Beekeepers have been managing hives and collecting honey across the Rainy River District for years, but many of those in operation now got their start from a single workshop conducted in 2017.
Peggy Advent sells honey under the Stratton Honey Hut brand with retailers across the district, and Tyler Spry sells Spry Farm honey throughout the area. Both took to the profession after attending a workshop offered by master beekeeper Rick Neilson, the owner of Seven Bends Honey Farm in Stratton.
“My dad was a beekeeper, and we’ve always been interested in beekeeping, and Rick Neilson was offering a course. We didn’t know whether we wanted to get into it or not,” Advent said.
Nine years ago, her husband Telford, who was working out west at the time, noticed an ad for the paper and suggested that she might want to see what was involved in beekeeping. “He called me and said, ‘This may sound crazy, are you interested in maybe taking that course from Rick?’ and I said ‘Sure, but how’s this going to work?’”
“I thought ‘Well, I can’t do this because he’s not going to be able to,’” Advent said. “He was going to be out there for three or four weeks. And he said, ‘Well, you go to the course and take notes on everything and then I’ll do the rest of the course with everybody else.’”
Advent says at the time Neilson was looking to pass on the legacy of beekeeping in the district. The course was well attended and it was a wellspring of inspiration—shortly after, the Advents got started with four beehives in a small operation that has now expanded to 57 hives.
“Rick, at that time, thought he’d like to carry on the legacy of beekeeping, and he was going to do his part,” Advent said. “So he put his course out, and he thought he’d get a few… he ended up getting 80-some people, so he had to divide the course between Stratton and Devlin.”
Tyler Spry got into beekeeping with an eye to bringing a new product to the family’s small business. They too decided to embark on a beekeeping odyssey and now have around 40 hives on the farm in Devlin.
“We wanted to try to produce some honey as another leg of the Spry Farm,” he said. “We had started the agritourism side and Leanne was doing dog training, so I said, ‘Let’s produce a bunch of honey we could sell.’ As we got into it, we realized that a lot of people are selling honey and it keeps growing year over year.”
There is a lot that goes into working with hives, especially in making sure that the bees stay healthy and happy. Regular hive inspections are imperative to ensure harmful pests such as varroa mites and wax moths haven’t gotten in amongst the residents. Commercial honey producers must register their apiaries with the Ministry of Agriculture and have regular inspections as well.
It can matter where the hives are located. Larger threats aren’t uncommon: some beekeepers in the region have had to tangle with bears attacking their hives even after they try to protect them with deterrents such as electric fences.
Sometimes the bees themselves can just be kind of fussy and fickle, Spry said, so the way he cares for them can vary from year to year.
“I do enjoy having bees most of the time; there are times where I don’t enjoy having bees because it’s either a lot of work, it’s really hot, or you’re getting stung. There are some drawbacks, of course, but for me, it’s like a puzzle,” Spry said. “You’re trying to figure out how to manage these bees, and you think you’re doing it right, and then something happens, and they die over the winter. And then you’re like, ‘What did I do wrong? I don’t know. Let’s try it again.’ And then you try something else, because over the course of the season, you can only do so much, and then you put them away for winter, hope for the best, and then either it’s good, or it’s bad. Sometimes it’s bad, and you’re like, ‘Man! Well, let’s try this again.’”
Ensuring that bees have a healthy supply of good nectar to feed on and create honey is another issue. For instance, Advent said canola nectar is not good for honey production and doesn’t serve the bees very well.
“Canola [honey] crystallizes quickly, and if you have canola in your hives in the wintertime, your bees will starve to death; it goes so hard they can’t get to it,” she said.
Beekeepers also try to keep their hives far away from any flowering crop that has been sprayed with pesticides.
“That’s not to say that the bees aren’t going to find something like that,” Advent said. “But for the most part, where we are, there’s very little pesticide being sprayed, and we have three apiaries other than right here at home, so they’re fairly far away from pesticides too. We don’t like to be close to the canola either,” Advent said.
On the plus side, there are many different naturally occurring plants that flower over the course of the spring and summer.
“Generally we get dandelions in the spring,” she said. “They get clover, and then later on in the summer there’s a mixture of wildflowers and everything,” she said. “Basswood is another one that’s a really good producer of honey, and in the fall there’s goldenrod and milkweed.”
In general, bees will feed on anything sweet. In 2012, beekeepers near Ribeauvillé in northeastern France were perplexed to find their bees making bright blue and green honey. It turned out the crafty insects were bypassing flowers to feed on sugary, dyed waste from waste M&M candy shells processed at a nearby biogas plant.
Keeping the colonies alive through the winter is another challenge beekeepers face. Both Advent and Spry overwinter their hives indoors. Advent noted that technology allows them to maintain better conditions for the bees.
“We now have a designated building for bees, and we have monitors. The monitors monitor the humidity, which is a big thing for bees,” she said. “As soon as they get too humid and wet, they’re going to die. This monitors the humidity, and it monitors the temperature, of course, and it also monitors carbon dioxide.”
Both Advent and Spry cited an adage that there is a lot of information out there about beekeeping and a lot to consider when beekeeping, and that all beekeepers tend to have different opinions about the various facets of the practice.
“There’s a saying where you can ask nine beekeepers about something and you’ll get 10 opinions,” Spry said.
Both Spry Farm and Stratton Honey Hut have honey available at retailers across the district.
Spry honey was recently stocked at The Great Bear, Rosey’s Convenience (formerly Ski’s Variety), and Devlin’s Corner Store. Stratton Honey Hut honey is available throughout the district at The Place, Beaver Mills Market in Rainy River, and Cloverleaf and Misty River Alternatives in Emo, among other retailers.
This week, Advent and other beekeepers around the district will bottle up some honey to bring to the Rainy River Valley Agricultural Society Fall Fair in Emo, where the Stratton Honey Hut has taken first place in the past. Advent says she appreciates the competition at the fair because it shows off the different honeys from beekeepers from across the district, but she says she’d love to see more.
“The competition is a good thing because you see the different types of honey in the area,” she said. “We’ve lost a few people for the competition. It would be great if we had some more.”
She’s also hoping the judges can offer a little more feedback.
“In the past years for the competition, there has been no feedback about what you can do to make your honey rise to the top level, kind of thing,” she said. “I’ve been told this year that has been asked of the judges. It’s one thing to put your honey in for the competition, but without feedback, how are you going to improve?”
The Stratton Honey Hut will be vying for the honey title in the Exhibition Hall once again this year.
