Humble Bee
601 Burlington Street East L8L 4J5 Hamilton, ON, Canada

Need a last minute gift? Honey, Beeswax, Education and Bees are all available with use of a gift card. Gift cards will be emailed to you directly after purchase. Link in bio. Happy Holidays everyone! http://bit.ly/HBgiftcards

Happy Winter Solstice! We wish we could be celebrating with you at our annual winter solstice celebration of the bees. Hopefully we can come together in celebration soon. This photo is from our first winter solstice celebration. Tonight, Jupiter and Saturn will be in a rare planetary alignment, appearing closer together in the evening sky than they have in nearly 800 years. They won’t appear this close again until 2080. Look into the sky tonight and see if you can spot the ...two giants together. The Solstice is the start of the new season for the bees as they use the sun as their calendar. The queen will know to start laying again soon. The days will begin to get longer as we turn towards the light, together. Thank you for all the support this season!

Queen Bee Beer! This collab with our friends at @grainandgritbeer is back! A truly local Hamilton brew like no other. #shoplocal From @grainandgritbeer... QUEEN BEE IS BACK! Queen Bee is our sour brewed with honey, lavender-infused hops and chamomile, fermented with Voss Kveik yeast. This beer is really something special it’s floral, tart and has flavours of cranberry, sour cherry and chamomile, with a dry finish. It’s a sour that’s meant for winter sippin’. We brewed this beer with honey from our friends @humblebee, an urban bee farm based in Hamilton (we also sell their honey in our market!). Get yer Queen Bee online or in store now!

Delivering lots of local honey and beeswax candles this season. You might see the local Humble Bee team in action around town and at your local shop.

Telling the bees of major life events is a very old tradition. We were very sad to tell the bees about the loss of our mutual friend, Adam Chiaravalle, who passed away at the age of 26 this November. Our hearts go out to his family. Adam was passionate about bringing bees and local food to McMaster. He was successful in doing so and we will continue the work to provide local food to the students and staff at @mcmasteru. We will also help keep the honey and native bee projects going as he encouraged us to do. We miss you Adam, you were a true friend to the bees. There is a fundraiser for a memorial tree to be planted in Adam’s name. Link can be found here: https://linktr.ee/Humblebee

In celebration of our partnership with Hamilton Oshawa Port Authority, 3 Serviceberry trees have been planted for the pollinators at the bay! @hopaports

The Honeycomb Donut is back! For a limited time you can eat this roasted plum and black currant honeycomb donut. Fresh local honeycomb is also available at @donutmonsterhamilton Posted from @donutmonsterhamilton We took a fresh chunk of honeycomb harvested from local hives by @humblebee and dropped it in the middle of an Ontario roasted plum glaze, then topped it with a black currant swirl. A great combination of seasonal flavours!... Available at our Walk-Thru window starting tomorrow, and for online pre-orders right now. We're also selling a limited amount of this honeycomb in 250g packages - it is a wonderfully delicious and healthy snack. Ask about it when you visit. See more

Sunset at the farm @earthtotable_thefarm

Bees working on the Sun Chokes at @blackcreekcommunityfarm

Ready for fall or hanging onto summer? #foreversummer

Love is sweet and so are you! Take care of yourself!

We have an online Zoom class tomorrow about how to prepare bees for winter! This is a great class for all levels of experience. Are you or someone you know new to beekeeping? Want to know how to get started or what to expect? We have an intro class coming up too! Link in bio.

A frame of baby bees. Love to see some of the older queens still going strong.

Hendrie Park is home to both honey bee hives and many native bees and we can all do our part to help them survive. Luc Peters of Hamiltons Humble Bee joins us to learn more about urban beekeeping at RBG. About Humble Bee: http://humblebee.buzz/

Way to bee fly! This is not a bee. Its a fly! It can be easy to confuse the 20,000 different species of bees and 120,000 species of flies! More specifically its a robber fly. Adult robber flies attack wasps, bees, dragonflies, grasshoppers, other flies, and some spiders. They play an role to help balance insect populations. #Asilidae #Laphriathoracica @ Algonquin Park, Ontario

Heat wave! Hope your staying cool. Bees are remarkable at keeping their hive cool. This hive was making quite the breeze!

