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.

News Article: Bees vs. Super computers: Bees win

In my regular Popular Science reading today I read an interesting article regarding bumble bees ability to solve the very difficult math problem: how to find the shortest possible route between cities while only visiting each city once. Scientists call this the classic travelling salesman problem.

The test involved computer controlled artificial flowers. The researchers were trying to determine if the bees would go to the flowers as they were discovered or if they would plan and route the most efficient way. It turns out that the bees went to each flower in the most efficient way possible even as new flowers were added. Super computers take days to solve this problem, but the bees can do it on the fly.

Take a look at the article:

PopSci: Bees beat computers ability to solve complex math problem

The last treatment: Oxalic Acid

It has been a long and tedious fall treatment, but I was able to get a good morning of weather and my mite treatments were finishing on the Friday and the Saturday. Saturday I took my Apivar strips out of two home hives and treated them with 50 cc of sugar syrup + oxalic acid by dripping the oxalic acid directly on the bees.

Oxalic acid and sugar syrup (50cc)

 The bellow picture shows a bee cluster. They are clearly more concentrated in the center of the box. You can also see two Apivar strips. They require 42 days in the brood box to work to their full potential. Apivar is a slow release insecticide to kill mites which are on the bees and in the cells.

Bee cluster: Apivar strips ready to be removed.

 This is actually a poor picture of my hives at my parents farm. The bees were bringing in some pollen. There were also some capped brood in these hives. They also received the acid treatment.

Old style landing board and new style.

The one hive seemed to have a fair bit of k-wing. This is the hive which I caught as a swarm. Their queen is old (age unknown actually). The bees also seem to be fairly aggressive. In the spring time I intend to replace this queen.

Clover Field: The end

It turns out that the clover field was a massive flop. It grew well but it never flowered.

Clover field: After being cut with a bush hog

I should have taken my fathers advice and cut it down when it was 2 ft tall. I was expecting it to flower at any time and it never ended up doing that. The weeds also grew in quite thick. There must have been only a couple of dozen flowers total. It was cut for the winter, we will see what the spring will bring.

Snow! What the heck??

Yes, we have some overnight flurries tonight. Which is quite weird but not uncommon for south western Ontario.

Christmas much?

Hand-packed snow man

I was checking the long term forecast and it was looking pretty bleak. Luckily my treatments all end on Saturday. So I will remove my formic acid pad from my weaker hive and add on a hive top feeder to see if they will take some feed in. My two other hives which I have at my home property have some 42 day old Apivar strips in.

Long term grim forecast

I will be removing my various mite treatments and then I intend to do an Oxalic Acid treatment (Trickle Method). This is recommended by the ministry of agriculture in the fall when there is the least amount of brood rearing; typically after a formic acid treatment. It involves mixing 35g of Oxalic Acid dihydrate crystals per 1L of 50% syrup. Then using a syringe, apply 50mL onto the cluster of bees. In a two box colony, apply 25mL on each box. It is supposed to be done on a cool day where the majority of the bees would be in the box.