Here are just a few of the many pictures that we’ve taken over the years of our many bee adventures.

The Misfits 2011

The last hive to have it’s honey taken off and to be fed for this year. This is hive is known as the “misfits”. It was rescued from a house on Greenhill and until we knew for sure wether or not there were any health issues with this hive we couldn’t add it to our regular beeyards. It didn’t fit in, hence the name. It now lives happily in the backyard of Nova Scotia’s “Kilted Chef” along the Northhumberland Strait.

Spring Time 2011

Every spring we open the hives for the first time after having wrapped them up for the cold winter months. Some hives may not survive and it is always exciting to see our bees for the first time of the year.

Wrapping Time

As the weather turns colder and the bees no longer fly, its time to get them ready for winter.

Spring Feeding

Every Spring is an exciting time for beekeepers as you never know exactly how each hive did over the winter.

Extracting Honey

Honey is taken off the beehives twice a year – once in late summer and again in early fall. At the same time the hives are checked to make sure that all is well. In the pictures below, you can see Wayne and myself going through a hive and extracting the honey.

Fall Feeding

In the fall the bees are fed a heavy sugar syrup solution. During the winter any honey left in the bee hives would crystallize naturally. Without any moisture to turn the crystalized honey into a liquid, the bees would starve. By feeding the bees a heavy sugar syrup solution which stays liquid all winter, the bees have access to food. During the winter months the bees do become active for brief periods of time whenever the temperature is above 10 – 13 C or higher.

Nukes Everywhere!

Last summer for the first time ever we made fifteen nukes to overwinter. The idea being that if any of these survived they would help make up for any winter losses that would occur with the full hives. Of the fifteen over-wintered nukes, ten survived. As a result we learned that we had made some of our nukes too strong right from the start and they swarmed on us. Those were the ones that didn’t make it – after a swarm they were too weak to survive the winter.

Swarm In The Apiary

Swarms occur naturally in the beeyard – a swarm is a group of bees that contains the old queen and up to half the worker bees in the hive. One reason swarms occur is when the population in a hive becomes too great for the space that they occupy. The bees determine when they will swarm and swarming is a means of ensuring the survival of the bees. In October 2004, Wayne and I discovered a very interesting swarm that took place in one of our beeyards.