Michael Barber has been a beekeeper for the last 12 years and founded Tri-City Bee Rescue in Guelph.
He gave GuelphToday a tour of a honey bee hive site in Moffat at Old Orchard Farm. Barb Robinson is a friend of the farm owner so she stores her 21 hives on the site and the rescue helps her take care of the hives. Tri-City Bee Rescue has 160 of its own hives and helps take care of 150 other hives.
The rescue removes hives from homes, buildings and other locations they shouldn’t be. The bees are then transported to a quarantine yard where they recuperate. Once the hive is strong enough the quarantine yard will become a regular hive site and a new quarantine yard is set up at a different location.
Here is what a honey bee hive colony consists of:
Queen: A female bee is chosen by other bees before it hatches. Unlike the other bees, her diet consists of royal jelly, a protein rich secretion. This nutrient rich diet is why queens live longer than other bees. Her sole purpose is to reproduce since she is the only female bee in the colony with fully developed ovaries. A queen bee produces roughly 1,500 eggs a day. It takes 16 days for a queen to hatch.
Drones: These are male bees and their only purpose is to mate with virgin queen bees.
Workers: These are female bees that don’t lay eggs. They are the labour force for the hive. Some of their tasks include cleaning, gathering food and making honey.
“The queen isn't really in charge. It's perceived by lots of people that the queen is actually in charge of the hive. The workers are in charge of the hive,” said Barber.
He compared it to the political system. The politicians think they are in charge but really it’s the voters who are pushing for things they want and need. Bees need food, health, water and enough eggs.
When a queen isn’t making enough fertilized eggs and her pheromones lose potency the other bees in the colony know they need to make another queen.
“So sometimes the other queen can actually stay in the hive. And you'll have a hive with two queens for a little while. But it's up to her daughter,” said Barber. It’s pretty similar to the show Game of Thrones.
The virgin queen can send out a “war cry” from her cell, which is covered in wax, to let the old queen know she is coming out and is ready to fight. “It's kind of her alarm system to tell the old queen okay I'm about to hatch. And I'm giving you the time to get out of the hive,” said Barber.
The old queen can leave to start a new colony with her loyal bees but if she chooses to stay, a fight ensues. “It looks like a pregnant woman fighting an MMA fighter,” said Barber.
When the old queen leaves to start a new hive it can last a year if the queen is able to lay enough eggs to get the colony started.
The tasty part is the honey. One hive can produce over 200 pounds of honey.
Beekeepers know when to extract honey from their honey super boxes when a frame in the box is entirely covered in wax. The moisture content of the honey has to be under 17 per cent. When bees create the wax capping it’s because they know it’s the right moisture content for the honey to be stored and used later on.
With the current weather conditions switching between rain and high heat “it’s been a great honey year around Guelph,” said Barber. Rain encourages flowers to grow like aster and goldenrod for bees to feed off of. Hives need to be hot to work well.
During the winter bees rely on the honey they’ve stored for food. The hive has to be kept around 30 degrees Celsius. Bees will dislocate their wings and use their muscles to make friction and create heat. If the bees are too small and there aren’t enough of them the hive will get too cold, freeze and die.
Aside from starvation, the number one cause of mortality over winter are varroa mites. Varroa feed off of honey bees. “So the decline in the hive population and the health of the hive happens really quickly once you have a varroa infestation,” said Barber. Tri-City Bee Rescue treats for varroa mites all year long with an organic product.
He considers Guelph a bee city since there are many commercial beekeepers, backyard beekeepers and the University of Guelph’s Honey Bee Research Centre.
“I'm very proud of how much people care about not just honeybees, but just, you know, their lawns and being mindful of water use and being mindful of what's planted where,” said Barber.
Although honey at grocery stores and honey from local beekeepers is the same “a lot of that honey is travelling a long way and a lot of those beekeepers don't get paid as much as they should to give those big companies their honey,” he said.
He encourages people to buy honey locally and directly from beekeepers.
As for the future of Tri-City Bee Rescue Barber wants to grow its hives to 250 by next year.
