Black Sheep Honey & Norray's Honey

Located in the beautiful countryside of Berne, New York, Tim and Jill Norray are third generation beekeepers and incredibly passionate about what they do.

The Norray family, sister and brother-in-law to North Country Subaru owner Ken Lendrum, care for thousands of bees. In addition to beekeeping they harvest and distribute honey, assist aspiring beekeepers in cultivating their own farms via the sale of queens and worker bees, and educate the next generation about the habits of bees and their impact on the environment.

Tim Norray and his daughter, Kristin, give a lecture at the Nassau Agway.

Pollination is, quite simply, transferring grains of pollen from one plant to another, to fertilize the ovaries of flowers. While some plants rely on wind to provide pollination, and others are self-pollinating, most flowering plants need the services of natural pollinators, such as honeybees, to do the work. Many of the crops grown require the use of pollinators: so important are honeybees as pollinators that many farmers will pay beekeepers to have hives located on their land. By using honeybees as pollinators, crop yields can be increased by as much as 300%. Local crops such as canola, alfalfa, and sunflower benefit immensely from the use of our honeybees as pollinators. A good pollination system is part of a healthy eco-system.

In addition to the benefits that our honeybees provide to the agricultural industry, they also provide similar pollination services to wild plants and flowers. Many of our trees, such as willow and poplar, benefit from the pollination services of honeybees, which help to preserve and spread our natural forests. The wealth of flowering plants that blanket the prairies owe much of their existence to the visits of the honeybees: in fact, many flowers evolved in conjunction with the bees. To remove the bees from the environment would mean the demise of many species of flowers and plants that we take for granted.

Many of the plants that our honeybees help to foster provide seeds, fruit, and nuts that feed numerous animal species native to America. This is an indirect benefit of honeybees, but a crucial one. If bees were removed from the environment, not only would the plants suffer and expire, but so would many natural animal species that depend upon those plants for their own survival. Loss of honeybees would mean the collapse of the natural ecosystem, so the value of bees aside from the simple production of honey cannot be underestimated.