Bee Keeping

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for those that are into bees here's some useful links:
http://www.three-peaks.net/beekeep.htm
http://www.beesource.com/plans/index.htm
http://maarec.cas.psu.edu/bkCD/equipment/hive_equip.htm
http://www.honeycouncil.ca/users/folder.asp?FolderID=4707
http://www.owa.cc/

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from http://www.biodynamic.org.uk/Research.htm#varroa

Varroa control with essential oils

1. Using Essential Oils for Honey Bee Mite Control - Jim Amrine, Bob Noel, Harry Mallow, Terry Stasny, Robert Skidmore

Report on Research carried out in 1995 Division of Plant and Soil Sciences, Virginia State University Morgantown WV 26505-6108 USA

Syrups containing essential oils were fed to bees in order to assess whether these could help control varroa mite infestation. Syrups were made with spearmint oil and applied on tracking strips inside the front entrance of the colony.

Results showed a marked reduction in varroa mite populations after three weeks of treatment. The essential oils appeared to be inhibiting the sensory and reproductive functions of the mites. Essential oils from the mint family are harmless to bees and honey appears to be more effective as a medium of application than sugar syrup.

Report written in English 1996 BDAA library

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all the posts about the honey bee die off (colony collapse disorder) have been moved over here -> https://www.cannabis-world.org/cw/showthread.php?t=3211

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hexagonal bee hives:
http://www.albios.it/en/pages/veter/veter.htm

there is a book about this available at the above site, but it is in italian
20) Apicoltura ed evoluzione dell'ape: una nuova visione dell'essere dell'ape, suo compito e sua cura. Con indicazioni per la costruzione dell'arnia esagonale. (Bee-keeping and evolution of bees: a new vision of the being of the bee, its task and its treatment. With indications for the construction of the hexagonal beehive.) (pag. 45);

[Green Supreme]

There was a nice article in the Province today about bee keeping and making mead. Too bad I'm not smart enough to make it appear here. Peacxe GS

[nuggdigger]

MEAD: Ancient wine making a comeback

Paul Luke
The Province
Sunday, April 22, 2007


A drink that fell from favour 500 years ago is making a comeback in B.C.

Mead, an ancient quaff made from honey, water and yeast, is flowing through restaurants, wine shops and down the throats of meadheads across the province.

Three meaderies have sprung up in B.C. over the past five years, in addition to dozens of honey producers brewing small batches for themselves.

"There's a renaissance," says Helen Grond, co-owner of Middle Mountain Mead on Hornby Island. "It began in the States and it has grown gradually through word of mouth."

Grond, a geologist who launched Middle Mountain three years ago with partner Cam Graham, says the local food movement has boosted interest in B.C.-made meads.

And there's the scent of Norse and Anglo-Saxon romance attached to mead, a romance stoked by mead's presence in the Lord of the Rings trilogy and film versions of Old English epic Beowulf.

Tugwell Creek Honey Farm and Meadery, on the Strait of Juan de Fuca just outside Sooke, is Western Canada's oldest and largest meadery.

Mead-maker and apiarist Bob Liptrot, who launched Tugwell Creek with his wife, Dana LeComte, in 2002, says mead has rekindled a strong attraction among youth.

Across the road from Liptrot's meadery is some of Vancouver Island's best windsurfing.

"A lot of the windsurfing crowd come by and buy a bottle," says Liptrot, 51.

"They don't have deep pockets like some of the Oak Bay people, but we still appreciate their business."

Demand has swelled to the point that Tugwell Creek's output will likely rise to 6,000 to 8,000 litres this year from about 5,000 last year, he says.

Michael Campbell, a retired schoolteacher who is starting B.C's third commercial meadery, turned to mead to diversify the output from his Abbotsford honey farm.

Campbell, 60, who will bottle his first commercial mead this fall, believes there's lots of room for more meaderies.

"It's a symbiotic relationship," says Campbell, who co-owns Campbell's Gold Honey Farm Country Store & Meadery.

"The parts may make a bigger whole, so you're not cutting anybody out of the market."

There are a few hurdles that will likely keep the trickle of honey wines from becoming a torrent.

First, there's the high price of entry.

Liptrot says commercial mead-makers can figure on sinking at least a quarter of a million dollars into supplies and equipment, ranging from stainless-steel mixing tanks to oak barrels, assuming they already have a building.

John Gibeau, Surrey-based president of the B.C. Honey Producers Association, says mead-making is a finicky process requiring a huge pile of patience.

