What's new on the farm:
It's official - the 2025 season has started for us at Three Foragers.
Andrew has arrived on Vancouver Island to check on our wintering bees.
We're pretty nervous on what we'll find out there. In the fall, the varroa mites did a lot of damage to our hives and we don't know what the residual effect is, yet.
This year, beekeepers in the US have lost over 1 million hives so far. That's over half of the hives in the country.
Canadian beekeepers won't know their numbers for a few more weeks. Most beekeepers up here check their hives in late March.
We're preparing for the worst, but hoping for the best.
To mitigate potential losses, we have purchased some bees from New Zealand this year.
How does that work?
There are a few ways of getting new bees for your farm.
One, you can make them yourself.
This is what we always do, but we have to wait until late spring for our current hives to be strong enough to split up.
Those new hives will grow over the summer, but won't produce excess honey that we can harvest until the next year.
Two, you can buy bees from other beekeepers. You can buy from other beekeepers in your area. This gets harder as more beekeepers in North America are facing higher losses and don't have extra hives.
Or, you can buy from other countries. Australia and New Zealand have big beekeeping industries. They are also the opposite season and climate from us in Canada.
That means, they will have bees that are ready to go as we are starting up our season here in March.
We decided to both buy bees and make our own this year. That way we have the benefit of having a lot of bees very early in the season, from New Zealand.
But we also want to raise our own stock so that we keep the genetics and hardiness of our own Canadian bees.
How do you get bees from New Zealand to Canada?
Beekeepers shake the bees into wooden boxes with screens on the side for ventilation. We call these "packages" of bees.
The queens are each placed into a small cage to protect her during transport.
Then the wooden boxes are stacked on a pallet and shipped to the airport.
The bees are flown overnight from New Zealand to Vancouver airport. Andrew will be waiting at the airport with his truck to pick up the pallets.
As soon as he gets the hives, he takes the ferry across to Vancouver Island and brings the hives to our home yard.
The following few days, Andrew and his crew will have a lot of hard work ahead of them.
First, they will place each package of bees into proper hive equipment.
Next, each hive needs to receive a queen.
Finally, Andrew and the crew will move the hives out to separate outyards.
It's going to be a punishing week of work, but it will be worth it!
