About Us
We are Jeannie and Terry Ross, living in the Union Hill Community of Cherokee County, who started beekeeping in 1994 with two bee hives. We slowly made our love of honey bees and beekeeping into a small business selling honey, beeswax candles and beekeeping supplies. By the spring of 2009 our number of hives had increased to just over one hundred. But in the late summer and fall of 2009, we suddenly lost most of our hives to what is called Colony Collapse Disorder. We came out of the winter with only 14 hives. So we started again. We are going into the summer of 2011 with 45 hives and the bees seem to be doing better this year. This year we became a Georgia Certified Farm Market and sell our products from our honey house on Monday, Wednesday and Saturday from 2:00PM until 6:00PM.
An apiary is the Latin word for “bee yard” and Ross Berry Farm and Apiaries has four apiaries in Cherokee, Pickens and Dawson counties.
For the past two years we have been planting lots of blueberries, blackberries, raspberries, scuppernongs, strawberries and figs, continuing on this spring by adding more of each. All of our berries and vegetables are organically grown as we add only our composted leaves and grass clippings to our garden soil each year. We use no pesticides on any of our berries, vegetables or flowers. Should we need to keep insects from eating our plants, we lightly dust the foliage (not the blossoms) with Garden Sulphur. This does not kill the insects but makes them not want to eat on the leaves. We ask all of you not to use Seven Dust as the bees think it is pollen and take it back to the hive and it can kill the entire hive. If you have to use Seven use the Liquid Seven and spray at dusk when the honey bees have gone back to their hive for the day and only spray the foliage not the blossoms.
We volunteer our time to promote honey and honey beekeeping in schools, senior citizen centers and anywhere else there are people interested in learning about honey bees. We are now working with the Cherokee County Farm Bureau to educate people on how important farmers and the honey bees are to mankind.