create an energetic field that attracts bees?”

but:

“What exactly are the bees detecting, and how does that stimulus affect their behaviour?”

Because seeing bees gather around something doesn't automatically mean they're benefiting from it. They could be attracted, curious, investigating something unusual, or potentially responding to a stimulus that isn't necessarily good for them.

To really know, we'd need controlled observations and experiments. For example, compare the bees' response to the complete device, the copper structure without quartz, and an ordinary object of similar size.

That's one thing I love about beekeeping. A question that starts with “Why are the bees doing that?” can suddenly take you into geology, physics, electrical engineering, and animal behaviour.

The more I learn about bees, the more I realize that beekeeping isn't just about bees. It's also an excuse to keep learning about science.

And sometimes the best answer to an unusual claim isn't immediately “yes” or “no.”

Sometimes it's simply:

“That's interesting. How could we test it?”

See you at Agrilink!

And for the last of our featured products at Agrilink 2026 something from the tiny bees that produce some of the most interesting products in the hive.

We’ll be bringing stingless bee honey, propolis ointment, and propolis throat spray courtesy of our friends from Peeking Bees Apiary

Stingless bee honey is known for its distinctive sweet-tart flavor, while propolis is one of the hive’s most fascinating natural materials collected by bees from plant resins and used to protect and maintain their colony.

From the hive to the bottle, jar, and spray, these products show that stingless bees give us much more than honey.

Visit us at Agrilink 2026 and check them out.

HONEY ON THE GO! SWEETNESS IN A STICK!

Who says honey always has to come in a bottle?

Another product we're bringing to AGRILINK 2026 our HONEY STICKS!

Real honey, conveniently packed in individual, easy-to-carry straws. No bottles to open, no spoons to wash, and no sticky mess!

Just snip the end, squeeze, and enjoy!

Perfect for a quick sweet treat, adding honey to your coffee or tea, packing for your travels, or simply keeping a little sweetness in your bag or pocket.

Small enough to carry anywhere, but filled with something that took thousands of flower visits and the remarkable work of honey bees to produce.

And remember, a bee spends much of its life working for honey. You can finish one in five seconds. Show some respect!

Visit Pia's Bee Farm at AGRILINK 2026, October 8–10, and discover our selection of honey and other bee-derived products.

HONEY STICKS - A LITTLE STRAW OF LIQUID GOLD!

Not intended for infants below 12 months.