Wolfgang and Sheri (1965)Coxsackie Bee Goods is housed at Twin Spruce Apiaries in Coxsackie, NY. If one wants to fine tune the location, we are in Climax, NY!
Twin Spruce was established in 1941 by Wolfgang Bauer and Jessie Kendall Bauer. Wolfgang acquired his beekeeping skills as a boy in Germany. In 1941 beekeeping became his profession in the USA. Wolfgang and Jessie's business became a team by the 1970s with son, Walter, Walter's wife, Nonie, and grandson, Walter Jr. I, Sheri Bauer, Walt and Nonie's daughter, did help out in the extracting room in summer, but spent most of my time during my 18 years on the apiary practicing piano and preparing myself for music conservatory. I stopped cracking open beehives with Wolfgang at age two, as a photo I found (above) instructs.
Wolfgang was known as "the one armed beekeeper." Prior to starting in the bee business, he lost his arm in a foundry accident. Walter, his son, became Wolfgang's missing left arm and after working many years alongside his father became a devoted keeper of the apiary and the "kingpin" of Twin Spruce Apiaries.
Walter and Wolfgang kept stationary hives throughout beeyards in the Catskill Mountains. The family supplied the locals, farmstands, mom n' pop stores, and resorts with raw wildflower Catskill Mountain honey. "The crew" worked as hard as the bees. Customers came for honey, to watch the extracting process, and for conversation. They usually stayed longer than they intended. All the Bauers gave time to answer questions about bees, honey, and appreciated a chat about what folks were up to and what was happening in town and around the world.
Walter and Nonie eventually went on to sell honey and candles at the Union Square Market in NYC; a market they were at for 30 years.
This was a wholesome and rewarding business, though there were endless bear threats, pathogens, and pesticides increasing in the 80s; many more stressors affecting the bees and their keepers. Keeping bees required new approaches, observation, and becoming accustomed to greater loss. This is our current reality.
Long story shortened: In 2019 I began beekeeping on the family farm; the last of the beekeeping part of the crew. I came to learn and hold dear what my father said near the end of his life: "Beekeeping will be saved by the backyard beekeeper." What did that mean? I know now. Simply put, and for all it entails, it means taking commercial pressure off of bees as well as commercial manipulations (artificial insemination of Queens, chemical treatments, preventing swarming, feeding sugar, buying packages, selective breeding, and using bees for pollination of monocrops). It also means that beekeepers become good stewards of the land. Soil and plants are connected to bee nutrition and survival. Planting trees, bushes, native plants in great variety are essential! I took that to heart and adventured into small scale beekeeping with the main intent to understand Bee Wisdom (which, if honest, we humans have only touched the surface of).
I became ""Coxsackie Bee Goods" offering honey in season, candles, vintage candle holders, "Straight From the Press" honey, tea blends, beeswax salves, propolis tinctures, and more.
One of the great treasures you can buy, which is of the highest quality and meant specifically for you and where you live, is locally extracted or pressed honey.
I'm delighted to keep this little corner of the world open for gifts from the hive and for growing bee wisdom.
One of our Layens hives: Taurus
Sheri Bauer