HONEY

Our 2023 Ontario Grade A gold honey is still in stock...

250 gram jar $5.00 - 10 jars remaining

500 gram jar $10.00 - 40 jars remaining

Kilo jar $20.00 - 2 jars remaining

Produced with a mix of wild and garden flowers; tree nectar and pollen, and cover crops.

Our gold honey took first place at the McDonalds Corners Agricultural Fair in 2021.

Great gift idea!  Contact whitscust@gmail.com for details.

2024:

We have lost several hives this winter, and seem to be down to two or three. Orders for two more "nuc" colonies were placed in late January.  We will likely have less honey this season, though with fewer hives requiring maintenance through the spring, our 2024 honey should be available earlier in the season than last year.

2023:  Our 6 hives are busy keeping warm and consuming the honey they stored for the winter.  On warmer days, the bees make short flights to remove trash, dead bees, and refuse from the hive; or take their final flight away from the colony.

6 of our 7 hives are doing well; one hive lost it's queen last fall and will eventually die off.  

Over the winter, Julia checks the hives and if they seem to be getting short on food, we place some food in the hive - either "Hive Alive", a nutrient rich commercial bee food, or sugar cakes laced with peppermint.

2022:

Right now the bees are consuming the nectar and pollen from our dandelions, maple trees and lilacs.

This past winter was very hard for beekeepers in Eastern Ontario.  

We were unable to source two new hives this season.

However, Julia tells me that at least one hive looks quite populated and there have been signs that the other hive is trying to grow a successor queen.  Therefore, we will have to do a new task for us, called hive splitting.

Basically, it is a technique whereby a hive is divided into two boxes, ensuring that at least one queen egg is transported to the new hive along with a compliment of worker bees.

This would be a new task for us, so Julia is consulting with some local expert bee keepers to learn some best practices and also find out what affect this will have on our overall honey harvest.  Will it double our quantity of honey, halve it, etc.?

So much to learn.  

I hope we will be able to keep at least one hand free to take a few photos of this process as I am sure you will find it interesting.  

2020:

We are in the process of drawing our first harvest of 2020.  The first drawing appears to be a white grade - considered by connoisseurs to be the best.  It is lighter and sweeter in flavor than other darker honeys.

I expect our third drawing will be darker, as I am growing buckwheat to feed and develop the vegetable growing field.  Bees love buckwheat, and will be harvesting the nectar when the buckwheat blooms. 

Some folks prefer the buckwheat honey flavor.  I am not one of them, though I would use it for baking or braising vegetables - a great way to have carrots!  (Clean the carrots and steam them for a few minutes.  Meanwhile, put a small amount of honey and water (about 2:1 ratio honey to water) in a small sauce pan, mince in some garlic or ginger (or both), and perhaps a light sprinkle of cumin.

When the carrots are tender, remove from steam, drain, serve on plate and driddle the melted honey across them. 

Especially good for children who are not big fans of carrots.

Prices:

Honey - 500 gram jars $8.00

Honey - 1 kilogram jars $16.00

Honey - 3 kilogram buckets $45.00

If you are interested in purchasing honey in 2021, feel free to PRE-ORDER by sending Bob an e-mail.  Our bee yard is still very small, so our product sells out quickly.

Please use the header "Honey" for honey email requests.

2019 marked the first season of beekeeping for Whitsend.  Despite our inexperience, I believe this was the best product our farm has harvested during our eleven years in business.

We started with two hives in spring of 2019.  By midsummer, we had four hives - the first two grew big enough to "swarm' .  This is when a hive reaches a maximum population, the colony produces new queens, which take half the workers away to a new location).

During the winter of 2019-20, three of these four hives succumbed.  One was invaded by shrews (which eat the bees), one seems to have lost it's queen (which usually means the end of the colony), and the other failed to thrive for reasons we could not determine.

We purchased two new colonies this spring.  One arrived with a condition known as "chalk brood".  This is a fungal infection that affects the developing larvae.  We immediately got a refund for this one, as these hives often do not survive.  Julia came up with the idea of opening up the hive a little to allow more air circulation.  Between that and the bees casting out their infected brood, the colony seems to be recovering.

The other new hive got off to a slow start, but now appears to be behaving as expected.

