Bishop Family Bees
15 Baird St N3L 2R8 Paris, ON, Canada

I'll just leave this right here....

Want to support an important cause and pick up some cool items? Check out the online auction for the Sexual Assault Centre. This year, they lost funding due to cuts AND were unable to run their annual fundraiser. So this is it! This is how the community is gathering to raise funds for such an important community resource. We've contributed a case of honey to the auction. Do you have anything you could offer? Or are you interested in bidding on some pretty cool offerings? Check it out! https://www.facebook.com/groups/1169403880086704/

Beekeeping update: The swarm we captured the other day stayed put in the box we put out for them, so this morning Henry and I went back to the farm and set them up in a nice new hive with lots of space for her to lay and for them to store pollen and nectar. Then we met Russ and Bill at our third beeyard in St George. Two of us stayed in the car and two of us worked hard in the humidity and got stung for our efforts!... I took this video just as we finished up removing winter wraps (before you judge me, remember that it snowed last week!) And we gave each hive an extra box, or two, in which to expand now that they are in full production mode. I'm sure some of them will go ahead and swarm but hopefully some of the queens will decide it's ok to stay now that they have more room. My arm hurt too much to get too involved in inspecting and splitting hives today. So we just gave them more room and will hope for the best. Either way, we've got 11 strong hives here and 6 in each of our other two yards. And so begins the busy bee season.

Oh dear. Went to check on my bees at Devon Acres Organic Farm after work today. Took my two guys with me while Nana stayed with Bill for us. I was suiting up when I heard Russ and Henry talking about how busy the bees seemed. I looked over at the cloud of bees and said "That's not busy - they are swarming!" And off they went. Talk about good (or bad) timing, to arrive just as your bees are taking off! They gathered on a post on the other side of the chickens. It was not an ea...sy surface for me to grab the swarm. I love it when they are just a big cluster on a branch and I can just clip the branch and take the bees home with me! This required more effort. I did see the queen for a second and tried to grab her, knowing that wherever I put her, the other girls would follow. But she got away from me. I finally brought over a hive box with some honey frames in it and they were fairly interested in that. When we left, they were pretty much all settled into the box. I will head over there again tomorrow after my online meetings to see if they stayed and if I can convince them to settle into a new hive in their same old row on the farm. I hope to get to my other yard on the weekend so I can split those hives before they swarm too! This is swarming week - the bees have been waiting for this weather as much as we have and they are on the move! See more

Thank you to the lovely customer who sent me the cheery comic today!