Raw Urban Honey

Wow, things are a bit hard on the bees here in Vancouver this year. We started the year off great and the bees were loving the warm weather by swarming every chance they got. I expanded the apiarys to double the previous numbers and 4 new locations around Vancouver. On another note I decided to go legit and source nice jars and make some cool labels. I worked with the wonderful people at District Dogs Designs who use technology from the previous century that still works well.Letterpress printing machines from 1909. I'll post some pics of that as well as a video once i get it edited.

I have pulled honey from 3 of the 6 locations I have now, as most of the new hives did not have enough to take due to the extreme drought we are having here on the west coast of Canada. Never before has it not rained during the summer. We have only seen a couple days of rain since the beginning of May. This has been devastating for the bees has they have no real nectar sources in abundance. There is a few colonies still bringing in nectar but I am pretty worried that we might have to put back some of the frames I have in the freezer for this type of issue.

This year has been a learning year once again. Beekeeping always keeps me on my toes. Perhaps that is the allure of being a beek, always something new to bee-hold (yikes) I will leave you with a few pics of my summer so far and some of the new bee yards.