Cole’s Farm NC

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Cole’s Farm NC We are a veteran-owned, family-operated honey bee hobby farm located in the southwestern side of Onslow County in Eastern Carolina. Our goal is simple.
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📍 Jacksonville, NC Beekeeper
🍯 Raw NC Honey • Straight From the Hive
🌿 Spring Wildflower • Summer Sourwood
🐝 Swarm Relocations • Veteran Owned
🏅 Certified NC Journeyman Beekeeper
👇 Get a Jar of NC Honey We decided to name this venture after our son Cole in hopes that he will join us one day tending to the bees. We strive to share our passion through the delivery of raw, unprocessed local wildflower honey. We also specialize in honey bee swarm relocation and are proud members of the NCSBA. Jeff’s interest in becoming a beekeeper piqued in the Winter of 2016 after a co-worker, who just started beekeeping the year prior, kept talking about these fascinating creatures, honeybees. He read Beekeeping for Dummies and spoke to Mr. Floyd Parker, one of Onslow County's Master Beekeepers. Afterward, the decision was an easy one to become a Beekeeper.

🐝 One Last Feeding Before Winter! 🍯❄️As our remaining warm days begin to wind down here in coastal North Carolina, it’s ...
10/19/2026

🐝 One Last Feeding Before Winter! 🍯❄️

As our remaining warm days begin to wind down here in coastal North Carolina, it’s time for one of the final feedings of the season at Cole’s Farm!

In this picture, I’m providing our honeybee colonies with one last round of 1:1 sugar syrup. This time of year, it’s all about preparing our bees for the months ahead.

🍯 Why is supplemental feeding important?

Honeybees don’t hibernate during winter. Instead, they cluster together inside the hive, vibrating their flight muscles to generate heat and protect their queen. Maintaining that cluster takes energy, and that energy comes from their food stores!

As fall progresses and natural nectar sources decline, some colonies may not have enough honey stored to make it through winter. Supplemental feeding can help fill that gap when necessary.

A 1:1 sugar syrup provides carbohydrates while bees are still active enough to process it. As temperatures drop, bees become less able to take up liquid feed, making timing critical. Beekeepers must also evaluate each colony’s food reserves, strength, and overall health.

The goal isn’t simply to get our bees through winter. It’s to help them emerge in spring strong enough to raise new brood, pollinate flowers, and prepare for another honey season. 🌼

And as tempting as another Fall Honey harvest might be, the bees’ winter pantry comes first! Their survival today is an investment in tomorrow’s spring blooms. 🐝

🐝 One link. All the buzz. ➡️ https://linktr.ee/colesfarmnc
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🍯🔬 What’s really in our Spring Honey?This photo shows the results of our Spring Honey pollen analysis from the Penn Stat...
10/16/2026

🍯🔬 What’s really in our Spring Honey?

This photo shows the results of our Spring Honey pollen analysis from the Penn State University Honey and Pollen Diagnostic Lab.

I’ll admit—I dragged my feet a little getting this test underway. We harvested our Spring Honey on May 10 and May 30, requested the test kit in mid-to-late June, and finally mailed our sample around mid-July.

What I didn’t know was that the lab was experiencing a significant backlog due to staffing challenges. It took roughly two and a half months to receive our results.

Rather than complain about the wait, I want to highlight the communication. Dr. Michele Mansfield was incredibly transparent about the situation and provided regular updates while the lab worked through the backlog. That kind of communication deserves recognition, and we truly appreciate the work Penn State is doing for beekeepers and honey producers. 👏🏻🐝

And the results are fascinating!

🌸 Prunus / Stone Fruit — 27%
🍀 Trifolium / Clover — 11%
🌼 Taraxacum / Dandelion — 10%
🌿 Crataegus / Hawthorn — 9%
🌳 Robinia / Locust — 8%
🫐 Rubus / Cane Berries — 8%
🌸 Magnolia — 7%
🌱 Lamium / Deadnettle — 5%
🌷 Liriodendron / Tulip Poplar — 5%
🌻 Other — 9%

The biggest surprise? Stone fruit pollen accounted for 27% of the identified pollen in our Spring Honey! That tells us just how important those early-season blooms were to our bees.