If you are interested in knowing more about our honey production, visit this page periodically; we'll be updating it as we continue learning the craft of beekeeping.

About our Honey bees

When we first brainstormed the possibilities of starting a farm, both Julia and I thought the idea of beekeeping suited a "whole farm" approach.  Due to concern from the neighbors, beekeeping at our rented property in Stittsville was not possible.

The new property in Lanark provided the opportunity to start beekeeping.  The previous owners were beekeepers, so a lot of ground work had already been laid. For example, mid summer is a time when there are relatively few wildflowers in bloom - known to beekeepers as the 'dearth of summer'.  As our first season progressed here, during the dearth we saw our bees foraging on the perennials that Malcolm and Kristine had wisely planted for their bees.

In addition to nearby wild flower meadows, these bees forage for nectar and pollen from our own flower beds, basswood trees, fruit trees, evergreen trees, vegetable crops and cover crops. There is no industrial agriculture anywhere near our farm, so the bees (and the honey) are safe from pesticides.

Welcome to the Whitsend bee yard.

A quiet corner of the property - shade for the summer and plenty of light in the winter, surrounded by a mix of wild flowers and easy enough to get to.  Safe from predators and removed from disturbance.  Accessible for visitors but far enough away for those concerned about stings.

These are the first two hives we started with.  By summers end, we had doubled our colonies to four.

With so many details to see to, we split some of the tasks up.

Julia took the lead with the bees, reading the literature, doing the research, and enrolling in a course at Algonquin college.

The late spring in 2019 delayed the introduction of our first colonies - a little later than usual.

The two nucleus colonies (called "nucs" in the bee trade) - a young queen and her first small population of workers - arrive in a pair of boxes that are opened up on top of the hive.  They quickly find the entrances and move in.

It takes about a day or two before the two colonies sort themselves out.  They then set out to explore the surrounding landscape and determine where the food is.

Bees are a relatively low maintenance livestock

The workload may not be great, but timing is everything.  Regular inspection helps predict when action is required.

At regular intervals, the hives are opened up, the frames lifted out, and the condition of the hive is observed.

Bees tend to select different frames for different purposes.  Some are filled with pollen (a protein based food), some with eggs and larvae (collectively known as brood), and some are filled with honey.

This frame is full of capped brood - well-fed baby bees wrapped in cocoons and tucked into wax cells which are capped off by nurse bees. This is their last stage of babyhood. When they emerge, they are full-grown and they immediately get to work cleaning out their own cell!

One item we look for are queen larvae, which the bees place in cells that are constructed differently.

Another important aspect of inspection is bee health.

The bottom of the hives are designed to slide out.  This reveals the detritus that that falls to the floor of the hive.

This is examined for mites.  The number of mites found here determines if there is a "normal" amount of mites per hive, or if there is an infestation,

This frame is about half full of capped honey - not yet ready for extraction.  When several frames are more than ninety per cent full of capped honey cells, they are replaced with empty frames and the full honey frames are taken to the house for processing.

Extraction

After gently brushing the bees off the frames (using a special 'bee brush'), they are brought inside.

First, the wax capping the cells needs to be removed, using another specialized tool, an uncapping fork.

The wax is separated and stored for other uses, such as candles or soap.  I've tried some as a  chewing gum.

Spinning the frames....thanks to our excellent friend Jeannine for kindly loaning us the extractor and a lot of other equipment!

This is the honey starting to flow out of the extractor. It passes through several filters to remove bits of wax, pollen and other detritus.

After the extractor is emptied, the honey sits for a day or two to allow air bubbles to work their way out. Apparently bubbly honey is more likely to crystallize, so we let the honey settle before bottling.

These bees are hanging out outside to stay cool. Either that, or they are preparing to swarm.  Time to move quickly.

As it turned out, our first swarm caught us off guard.  The previous inspection was seven days ago and suggested that this colony was getting close to swarming.

It was closer than we expected.  We planned our work for today, but as we approached the hives, the unmistakable droning sound of many many bees told us that one of the hives was on the move.

In this instance, all turned out ok.  We found the swarm, and with a little help form a more experienced beekeeper in the neighborhood, we were able to catch our first swarm...

To be continued...how to catch a swarm that's twenty five feet up in a tree.