Our Story

I had all ways been interested in raising bees. The learning of all the hows, the whys, the handing, and of course the reward of the natural honey is something that I have embraced with enthusiasm.

We are only in our first year and have all ready reaped the rewards of our efforts. Our apiary started out with 4 hives and expanded to five when we learned all about swarming and the subsequent catching there of. This is Some thing that I had never thought of or ever imagined that I would be doing. So there I was precariously balancing on a rickety old ladder wearing my bee suit and my wife wearing a make shift protective bee suit. Shaking the branch while holding a Tupperware container was difficult. Asking my wife to hold the ladder was harder. She stepped up like a champ and learned that maybe this endeavor is not to scary. As a side, she was also the first of the family to be stung (although not during the swarm recapture)

We had to learn all about bee husbandry in the late spring to prevent over crowding, when to add new boxes to the hives. We learned that apparently you have to feed bees in Alberta in the spring (and again in the fall). How to find a queen and also how get hive to make a new queen.

To get honey, we strive to get the bees to be at their maximum population when the clover is blooming, this gives the bees opportunity to make lots of honey for us while leaving enough for them to make it though the winter.

After the honey has been removed we start preparing for winter. We take the hives apart and inspect for the numerous infliction that can have an effect on them.

During the winter, the bees are simply wrapped in a thin insulation and left out in the field. These resilient little insects group together, shiver their bodies to stay warm and eat honey to stay alive all the while maintaining an internal temp in the hive of approx. 30 deg.