A pollen analysis is like a snapshot of our bees’ spring travels—showing which plants were blooming and contributing to what eventually became the honey in these jars.

Every jar has a story. This one just happens to have a laboratory report to help tell it. 🍯🐝

A big THANK YOU to Dr. Mansfield and the entire Penn State University Honey and Pollen Diagnostic Lab for helping beekeepers better understand the honey our bees produce!

🐝 One link. All the buzz. ➡️ https://linktr.ee/colesfarmnc
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🍯🐝 We chased Sourwood all the way across North Carolina… and now you can see the whole story in just 3 minutes!On June 1...
10/14/2026

🍯🐝 We chased Sourwood all the way across North Carolina… and now you can see the whole story in just 3 minutes!

On June 19, we loaded 20 hives in Jacksonville and hauled them to Andrews, NC, hoping to catch the Sourwood flow.

What followed was more than a month of hauling bees, checking colonies, pulling completely full frames of Sourwood, bringing 20 hives back home, extracting, and finally bottling the honey.

I put the entire adventure together into one short video—from the first hive loaded to the finished bottles.

Watch here: https://youtu.be/6dxzhGipO_U

🍂🍯 Fall Honey: Tempting to Harvest, Better Left for the Bees! 🐝One look at this deep frame from a recent inspection tell...
10/14/2026

🍂🍯 Fall Honey: Tempting to Harvest, Better Left for the Bees! 🐝

One look at this deep frame from a recent inspection tells me everything I need to know: the girls have been busy! 🐝💪🏻

As we move deeper into fall here in Eastern North Carolina, the bees are shifting their priorities. With fewer flowers available and winter approaching, the colony is working hard to pack away as much food as possible. Those beautiful, capped cells represent valuable stores of honey that will help sustain the colony through the months ahead.

And I’ll admit it…seeing a frame like this makes it very tempting to think about harvesting a little “Fall Honey.” 🍯😋

But sometimes, the best thing a beekeeper can do is leave the honey right where it is.

Unlike us, honey bees can’t simply run to the pantry when the weather turns cold. Their winter survival depends heavily on the food they have stored inside the hive. Throughout winter, the colony forms a cluster and consumes those reserves as needed, gradually working its way through the honey stores.

So while it would be exciting to add another harvest to the season, the priority right now is simple: healthy bees going into winter. 🐝❄️

There will always be another opportunity to harvest honey. There may not be another opportunity to replace what a colony needs to make it through winter.

Sometimes, the sweetest harvest is the one you leave behind. ❤️🍯

🐝 One link. All the buzz. ➡️ https://linktr.ee/colesfarmnc
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🐝 From “ugly” comb to beautiful beeswax. 🕯️There is something pretty remarkable about what can come out of a beehive whe...
10/12/2026

🐝 From “ugly” comb to beautiful beeswax. 🕯️

There is something pretty remarkable about what can come out of a beehive when you’re willing to put in the work to recover it.

This is the final block of rendered beeswax from one of our recent batches, weighing somewhere around 15–20 pounds. But getting it to this point was anything but a one-step process.

The starting material was a mixture of wax cappings and old brood comb from recent dead-outs—material containing remnants of honey, propolis, pollen, cocoons, and plenty of other debris. It certainly doesn’t look like the beautiful golden wax you see here!

The wax was melted, separated, allowed to settle, and cleaned before going through the process again…and again…and again. This block was rendered approximately five times.

With every pass, more of the unwanted material was removed, transforming a messy collection of old comb and hive debris into a beautiful, solid block of usable beeswax. 🐝

It’s one of those lesser-seen parts of beekeeping that I really enjoy. There is something incredibly satisfying about taking a material that might otherwise be discarded and turning it back into something useful.

For now, we’re not selling our beeswax. We have a very practical use for every pound we recover.