Many meads take at least a year to age -- if mead-makers get the right balance of yeast, honey, water.

Add fruit, herbs or spices and things get even trickier.

"It's much harder to make mead than wine or beer," Gibeau says. "It's a long haul, and that discourages people."

Gibeau predicts mead-making won't take off until someone markets a low-cost mead-making kit.

Some mead-makers, such as Middle Mountain, buy most of their honey from others.

Keeping your own bees, while more economical, brings a host of other challenges, from parasites to bears.

John Schreiner, a North Vancouver wine writer, believes the biggest challenge facing mead-makers is lack of awareness.

"It's a niche product," says Schreiner, author of The Wines of Canada. "It's a huge amount of education that's going to be required to get consumers to even understand the product."

In the past 12 months, B.C.'s Liquor Distribution Branch -- which sells no mead itself -- says only 312 12-bottle cases of mead were sold across the province.

Tugwell Creek, whose meads are sold in the Lower Mainland at Liberty Wine Merchants stores, targets higher-end restaurants and suggests appropriate mead-food pairings.

While a fascination with Nordic myth has helped in mead's rebirth, Asia may have more to do with its commercial future, Grond says.

"Mead goes well with Indian foods because it's low in tannins and astringency," she says. "It's very smooth. It goes in places in which other wines can't go very often."

There is one group of enthusiastic consumers that wants no educating -- and they can't even wait until the

honey ferments.

When Liptrot moves his hives into the mountains for the summer, he erects electrified bear fences.

"Sometimes we get a determined bear with a sweet tooth that will get through a fence no matter what," he says. "That can be a big loss."

pluke@png.canwest.com

© The Vancouver Province 2007







hope i found the right one GS ....

peace:kind:

[Green Supreme]

Yup thanks. Peace GS

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from http://redicecreations.com/article.php?id=974

Sharon Labchuk is a longtime environmental activist and part-time organic beekeeper from Prince Edward Island. She has twice run for a seat in Ottawa's House of Commons, making strong showings around 5% for Canada's fledgling Green Party. She is also leader of the provincial wing of her party. In a widely circulated email, she wrote:

I'm on an organic beekeeping list of about 1,000 people, mostly Americans, and no one in the organic beekeeping world, including commercial beekeepers, is reporting colony collapse on this list. The problem with the big commercial guys is that they put pesticides in their hives to fumigate for varroa mites, and they feed antibiotics to the bees. They also haul the hives by truck all over the place to make more money with pollination services, which stresses the colonies.

Her email recommends a visit to the Bush Bees Web site at Here, Michael Bush felt compelled to put a message to the beekeeping world right on the top page:

Most of us beekeepers are fighting with the Varroa mites. I'm happy to say my biggest problems are things like trying to get nucs through the winter and coming up with hives that won't hurt my back from lifting or better ways to feed the bees.

This change from fighting the mites is mostly because I've gone to natural sized cells. In case you weren't aware, and I wasn't for a long time, the foundation in common usage results in much larger bees than what you would find in a natural hive. I've measured sections of natural worker brood comb that are 4.6mm in diameter. What most people use for worker brood is foundation that is 5.4mm in diameter. If you translate that into three dimensions instead of one, it produces a bee that is about half as large again as is natural. By letting the bees build natural sized cells, I have virtually eliminated my Varroa and Tracheal mite problems. One cause of this is shorter capping times by one day, and shorter post-capping times by one day. This means less Varroa get into the cells, and less Varroa reproduce in the cells.

Who should be surprised that the major media reports forget to tell us that the dying bees are actually hyper-bred varieties that we coax into a larger than normal body size? It sounds just like the beef industry. And, have we here a solution to the vanishing bee problem? Is it one that the CCD Working Group, or indeed, the scientific world at large, will support? Will media coverage affect government action in dealing with this issue?

These are important questions to ask. It is not an uncommonly held opinion that, although this new pattern of bee colony collapse seems to have struck from out of the blue (which suggests a triggering agent), it is likely that some biological limit in the bees has been crossed. There is no shortage of evidence that we have been fast approaching this limit for some time.

We've been pushing them too hard, Dr. Peter Kevan, an associate professor of environmental biology at the University of Guelph in Ontario, told the CBC. And we're starving them out by feeding them artificially and moving them great distances. Given the stress commercial bees are under, Kevan suggests CCD might be caused by parasitic mites, or long cold winters, or long wet springs, or pesticides, or genetically modified crops. Maybe it's all of the above...