Smooth Move

Just a quick update to let everyone know that my bees are successfully in their new location. Bright and early this morning, 6am, I headed out into my backyard before the bees had a chance to wake up. I taped a piece of screen mesh over the top entrance and stuck the entrance reducer on the bottom. The bees didn't even seem to notice, except one or two of the guard bees that were confused by the screen. My bee friend Bea showed up and we packed the hive into the trunk of the car with the cinder blocks and headed out.

It was a short trip to the new site because it is just outside the city limits. It was also a bonus that the road was paved all the way there which is great because I can hop on my motorcycle to check on the bees when I don't need to bring hardware. Mario was already up and about in his greenhouse tending to his tomatoes. In farm fashion he just had us follow him across the lawn in the car until we got over to the bee yard. Mario threw out some corrugated sheet metal and topped it with a piece of plywood. I setup the cinder blocks and we arranged the hive on top just like it was in my backyard. Mario then showed us around his hives. Taking the tops of various ones to show us how they were doing, all without a veil or gloves, he'd just gentle pop the top off and have a look. I found it funny that when he had a look in mine, one of my girls took exception and stung him.

There was also something that stuck in my head when I went to the EDBA meeting last Tuesday. They were talking about how San Francisco got started into urban beekeeping. It was the community gardeners that were actively seeking out beekeepers to put bees into their gardens. No one understand the role bees play better than a gardener and they wanted bees to increase the harvest. Apparently they use their community gardens to provide food to the homeless. That got me thinking if gardeners can actively seek out beekeepers, maybe it could work in reverse. So I sent an email out today to a community garden in my friends neighbourhood, and I'm curious to see what kind of response I'll get. Granted there will be a lot more leg work to do than San Francisco because they, like Calgary, had lenient bylaws regarding beekeeping. I'm hoping that if I can get support from a community I just might be able to get approval from the city manager to have bees in a non agricultural zoned area. I'll keep ya posted.

This is the hive in the back of the car. Screened on top, entrance reducers on bottom.


Here is Mario's yard. He started with 1 hive in 1999, is this my fate?


The new location of my hive, my girls are gonna love all that canola behind them.