We use our rendered wax to heavily coat our plastic foundation before putting it into our hives. That extra natural beeswax gives the bees a significant head start in the spring. Rather than starting with essentially bare plastic, they have a foundation already coated in real beeswax that encourages them to get to work drawing beautiful new comb.

From old comb…to clean wax…back to the bees. ♻️🐝

And if you’d like to see the process, I’ll be sharing a YouTube video later this month documenting how we turn that original “gross” material into this final block.

🐝 One link. All the buzz. ➡️ https://linktr.ee/colesfarmnc
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🐝 From “Gross” to Golden: The Journey of Beeswax 🕯️This is one of the first runs through our new Steam Wax Melter, and I...
10/09/2026

🐝 From “Gross” to Golden: The Journey of Beeswax 🕯️

This is one of the first runs through our new Steam Wax Melter, and I thought it would be fun to share a little behind-the-scenes look at what beeswax actually looks like before it becomes that beautiful, bright yellow wax most people recognize.

When beeswax comes out of the hive, it’s rarely clean. What you see here is a mixture of old comb, cappings, propolis, pollen, honey, and other hive debris. At this stage, it certainly isn’t much to look at! 😂

So how does it become clean beeswax?

♻️ First comes rendering. Steam melts the wax, allowing it to separate from the comb and other material. The liquid wax drains away while much of the heavier debris remains behind.

🧺 Then comes straining. The rendered wax still contains plenty of fine particles, so it has to be filtered and strained to remove impurities.

🔄 And often… it needs to be rendered more than once. Depending on what is being processed, multiple passes and different levels of filtration may be necessary to get the wax progressively cleaner.

🌡️ Finally, it is allowed to cool and solidify. Once clean, the wax can be collected, stored, and eventually put to use in everything from candles and wax melts to woodworking products, cosmetics, and other value-added products.

One of the things I really enjoy about beekeeping is that very little goes to waste. What might look like a pile of old, dirty comb can actually be a valuable resource waiting to be recovered.

And this picture? This is just the first bite. 😁

There are still several steps between what you see here and that beautiful golden beeswax that comes out the other side. I’ll be sharing more of the process as we continue rendering and cleaning this wax—including the wax cappings we’ve saved from this year’s honey harvest.

From the hive… to the wax melter… and eventually, to something useful. 🐝♻️🕯️

🐝 One link. All the buzz. ➡️ https://linktr.ee/colesfarmnc
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Feeding 24 hives used to take way more time and effort than it should…So I built a system using a 55-gallon barrel, pump...
10/07/2026

Feeding 24 hives used to take way more time and effort than it should…

So I built a system using a 55-gallon barrel, pump, and hose—and it completely changed how I manage feeding in the bee yard 🐝💪

In this video, I walk through the entire setup and show how I mix and deliver 48 gallons of sugar water fast and efficiently.

Watch here: https://youtu.be/FtfV1Kgcutc?is=qJgqfoGLi4TiuujG

🐝♻️ Time to Render Some Wax!I’ve been patiently waiting to clean up several boxes from recent dead-outs, and now that th...
10/07/2026

🐝♻️ Time to Render Some Wax!

I’ve been patiently waiting to clean up several boxes from recent dead-outs, and now that the new Steam Wax Melter has arrived, it’s finally time to get to work!

I’m starting with these two 5-gallon bags of old comb and wax from colonies that didn’t make it through the season. Getting this material cleaned up is an important part of maintaining the apiary. Once the wax is rendered, the boxes can be properly cleaned, inspected, and put away until they’re needed again.

And this is just the beginning…

Once I work through the wax from these dead-outs, I’ll move on to the 10 gallons of wax cappings I’ve been saving from this year’s honey harvest. Cappings wax is some of the cleanest and most valuable wax produced in the honey house, so I’m looking forward to seeing how much beautiful beeswax I can recover.

One of the things I enjoy most about beekeeping is that there’s very little that truly goes to waste. Honey is harvested, wax is rendered, and even the materials left behind from a difficult colony can often be cleaned up and put to use again.

