News Article: 40% of Canadian honey fail chemical residue test

The Canadian Food Inspection agency claims that 4 out of 10 jars of honey show elevated levels of chemical residue. They say that 61% of honey complied with the federal chemical residue requirements. These requirements are 0.1ppm (part per million); which by rights is a considerably high standard compared to other food products.

The culprit? Primarily bee relaxing chemicals! I never quite understood that. I am always careful not even to use my smoker on or near any honey so that it does not take any weird tastes. I have always wondered how people can use chemicals to chase their bees out of their honey supers without the honey being affected. The not so simple solution? Use a clearing board. These clearing boards, I built my own version of a modified quebec escape and it works very well, except that it takes more work to put it in under the supers and then take it out afterwards.

The other culprit may be imported honey, which should be banned if you ask me. Our country makes more honey than we consume, yet cusumers do not want to pay for the quality.

I guess it is just one more thing I can put on my honey labels.

Read the article for yourself:

Montreal Gazette: Nothing sweet about this honey

Mead: Bottled

 My mead had now been bottled. It was long over due to be bottled and I finally got around to doing it tonight.

Boiling the corks to make them expand and soft

 I boiled the corks and let them cool down before pushing them into the bottles.

What I got with 3 Ga. of mead: 9lbs of honey

Natural Sack mead on left, Dry mead on right. Different Honey sources.

It is ready for consuming, so I did some 'testing' and I am quite happy with the results. I particularly like my dry mead which is the clearest. It is 2 1/2 lbs of my honey and the rest is water! It looks fantastic and tastes great. It actually has quite a good after taste.

The law states that I am not allowed to sell my mead unless I have a liquor license, etc. I can give it away as Christmas gifts though. They make for interesting dinner gifts. I hope they taste better than turpentine. I suppose I should be working on a couple of labels!

That's a wrap!

The weather has been quite cold lately. There has been some pretty hard frosts and lows of -5C. Lately the highs have not been more than 7C. The reality is that we are headed towards that dreaded winter season. I spent a night up in Northern Ontario and we got 3 inches of snow.

A piece of insulation is placed on top of the inner cover

 The bee cozy wraps fit snug around the hives but they also have a seem on the front of the hive which allows moisture to leave the hive. This is very important. Cold does not kill bees, moisture does. Look at the hive cover. I switched it over after taking the picture. Notice the corners have little stubs them which will allow a tiny gap all around the hive. This will let the warm humid air which comes from consuming honey in the cluster to escape.

Wrapped hives

The bee cozy wraps take literally 20 seconds to install. It is wonderful!

Ventilation holes allow the hive to breath

Left is a custom cover: R5 blue insulation + tar paper wrap

 My smoker was working insanely well tonight. The smoke was pretty strong and thick. I found myself being choked out by the smoke on several occasions.

Smokers always work the best when not needed

This is essentially the end of the beekeeping season. I installed hive entrance reducers/mouse guards but I forgot to take a picture of them. Now I can only hope that my bees have enough honey stores to make it through the winter and that they will not be plagued by disease.