A beekeeper to the rescue!

Until tomorrow. A good friend of mine attended our April workshop and caught bug, so to speak. She’s picking up two packages of bees (plus two for us) in Peterborough tomorrow and I’ll be meeting her to help hive them. Over the course of the next month or so, we’ll be setting up a number of new hives and re-populating dead-outs.

My family and I are also moving to a country property north of Kingston (the new SFA Headquarters) in June and when you throw that into the mix, it’s going to be a busy summer.

We could not have done this without everyone’s participation and we look forward to doing more in the future!

Cheers!

More than three-fourths of the honey sold in U.S. grocery stores isn’t exactly what the bees produce, according to testing done exclusively for Food Safety News.

The results show that the pollen frequently has been filtered out of products labeled “honey.” The removal of these microscopic particles from deep within a flower would make the nectar flunk the quality standards set by most of the world’s food safety agencies.

Ultrafiltration is an industrial process where honey is heated, and could be watered down as well, and pushed through an impossibly fine filter to remove every single spec of anything from the honey. Anything larger than 0.1 microns is taken out. For reference, a human hair averages 100 microns in width, so this thing is taking out particles that are 1000 times smaller than the diameter of a human hair. Pollen, yeast, everything. Of course, the heating itself destroys most of the good stuff in the honey anyway, so the filtering itself only adds insult to injury.

Why on earth would a respectable honey packer do this to such a perfect food? For one reason and one reason only: to hide the origin of the honey itself. The only way to find where honey comes from is by analyzing the pollen found in it. Take the pollen out and that’s impossible. Why would you want to hide where your honey comes from? Because Chinese honey imports are illegal in both the US and Canada. Time and time again, Chinese honey that is actually more honey syrup than honey shows up here. Not to mention the risk to human health of the chemical contaminants that are found in it.

Filter out the pollen and Chinese honey magically becomes legal. It doesn’t take out the illegal antibiotics or heavy metal contamination, though. Why would a respectable honey packer ultrafilter their product? It’s simple: they wouldn’t. There is no good reason to ultrafilter it and plenty of shady ones.

Be careful when you buy your honey. You could be getting a whole lot less and a whole lot more than you’re expecting.

The full article at Food Safety News has the details and test results.

So, Spring:

• Our winter losses were above average for Ontario beekeepers: we lost about 55% of our colonies. The interesting part is the reason and it’s no mystery or disease issue, either. We’ve lost colonies to two main problems: predators and starvation. The two banes of all beekeepers. Mice continue to be an issue, but we have a couple of exciting ideas for hive changes that should help. We’ll know more in Spring 2012. Eastern Ontario had a beautiful warm spell in March and when we had a peek in the hives, everything look great: nice clusters of bees and loads of stores. It should have been a cakewalk. Except, it quickly turned cold again and stayed that way until Spring. A number of colonies were fooled by the weather into thinking that Spring had arrived. The queen went into laying mode and the cluster moved off the winter stores to look after new brood. When it turns cold, the workers won’t abandon the brood to eat and wind up freezing. When you’re fulling expecting to have a humming colony, it’s a terrible thing to find everyone dead like that.
• We held our first workshop in April and were bowled over by the interest. Greg and I spent the winter answering emails from aspiring and experienced beekeepers alike, so we decided to hold a one-day workshop and see if enough people wanted to see what we’re doing. We booked a room and limited registration to 25 people. If the thing flopped, we definitely didn’t want to stand in front of 5 people in a huge auditorium and talk away. Much to our amazement, those 25 seats filled up in 8 days! We had folks from all over Eastern and Central Ontario. We had planned to hold several more over the course of the season, but life got in the way. Watch here for more in 2013.

Spring – Summer:

• There are three ways to replaced dead-out colonies: split surviving colonies, buy more bees or catch swarms. We did some of each. Once the warm weather finally got underway, numbers built very quickly and stayed high all summer. I was able to catch a swarm from one of the survivor colonies and successfully split the remaining bees at the same time.
• We bought six packages of bees from a breeder just north of Kingston who has a unique strain of stock. We’re referring to them as DebBees. The family has kept bees in one area for much of the last 200 years and they have enough farm land in one contiguous area to more or less isolate them from other stock. They’re amazing: I’ve seen them flying in drizzly weather. They’re wonderfully calm and don’t mind the cold either. To better observe the, we have one colony in my backyard. I was utterly amazed to look out a back window in September to see a massive amount of flying going on. The ladies were coming and going in four different directions like fighter pilots. Wow.
• 5 of those six colonies are going like gangbusters into fall. The backyard hive has a cluster the size of what I’ve come to expect in May after the brood starts hatching. The sixth colony is in what we’re forced to admit may be a questionable area for them. I guess we’ll find out in the spring. We’ve lost it over the winter twice before. If we lose it again this year, the hive will be moving.
• In July we trekked down to Leominster, Massachusetts for the third annual Northeast Treatment Free Beekeeping Conference. It’s the only event of its kind on the Eastern seaboard and is an invaluable resource for making connections and hearing the experiences of other sustainable beekeepers.

Fall:

• The summer weather literally continued right through September. October 1 dawned cold and wet and it felt like someone had turned the furnace off overnight. It’s since moved back into more seasonal temperatures: 10-12C during the day and down to 5C or so overnight. It’s given the bees notice that winter is, indeed, on her way and they’ve taken full advantage of the weather when it’s been to their liking.
• I have one hive in my back yard and it’s been amazing to watch the activity there in the fall. Our breeder told us that the bees will fly in quite low temperatures as well as some rain and I have to be honest: I took it for a bit of beeyard hyperbole. I’m pleased to see that she wasn’t kidding. I’ve seen these bees foraging in much cooler temperatures than I would have expected and I’ve never seen bees out in a light rain before, either. Amazing.

November is coming and with it, the time to close up for winter. We’ll be pulling excess bars and closing down the followers shortly and I’ll document the process fully for a post here.

Again, my apologies for not keeping up with the flow of information here. We’re fully committed to beekeeper education and sharing our knowledge and experiences with anyone who’s interested. This site and what we hope to be a full slate of workshops and lectures are key to that.

Battling the things that bug bees | OurKingston.

Beekeepers Battle ‘Perfect Storm’ : Discovery News.

I know the beekeepers who know better are doing this, but the majority of the industry is waiting for the next great chemical bullet to save them.

Judging by your comments, we seem to have struck a nerve chord and will certainly be holding more as the season progresses. Thank you for your kind words and encouragement.

To anyone who was unable to register in time, watch this space for announcements of the next ones. Even better, if you haven’t joined our low-volume email list, use the box to the right to sign up and information will be delivered directly to your in-box.

Again, thank you for your attention and kind comments. We’ve taken them all to heart.

Registration will start before the end of the month, as soon as we work out a couple of details.Thanks for being patient!

the link for the info page is here