Now that I have the equipment to do it efficiently, I’m excited to put all of that wax to work! 🐝🕯️

🐝 One link. All the buzz. ➡️ https://linktr.ee/colesfarmnc
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🐝 Big things are happening at Cole’s Farm! 🍯After patiently waiting for the right time to expand our operation, a recent...
10/05/2026

🐝 Big things are happening at Cole’s Farm! 🍯

After patiently waiting for the right time to expand our operation, a recent shipment from HillCo arrived—and I’m pretty excited about what’s inside these boxes!

From left to right:

🍯 Honey Warming / Cooling Cabinet — giving me much more control over temperature during honey processing and future value-added products.

♨️ Steam Wax Melter — a new tool for efficiently reclaiming and processing beeswax, allowing us to make better use of a valuable byproduct of the beekeeping process.

🍯 9-Gallon Honey Creamer — the piece of equipment I’ve been especially eager to put to work as we begin developing small-batch creamed honey.

💧 Digital Refractometer — providing an accurate way to monitor honey moisture content and help ensure our honey is properly ripened and ready for bottling.

For a small operation like ours, investments like these are a big deal. They aren’t simply about buying more equipment—they’re about improving our ability to process what our bees produce, make better use of our resources, and eventually offer our customers a few new value-added products made right here at Cole’s Farm.

There’s still plenty to learn, experiment with, and fine-tune, but that’s part of the fun. 🐝

Now it’s time to put this equipment to work!

Stay tuned… there’s some sweet stuff coming! 🍯

💲Save some money on your next purchase with “colesfarm5”.

🐝 One link. All the buzz. ➡️ https://linktr.ee/colesfarmnc
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🐝🇻🇦 A HISTORIC MOMENT FOR BEEKEEPERS AROUND THE WORLD 🍯There are moments in beekeeping that remind us that what we do is...
10/02/2026

🐝🇻🇦 A HISTORIC MOMENT FOR BEEKEEPERS AROUND THE WORLD 🍯

There are moments in beekeeping that remind us that what we do is about so much more than honey.

On Saturday, October 3, 2026, a special Holy Mass for beekeepers from around the world will be celebrated at Borgo Laudato Si’ in Vatican City by Cardinal Baggio.

Then, on Monday, October 5, the Pope is scheduled to receive beekeepers from around the world in a private audience at the Vatican.

According to the organizers and publicly available records of the Holy See, there has never previously been an official private papal audience dedicated exclusively to beekeepers. That makes this a truly remarkable and historic occasion. 🐝🌎

The gathering, organized through the initiative of the Slovenian Beekeepers’ Association and the European Beekeeping Association, will bring attention to the vital role honey bees play in our ecosystems, agriculture, and food supply.

The message is simple but incredibly important: let’s protect our pollinators—and let’s buy local honey. 🍯

Real honey comes from real bees, real flowers, and the dedicated work of beekeepers who care for their colonies and the land around them. Supporting local beekeepers helps sustain pollinators, agriculture, and our communities.

A special candle made in Slovenia will also be presented to the Pope—a beautiful symbol of beekeeping, tradition, community, and faith.

From a backyard hive here in North Carolina to apiaries around the world, beekeeping connects people across cultures and continents.

As a beekeeper, it is incredibly special to see our craft recognized on such an extraordinary international stage.

🐝 May this gathering inspire greater awareness of the importance of honey bees.

🌻 May it encourage us to protect the habitats they depend upon.

🍯 And may it remind us to support the local beekeepers who keep the bees.

What an incredible opportunity to let the world hear the buzz. 🇻🇦🐝

🐝 One link. All the buzz. ➡️ https://linktr.ee/colesfarmnc
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Address

200 Bribster Court N
Jacksonville, NC

Opening Hours

Monday 9am - 7pm
Tuesday 9am - 7pm
Wednesday 9am - 7pm
Thursday 9am - 7pm
Friday 9am - 7pm
Saturday 9am - 7pm
Sunday 9am - 7pm

Telephone

+19103336585

Website

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