For close to a decade, master beekeeper Donna Moseanko successfully raised queen bees and cultivated a number of bee colonies across the qathet region. But, sometimes, even for a master, beekeeping can go off track.
"I lost all my hives last year," said Moseanko. "Probably due to a few things like management, pests, and wasps were really brutal last year."
Wasps eat bees and may attack a colony to source honey or protein when their colonies grow large and other food sources become scarce.
On average, one honeybee colony will have 30,000 to 50,000 bees, depending on size. Moseanko said within that community lives the queen, who lays upward of 1,500 eggs daily. Worker bees run the hive, and drones, the male bees, mate with queens from other colonies. Once a colony is grown and healthy, honey can be harvested in the fall.
"The queen is very important, but she's not the boss, the whole colony is the boss," said Moseanko. "The breed I like is Carniolan, and they can overwinter."
Carniolan queen bees are known to be less aggressive, have good honey production and are more resistant to pests. Raising and selling queens to other honey makers can be a lucrative business, since every hive needs a queen.
June is a busy time for bees and beekeepers. Moseanko's hives are buzzing with activity with bees coming and going, searching out nectar from plants near and far.
"I raise the drones on purpose, more than regular beekeepers would want to," said Moseanko. "They go out and hang out at a tree in a big field, the cemetery, or over at the school yard."
Drones are responsible for fertilizing the queen's eggs, ensuring the continuation of the colony, and they also build honeycombs.
Moseanko has been working hard to get her bee hives on track once again, but it's not always an easy task. She said beekeepers have to keep learning, as she has been doing this past year, taking a refresher course and reading books, such as The Intuitive Beekeeper: Beyond Master Beekeeping.
Moseanko recently gave a workshop to novice beekeepers at her aviary in Cranberry.
"We don't have monoculture here, which is a good thing," said Moseanko. "I used to have hives in 13 different locations."
Bees with the ability to gather pollen from a variety of flowers means the honey produced here will taste like a particular region of qathet, depending on what type of flowers are growing.
Places like Manitoba and Saskatchewan have more of a monoculture of plants, such as alfalfa and canola. But, that also means those regions produce most of the honey Canadians buy.
"They have huge quantities of honey, because they have bees to pollinate it, to make the seed, and then honey is the byproduct of all of that," said Moseanko. "There are only a few large commercial producers in 小蓝视频; the rest are all backyard producers or folks like me."
There are many different climates in 小蓝视频, so, for example, if honey is produced in the Kootenays, it may taste more like alfalfa since that's grown there. In qathet, blackberry bushes are everywhere and thus a common taste for honey made in the region.
"Right now I want to focus on raising queens," said Moseanko. “I also raise nucs and provide them for local beekeepers to get started."
Nucs, or nucleus colonies, are small starter hives that contain a laying queen bee, worker bees, larvae and eggs, ready to expand into a larger hive.
"I'm a certified instructor, but I'm still learning," said Moseanko. "Something has been going wrong the past couple years, but I am figuring some of the things out."
Beekeepers have to be registered with the province in order for the bees to be tracked in case there is a disease outbreak.
"There are a couple of [bee] rush hours in a day," said Moseanko. "They go out when the sun comes up, and then again in the later afternoon."
She said older bees are the foragers and come back with pollen.
"They have different activities depending on their age," said Moseanko. "When they do go out, they gather propolis, water, pollen and nectars, and bring it back to the hive."
Moseanko said beekeeping can be physically challenging, so now she is focused on mentoring people who are just getting started.
"I'm auditing a course right now," said Moseanko. "I'm seeing through beginners’ eyes and can see what I know and what I don't know."
She said after a tough couple of years she's feeling inspired, and feels like she has a handle on things once again.
"I want to support other beekeepers with what I'm learning, or still learning,” said Moseanko. “I've seen a lot of things; I've had up to 80 hives.
"I've done a couple workshops here in my yard, and as part of my business, if people are interested in learning, I'm open to teaching them."
Moseanko said working with her bees and the hives is her happy place.
"It was a warm day around my father’s birthday; we were in the backyard having dinner and I became fascinated by a swarm of bees," said Moseanko. "I looked at the swarm hanging from the tree and everything else just disappeared at that moment."
To contact Moseanko, email [email protected].
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