At B.M. Dooney Farms, we are committed to making our business SUSTAINABLE through our practices, our products, and our packaging.
We believe COMMUNITY OUTREACH is an important pillar of our business, and strive to stay connected through service.
Our RETURN POLICY ensures customer satisfaction. We want our customers to have a great experience with our products & services – if you are not satisfied, we’ll make it right!
Want to know more?
Then check out the details of our commitments by clicking on the links below.
Arden Haynes owns B.M. Dooney Farms, which he operates with the help of his wife, Marnie. Arden served in the U.S. Army, twice, and is now a disabled combat veteran. During his initial time in service, he was stationed in Germany, enlisting after graduating from high school in hopes of earning the G.I. Bill in order to attend college. After serving 3 years in the Army, Arden was honorably discharged, and he enrolled at the University of Montana.
While working on his degree in 2004, Arden was called back into service and forced to place his studies on pause to serve in the Iraq war with the 1/110th Infantry (aka The Pennsylvania National Guard). After a 12 month combat tour in Iraq, Arden eagerly returned to Montana to complete his bachelor’s degree in Wildlife Biology. While there, Arden & Marnie met in 2007. Marnie was completing a Ph.D. in Ecology, studying plant-soil-microbial interactions – and she is possibly the reason Arden passed Cellular & Molecular Biology. With overlapping mutual interests in many things, including science, being in nature, gardening, being with 4-legged family – getting married was the logical next step.
Fast forward a few years, and one morning in 2013, while drinking coffee, Marnie said,
We're getting bees, but you'll have to be the beekeeper because I just don't think that I can do that part!
Well, one hive led to another, and now we are a business. We’ve have been happily married nearly 15 years now, while working together to build B.M. Dooney Farms. Oh, and yes, Marnie is now “doing that part” she just didn’t think she could.
As we learn beekeeping together, we are constantly reminded of the benefits of bees. The flowers around the farm are more prolific each season. Our bees provide us with delicious honey. Our business connects us to our community. And thanks to the bees, this veteran’s quality of life is greatly improved.
Our Bees
Organic North Country Beekeeping
Routine use of synthetic chemical treatments to manage pests and diseases comes at both great financial and ecological costs
At BM Dooney Farms, we strive to use sustainable practices that are mutually beneficial to the bees, our farm, & the local farms that host our bees.
We have developed an apiary management plan that is natural-selection-based and promotes Varroa Mite Resistance + Cold Hardiness.
Our queens are naturally mated with bees that survive the long North Country winters. Our bees never migrate, reducing the spread of pests & diseases, while minimizing our carbon footprint.
Our goal is to respect the natural process of honey bees, while benefiting from reasonable and healthy honey harvests.
For more information on sustainable beekeeping we suggest reading Thomas D. Seeley’s book THE LIVES OF BEES.
We feel that management must not be detrimental to the health of honey bees, and habitual use of synthetic chemical regimes cannot provide the answer to the long-term health needs of the bees. Most commercial beekeeping operations use a combination of synthetic chemicals for Varroa mite treatments, antifungals for Nosema infections, and antibiotics for Foul Brood. With routine chemical treatments, beekeepers run the risk of developing resistance among both pests and diseases to these very same treatments. When that happens, there are no alternatives, and will likely lead to absconsion or death of the colony.
Therefore, we strongly recommend reserving these chemical treatments as a last resort, opting instead for organic chemicals like oxalic acid vapors (OAV), which is what we use annually on all our hives. A February 2025 meta-analyses concluded that organic chemical treatments represent the best long-term approach on balance. You can read more about that study HERE
With our background in science, we focused on maintaining a low level of exposure to Varroa mites, rather than raising naive honey bees with no exposure to mites due to habitual chemical treatments, which sets up a situation where the bees are naive to this pest over time. Our management practice embraces adaptation & natural selection. By allowing a level of exposure to the mites, this enables the honey bees to adapt to this pest, which they do through adapted grooming behaviors.
Let’s Be Clear: Seasonal Application of Organic OAV Prevents Winter Colony Loss
These hygienic grooming behaviors have been well documented and are defined as Varroa Sensitive Hygiene (VSH) and Excessive Grooming Behaviors (EGB) as documented by USDA Managed Pollinator Project And also HEREHEREHERE and HERE.
These bees use extensive grooming activities to hunt down parasites, pathogens, and diseased bees (even inside capped cells) to expel them from the hive. These hygienic behaviors are observed in the bees at BM Dooney Farms. We maintain VSH & EGB bees in our apiary by selecting bee hives that exhibit these traits to be used as parent colonies for each new hive we produce.
Timeline of Our Growth
In 2014, we opened BM Dooney Farms while we were living in Texas. We spent 7 years beekeeping and growing our business, while we also provided educational services to the public through our non-profit outreach work with rural K-12 schools, built public live beehive demonstration exhibits, and provided portable live-hive education in the K-12 classrooms.
Having relocated to upstate New York in 2021, our apiary has been in the growing phase since we sold off all our hives that were adapted to much warmer climate. We initially captured swarms of bees across St. Lawrence county and the first two years were spent preparing for and then studying the impact of the long winter on their survival.
Winter 2022 in Upstate NY
Winter of 2022 was spent tracking temperature and humidity in the hives as Arden dialed in his successful winterization methods.
We’ve also partnered with our local community!
Our apiary grew over the summer 2023 with help of SUNY Potsdam Environmental Studies student intern, Charles Bennett.
Since 2022 with SUNY Potsdam’s WISER Center where we have been educating staff, faculty & students how to maintain their bees while also providing those services
Since 2022 with St. Lawrence Nurseries where we went from capturing a swarm to having a full apiary
Since 2023 with Canton Apple & Cider where we have a full apiary & plan to sell our honey in their Farm Stand summer 2025.
Expanding Growth Through Mini-Queen Nucs!
Summer of 2024 we greatly expand through creating queen rearing mini nucs. Arden times the emergence of multiple queens, collects them into cages, allowing bees to select and raise those that will become queens.
Beeswax Studio Opens in 2024
Beeswax Studio located at 230 Orebed Rd. Colton, NY 13625 Open Saturday’s 10a-4p
Our Mascot
Our logo is a fictitious creature, the raccoon-honey bee named after our friend, Big Man (B.M.) Dooney, the first raccoon that came into our lives. B.M. Dooney inspired us to advocate for wildlife rehabilitation, which began while we were in Texas. While living in the south, we assisted with area wildlife rehab facilities to rehabilitate and release numerous injured and orphaned wildlife, including gray foxes, opossums, prairie dogs, white tailed deer, bobcats, several bird species and many raccoons. We expanded our passion for wildlife conservation into a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization with a mission to provide public access to knowledge through understanding of science, technology and environmental conservation issues. You can view all of our education, conservation, and community outreach work at ecoVerdant.org.
