Ethical Bees

11/26/2021

Black Friday - girls going shopping

09/24/2021

This on CNN today about bees wax wraps for food

Bee's Wrap is an organic, sustainable and reusable kitchen wrap that can store everything from fruit and vegetables to baked goods and leftovers. So naturally we had to give it a try.

09/02/2021

Only a Queen Breeder. So I go back and forth once a week from my apiaries on Vancouver Island and some bees but more day job out of Vancouver. I brought a couple of virgin high VSH bees with me in my backpack. (I do walk on to the ferries and use buses between everything to keep the costs down.). I’m checking the queens in my backpack as I’m waiting for last bus to get home in West Vancouver. Queen cup has come out of the California Mini cage and she is no where to be found. Lots of heavy things in my backpack to squish her - including a few bottles of good wine.
I dig deeper but can’t find her as I stop close to home for some dinner.
Get home and start taking everything apart. Guess who has navigated onto my jacket in a completely separate part of the backpack!
Too funny 😂

05/22/2020

Very interesting letter to the editor - Bee Venom and CoVid19. Further investigation required.
🐝 👩‍🔬 🔬

ToxiconVolume 181, 15 July 2020, Pages 69-70Letter to the EditorBee venom and SARS-CoV-2Author links open overlay panelWeiYangFu-liangHuXiao-fengXuShow morehttps://doi.org/10.1016/j.toxicon.2020.04.105Get rights and contentPrevious article in issueNext article in issueRecommended articlesCiting arti...

05/16/2020

Young bees being added to mating NUCS and virgin Queens being introduced.
It’s that time of year again! Yay 😁

05/11/2020

Micro algae as a food supplement.

BATON ROUGE, LOUISIANA, May 11, 2020—A microscopic algae ("microalgae") could provide a complete and sustainably sourced supplemental diet to boost the robustness of managed honey bees, according to research just published by Agricultural Research Service scientists in the journal Apidologie.

04/04/2020

So our times are a bit different. In my immediate BeeKeeping collaboration I am SO grateful for everyone’s efforts to support the local production of bees. The Team.
We have been dependent on “Temporary Foreign Workers” with our reliance on imported packages for Canada. These bees are not locally adapted, but as modern agriculture depends on them - their supply has been seriously injured. In these different times the Team are upping our game. More later. But thanks to Julie Poolie for posting this. I’m told she listened to it for 30 minutes. I’m in repeat as well. Thanks Group. This reminds me all of you. Love you all! ❤️ 🙏 🐝

We’re excited to share our newest Song Around The World, “The Weight,” featuring musicians performing together across 5 continents. Great songs can travel ev...

04/02/2020

Thanks Tim for this. A little brevity! 🎶 😆 💕

Stay inside and wash your hands! Hope everybody is staying safe, and staying inside! Like, Share, and Subscribe Brent McCollough - Vocals/Keys ...

03/26/2020

A Beautiful Day:
Responsible Social Distancing with Bees and our Responsibility for Agriculture 🐝 ❤️
Let’s be clear - the hero’s right now are the first responders, the medical teams, the scientists and the suppliers etc. to mitigate the current reality. But today something good happened.
Our Grass Roots group of beekepers are trying to backfill a serious shortage of colonies in the Province of British Columbia in Canada. Unfortunately, Canada is heavily reliant on foreign packages. And temporary foreign workers to help with lots of the larger BeeKeeping Operations. The reality is things are seriously derailed. Many many people have received notice that their bees are NOT going to be supplied this year. We are talking in the thousands or higher.
We are a Grass Roots group who are working on mite resistant bees to produce local NUCS and queens. A core thought was what can we do? So we started working on a plan to produce more colonies to be shared. Today was a just a small piece of what we are doing.
Lots and lots of planning of how could we execute with social distancing. The number of people was carved down. Everyone who was involved has been appropriately isolating. Details. Hand sanitizer. Distancing. And lots of oral discussion. They pulled it off!
And then someone has to shame “what part of stay the f**k home do you not understand”. Someone who wasn’t there. Someone who amongst other things tries to publicly take credit for community grants he had nothing to do with the application process of. Lots more but that isn’t the point.
Today was a great day. Well planned. RESPONSIBLY executed. Many more people are going to get strong local mite resistant bee colonies as this Team and the Grass Roots keep working.

Agriculture. We need to eat.
Maybe think before you social shame. Maybe have your facts right. Support each other. Look out for each other.
And we need to take care of the Bees. ❤️ 🐝 🌍

03/23/2020

Well at least we can do social distancing with our Bees. Happy to report we are in very good shape for the NUCS. We will also be starting a steady stream of queens on early May. Strong V.S.H. locally adapted Carniolan. More information soon on how you can work with us for local mating in BC.
We will have the NUCS on both deeps and mediums.

This Nucleus Colony will have a locally mated mite resistant queens from our Strong V.S.H. breeder queens with locally adapted bees. This is our fourth year of producing these Queens on Vancouver Island. We are primarily producing on deeps, but mediums can be arranged or packages. Let us know! But h...

03/08/2020

Science and Beekeeping. Ethical Bees is going into Year Four on Vancouver Island.
It’s all about the Bees and the Science.
But a small project is getting larger quickly. Better Bees. Locally Adapted.

A GrassRoots story. Back yard to commercial. Just truth.

We have direct relationships with both access to the genetics and the academic community for the top mite resistant bees.

But it’s also about community delivery to you locally. Our volunteer group is at roughly 150 and growing.

There will be many more announcements coming over the next weeks and months. Join us. Better Bees and Education.
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