It all started at a car free day here in Vancouver. I saw someone at a booth with a observation hive with live bees in it.
I was intrigued and asked lots of questions and arranged to attend a backyard workshop later that month. The more I learned about bees the deeper they pulled me into their world. I was fascinated by the hive mind and the whole super organism that is a colony.
I took a few more workshops, went to some local beekeeping club meetings, read every book i could get my hands on while watching a lot of YouTube videos (some good, some not so good)
I made the next big step and bought my first hive in the winter and ordered bees for delivery in spring. By the end of the summer I had 3 hives. The next year more than double and each year after it I added more hives, putting them in friends and friends of friends backyards. Pretty soon people were calling me to place hives in their yards. The hobby had become obsessive!
Late 2015 I was having issues with swallowing and after seeing the doctor(s) I was diagnosed with Squamous Cell Carcinoma or in short Cancer in the base of my tounge. I spent the early part of 2016 in treatment with a combination of Chemotherapy and Radiation that took a toll on my body and my spirit. The rest of 2016 was spent recovering from the damage that was inflicted on my body to rid it of the cancer. Throughout this whole ordeal my family was my rock but knowing that i would be able to see my bees again in the spring was my inspiration to stay positive and look to better things in the future.
I did have a pretty good long running full time job before i left for treatment but that evaporated after my health returned. So I was left with a predicament, go look for another full time desk job or give this beekeeping thing a go. Having cancer makes you look at things a bit differently when you ask most people that have have gone through it. For me it seem that life is too short to spend it doing things you dont want to and beekeeping brings me joy so here I am.
I have always marched to a different drummer. As a teenager I grew vegetables and sold them to a local grocer. In my 20's I ran a music promotion company, putting on concerts for local and international bands. I spent time on a Kibbutz and Moshev in Israel, Backpacked around Europe for a few years. I ran a Skateboard/Snowboard shop for 13 years before starting and then working with several national sports distributors. Currently I help co-ordinate several community gardens here in Vancouver.
Beekeeping just seems like the right thing to do.
I hope you will join me on my journey with the bees and give some of our honey a try and check out all the other things we have to offer
EastVan Bees are about diversity. Multiple cultures in neighborhoods making a community. We are inspired by the history and vibrant past and future that is the East side. We work with hive host homeowners and community gardens in various Vancouver neighborhoods to produce the most diverse multi-floral honey that can only come from here. Vancouver has multitude of amazing gardens full of flowers and vegetables. Flowering trees like the Maple and Linden line our boulevards as well as all the fruit trees hidden in back yards.
Bees thrive in an urban environment. There is always enough food for our bees and with the diversity of the pollen it makes for happy healthy bees.
Our bees are never transported for pollination like country bees. Country bees often travel across the province or even across the country to pollinate various crops like canola, Sunflower or fruits like blueberries. Most beekeepers don’t have a say in if the crop gets sprayed with chemicals. While we can’t guarantee our honey to be organic it’s about as pure and raw as you’re going to get in Vancouver.
We handle every frame of honey that gets put in a jar. East Van Bees honey is never heated or over filtered to remove the pollen that gives our honey its unique neighbourhood flavor-hoods Unlike commercial honey that takes all the honey from the hives and mixes it together ,you will taste the flavors of each neighborhood and imagine what was blooming to provide the nectar that the bees collect to transform into what we know as honey.
- Raw Urban Multi Floral Honey
- Chemical Free
- Gently Filtered
- Cold Extracted
Steve
