Serendipibee blog: A new beekeeper's journey

 Hey Serendipibee fam, Crazy times we’re living in right now. Lauchie and I have been physical distancing for the last 3.5 weeks. Life is turned upside down, but we’re slowly getting used to the new normal. The one upside to COVID-19 is that we can continue beekeeping...

Last evening, while working in the bee yard, I did something foolish—actually a series of foolish things—that provoked a bee attack that resulted in 18 stings to my knees, butt and thighs. And holy mother on toast and jam, did it ever hurt—like snorting‑a‑gob‑of‑wasabi‑up‑your‑nose type of hurt (for the record, I’ve never done this, but I assume that it would produce a similarly intense burn).

Big week here at Serendipi-bee.ca, folks. As many of you know already, we completed our first extraction of the year and our little buzzies blessed us with a generous bounty. To celebrate their hard work, we are making Serendipibee honey available to people in the...

So it’s mid-July and the first major honey flow is starting to dry up. For about 4 weeks—from June 16 until now—our honeybees were bringing in ridiculous amounts of nectar. Just oodles and oodles. We could barely keep up. To add some context, Lauchie put a weight...

We had a beautiful, sunny day on Monday, so we took advantage of the weather to open up our hives. Here is a recap of our first hive inspection of 2018. We didn’t expect any surprises, but boy, were we wrong!

Quick update, folks. We FINALLY had some nice weather this weekend and both hives are going gangbusters. That’s right, ladies and gents—both of our hives survived the winter! Let the spring time bee time fun commence! Boo‑yah! Happy dance! Waggles all around!  ...

As we enter our second year, we thought it would be a good time to sit back and reflect on some of the lessons learned during our first year as “beeks”. And in no particular order, this is what surprised us the most as new beekeepers:

It might surprise you to learn that Lauchie and I didn’t start beekeeping with the intent to harvest beeswax (also known as cera alba for you science-y guys). It never even crossed our minds. Honey was the name of the game. But where there are bees, there is wax—sometimes lots of it—and eventually we had to decide what to do with it.

When we first started out, Lauchie and I were kind of obsessed with Paul Kelly. If you haven’t heard of him yet, Kelly is a researcher and apiary manager for the University of Guelph Honey Bee Research Centre and he is kind of a rock star on the UoG Honey Bee Research...

The season of never‑ending darkness is upon us and to celebrate (cope with?) the change in weather, Lauchie and I have been busy getting our bees ready for the long, cold Canadian winter.

Late in the season, as the nectar flow dries up, honey bees face a brand new challenge—Robber bees. This new threat spells trouble for weaker hives.

Oh baby! We are flush with honey! When we started beekeeping, we were told not to expect honey the first year. Bees are focused on building comb and stocking up for the winter during the first year, so there often isn’t an excess of honey that can be extracted. If it...

On July 12, 2017,  we successfully re-queened Sunshine hive with a new Carnolian queen, Lola, courtesy the Ottawa Community Beekeepers (OCB).

Ever wondered "what’s the difference between a honeybee and a bumblebee?" It’s a valid question. There are several qualities these bees share as pollinators, but there are also some marked differences. In particular, bumblebees and honeybees differ in the way they...

This was interesting enough that we decided to post a short update on Sunshine hive's progress. What do you think of their handiwork?         Those long peanut shaped things sticking out from the frame are queen cups...lots and lots and lots of...

Greetings fellow bee nerds and misguided Googlers searching for ‘vees’. I’m Lauchie, Becca’s partner in life and in this beekeeping adventure. Becca handed me the baton this week to write up the Serendipibee blog. If you’ve read thus far, you can tell that Becca’s...

After 7 full days of waiting and wondering what the girls were up to, we FINALLY cracked the top off our hives and took a peek inside. Full disclosure, Lauchie and I stalked our hives all week—every night we drove to the yard, donned some rubber boots and watched the...

Good news everybody! Our bees moved in and they are ready to redecorate! We peeked under the top cover late on Sunday and the little ladies were already busy propolizing the tops of their frames. How did we come to this point? Thinking back, the last 3 months have...