Internationally acclaimed Honey...

Okay, Okay... I may be exaggerating slightly. But my sister is in France learning the secrets of cheese making and she brought along a couple of pounds of my honey to give as gifts. The family she is living with really enjoyed the honey and eat it on everything! The one boy even claims that the honey soothed his cough.

Filling jars with honey

One of my sisters' bosses claims that trying my honey has pushed him into becoming a hobby beekeeper and having a few hives on his farm. I told my sister to warn him of the addictiveness of beekeeping and of all of the necessary hours needed to be successful.

It seems as though my family and friends who know that I keep bees are inadvertently interested in bees now. Everyone is becoming more aware of the plight of the honey bee. If my one pound of honey has made another beekeeper, then it was a pound well spent!

2nd Annual: Beekeeping Reunion

 On August 29th I had the pleasure of hosting the annual "bee swarm". We are a group of friends who are hobby beekeepers. Everyone came to my place and we enjoyed a BBQ and then we took a look at my hives.

The bees were very gentle and everyone seemed to like my hive lids.

We also went through pictures that we had taken over the last year and shared our stories. I shared my video of the swarming and we talked about how to deal with swarming, etc. Everyone in our group had swarms come out of their hives this year (including a swarm on the day of the meeting)! Everyone seemed to be bitter about that.

Me standing beside the 'monster' hive. This hive was 4 frames in May.

We were fortunate to have a beautiful day and the bees were all on their best behavior. My girls made me proud!

Board's Honey Farm: Restoule

On a recent vacation to my cottage up in "Northern" Ontario, I took the time to visit a local honey farm. I got the chance to have a little tour of the store and the honey extracting area by one of the owners. She was very helpful and very knowledgeable.

They run 300 colonies and raise their own queens in the spring time. Mites are present in their area as well but the mites are not as rampant as more southern bee hives. I do not understand how the mites could be less rampant; I suppose it could be because the mite breeding season is shorter. Because they do not have as long of a summer as we do.

There honey extraction system allows them to extract a ton (1000 kg) of honey in a days work. That is a lot of honey! The honey is stored in large stainless tanks which are heated and the honey is bottled from these tanks.

They are not able to get as much honey as more southern locations but they still manage to get a decent crop. There is some agriculture in their area and even some Buckwheat fields within driving distance.

What impressed me the most about their operation is that they do a lot of value added work to their honey. They have a retail store where they sell all things that can be made from honey, beeswax etc. The owner has a fairly good sized garden where she plants vegetables to use to mix with honey to her products. It was very impressive. From BBQ sauces to salad dressings!

There is also a good amount of information scattered around the property to teach children about bees and their importance to our environment.

Thanks for the tour!

Forks of the Credit: Beekeeper

I had the pleasure to meet another beekeeper who lives and manages 20 hives in the picturesque Niagara Escarpment  near the small town of Forks on the Credit, Ontario. He has a beautiful location with the Forks of the Credit river raging through his backyard. His hives are located on the other side of the river and his bees primarily forage on basswood trees; which produce a lot of nectar in the right conditions.

Interesting bottom board. This hive is sitting on a scale!

Hive sitting on a scale.

 Hives sitting on a scale are excellent ways to monitor honey flows and the general condition of the hive. This beekeeper has two separate scales and compares them regularly. I need to find a scale like this at an auction sale!

A treasure chest of bees! Swarm collection and relocation in action.

Hive with 5 mediums of honey on top!

A lot was learned in our short visit. He has an interesting method of running his bee yard. In the spring time he splits up his strong hives and lets them raise their own emergency queens and he tries to keep young queens in his hives at all times so that they do not swarm. I am reluctant to split my hives up all the time because I want to remain as a small beekeeper. It is always nice to get to meet an experienced beekeeper so that wisdom can be passed on.

Local Beekeeper

On my way home the other day I stopped at a bee yard in which I saw a beekeeper working. I drive by these hives every day and I have seen the beekeeper there a couple of times but never had the courage to stop in.
He was busy treating for mites and giving the hives some pollen patties. I typically treat hives for mites with Mite-Away II. It is a formic acid pad which releases formic acid and essentially fumigates  the bees to kill off all of the mites. I personally think that it causes a lot of damage to the bees. I think it mostly works by breaking the brood cycle and therefore breaking the mite breeding cycle and it also does kill mites by fumigation. He was treating them with small formic acid pads which he has to replace every 4 days. He claims that the big ones (which I use) are too strong for weaker hives; he also claims that the bees essentially just stop working while those bigger pads are in; which makes them less prepared for the honey flow. He had lots of excellent points.
The most interesting thing about this beekeeper was that he has five hundred hives located throughout thirty three yards. That is just mind boggling to me. I had previously realized that the only way you can make a living with honey was to have 500+ hives. This man also does it all on his own and he said that he is sixty. Last year he had 30% losses in the spring and this year it is somewhere close to 10%. I think this has a lot to do with our gentle winter but it is really hard to know exactly.
It was nice to meet a fellow local beekeeper. I am still not part of any club or anything and I really only find out about beekeeping through what I read.