A teen with bees

I always get a brief, confused stare whenever I tell people about my small business.

After I assure them that they heard me correctly, a series of predictable questions follow, ranging from “What made you get into THAT?” to “How much money do you get?” and the famous “Have you ever been stung?”

The first question is reasonable, I guess. After all, beekeeping is not the usual activity associated with 17-year-olds, but my motivation is far more typical for the demographic.

I got the idea one summer day in 2013 after I came home from work at a nearby ranch. My job there was to stack endless bales of hay, row upon row, in a blazing tin oven some people call a barn.

I did not like it, is what I am trying to say.

The news was on the TV when I walked in. They were interviewing some teenager, around 14, about his lucrative beekeeping enterprise. I don't remember the exact details, but he had approximately 90 hives and made $90,000 (!!) a year.

That was much more than I was making, and seemed to involve much less work, so I decided to give it a try.

As an avid player of strategy games such as “Rome: Total War” and its many knockoffs, I knew the folly of entering a battle without conducting proper reconnaissance first, and thus I set out to scout the mysterious territory of beekeeping.

My quest for knowledge lasted for the rest of the year, during which I spent hours watching helpful YouTube videos, browsing websites such as backyardbeekeeping.com, Ontariobee.com and reading the book “Beekeeping for Dummies” by Howland Blackiston.

There is an ancient Croatian proverb that states, “He who becomes thou beekeeper without reading thy beekeeping stuff first is doomed to lose all thy bees and suffer a painful sting to thy wallet and pride.”

You probably think that I made that up, and that assumption is correct, but you get the point.

Another thing you have to do is find a location. The ideal spot will allow the sun to hit your hives as early in the morning as possible, so it can't have too many trees to the east, but there should be trees right behind the hives to the west so that the colonies do not experience the full fury of the infernal noon sun. If the colony is hot, the bees will devote an enormous amount of the workforce on cooling the hive, and if it gets too hot, they are likely to pack up and leave.

This disastrous event is called swarming, and is caused by overcrowding and other unfavorable conditions. During the swarm, half of your hive will steal all the honey they can and set out to establish a new colony.

It never happened to me, but I imagine that having your bees form a buzzing cloud of angry stings and rove the neighbourhood in search of a new home will not make you many friends, especially if that home ends up in your neighbour's backyard.

There should also be some sort of wind cover to protect the hives in the winter, but not too much cover, as they will need a breeze for the summer months.

Lastly, there has to be some source of water nearby, and if there is not, you will have to provide it.

Things get even more complicated when you try to satisfy the humans.
By law, the hives must not be placed 30 metres away from a property line separating the land on which they are placed and 10 metres from a highway (for a full list of beekeeping laws in Ontario go to omafra.gov.on.ca/english/food/inspection/bees/beekeepingregulations.htm.)

By 2014, I had the spot, the information and the money. All I needed was to find a seller.

After a long time of searching and price-matching, I found all I needed at Georgian Bay Honey in Owen Sound.

I do not remember the exact numbers, but after the nucs (pronounced “nukes,” the short-hand for a nucleus colony of bees) six unassembled hives, about 40 unassembled frames (four frames came in each nuc) and a smoker, I spent about $800.

Unfortunately, while we were packing all the goods in the trunk, a warband of 20ish bees decided to join their sisters trapped in the nuc boxes.

Needless to say, the three-hour drive home in a car buzzing with feral bees was not a relaxing occasion.

Moving the bees from the nucs to the hives went better than I hoped, with absolutely no comical disaster to speak of.

Not much was left to do after that; they do all the work on their own. Things get buzzy again in September, which is harvest time.

I thought my colonies would not have enough honey for me to harvest on the first year, and two of my hives did not, but one of them was absolutely overflowing with the good stuff.

I rushed to the Bee-Care-Full Apiary in Hanmer to buy the equipment and talked to the owner of the business, Noel Shank.

Noel seemed like a veteran apiarist with the hard-earned knowledge that can only come with years of experience, but he was more than willing to pass some information to a noob like me.

To harvest the divine nectar, you first need to cut the wax off the surface of the frames. This is called capping and is done with the imaginatively named “capping knife.” You then put the frames in an barrel called a honey extractor.

I got 20 liters out of that hive, and divided it up in 250ml jars, which I sold for the inexcusably high amount of $15 to family, neighbours and friends.

Then came the true test of my skills. September and October can be considered the most crucial for a keeper and will decide the future of the colonies.

This is the time when the apiarist has to feed his bees with syrup, install proper winter protection, regulate the moisture and set up mouse-guards at the hive entrances.

To be honest, I had no idea if I did a proper job during this time, and this has troubled me the entire winter.

Had my bees starved to death? Had they died from some evil, but preventable, pestilence? Did they get invaded by tiny xenomorphs? These concerns have haunted me through the dark months of ice and snow, and were finally brought to an end on March 22.

On this day, I peeked into the hives and was met with an equal amount of relief and despair.

Two of the colonies have survived, one of which just barely lingered, but the hive that gave me all the honey last year was completely and utterly destroyed by the wretched American Foulbrood disease, which turns the delicious honey into a useless red slime.

I was forced to purge the corrupted boxes in a cleansing fire to prevent its evil from spreading, but my hopes for the future have not gone up in smoke.

My ultimate goal is to create my own legitimate honey business and be like that kid on TV I saw twp years ago.

I don't remember your name, or anything else about you except that you are a kid with a lot of money and bees, but you have inspired me to take on the swarm, suffering many stings and spending lots of money in the process.

Ivan Radisic is a co-op student from Robert F. Hall Secondary School in Caledon, Ont. He is on a placement at Northern Life.