Drone brood for the birds. This is an incredibly nutritious treat for chickens and it can be a part of integrated pest management for the bees. By removing the drone brood you can also remove varroa mites.

Spotted this Northern Amber Bumble Bee while in Halifax 3 years ago. Just a gorgeous bee! Like a flying fuzzy sun. #bombusborealis

Warm bees on the rooftop of the @cottonfactoryca. Stay hydrated everyone! #rooftopbeekeeping

Queens for sale! Very excited about these Ontario bred hygienic Buckfast queens. This round of queens were grafted from our chewie Buckfast breeder queen. She got the name because of the chewing sounds we hear when we open her hive. Looking to do more analysis once we can actually find some mites in her hive! She has perfect hygienic testing scores and heads a very gentle hive. Available now for pickup.

TGIF! Wishing everyone a great weekend! Stay cool out there

Weve got queens! Just caught a round of queens grafted from our chewie Buckfast breeder queen. Available for pickup tomorrow. Well have more available Tuesday as well!

The Queen in her hive on top of the Royal York. Can you spot her on this frame? We will post the answer in our stories!

Dan selecting a frame to graft from one of our selected breeders. This hive is also on a scale! Which gives us daily insight into the hive. Like how much nectar is available to them.

Busy hot hives! Lots of bearding happening during this heat wave in southern Ontario. Its too hot for all the bees to be inside the hive so they hang out on the porch! Stay hydrated everyone!

A rainbow of pollen Today is the anniversary of the Stonewall uprising. 51 years ago the riots led to many victories for civil rights. Love is love! Happy Pride!

This is a leaf cutter bee! While most bees pack pollen on hooks located on their legs, these bees carry their pollen on their abdomen. No pollen pants for these bees!

Happy Pollinator Week! This bee is doing extremely important work on this pear tree. An estimated 1/3 of all foods and beverages is delivered by pollinators! Thank a bee for what you got to eat today!

Happy Summer Solstice! The days are now getting shorter. Bees are completely connected to the sun and we are connected to the bees. The bees will start to slow down as the days get shorter and we could not be more relieved! The Solstice is an excellent time for relaxation, reflection, release, restoration and renewal.

Love seeing the bees happily working away. They do crucial pollination so we can feed ourselves. As a bonus, we can harvest small batches of surplus honey for the lowest carbon footprint sweetener with added health benefits! Such a blessing!

Wow! What a swarm. Good thing this was only a few feet off the ground. These bees were successfully recovered and given a new home. #

We at Humble Bee took some time away from producing social media content to listen and learn from, and share, Black voices. We believe the attention should be focused on the ongoing and critically important human rights conversations. Black lives matter. The violent U.S. murders of George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor and many more at the hands of police have shown the world that policing and other institutions are filled with deep and systemic anti-Black racism. Here ...in Canada, the deaths of Regis Korchinski-Paquet, Dandre Campbell, Chantel Moore and others tell a similar story: Black and Indigenous lives are not valued. The colonialist history of North America, and much of the world, means that we have created a system that doesnt care about human life. The level of systemic racism in our institutions (policing, government, food security, health care - everywhere) is so pervasive that no reform can fix these systems that were designed to harm. Often, reform leads to increased violence. Dismantling the system is what has been called for by members of the Black community. It is what is requiredwe must imagine something different. We have a chance to build a stronger and safer community. If we are #allinthistogether then we need to dismantle white supremacy. An important first step is to defund and demilitarize the police so we can invest in our communities. As we collectively deal with the multiple layers of grief created by these violent murders, set against the backdrop of global climate change and a global pandemic, we can: Educate ourselves. Learn about the past and the present. Dont put the responsibility on the Black community to educate, do the work, listen to the resources from the Black community. Educate others. Influence those around us, our children, our friends, our family. Be a good role model and own up to our mistakes. Listen. Pay attention to what happens around us, acknowledge our privilege, lift the voices of others. Stand up. Use our privilege to create a platform to raise others, stand in solidarity, voice our concerns and outrage to those in power. Donate. Vote. Dont just be outraged when its trendy, this is an effort we must take on every single day. Here is the local petition https://www.tinyurl.com/defundpolicehamont Please donate directly to: Black Lives Matter T.O. Hamilton Centre for Civic Inclusion Black Legal Fund See others posted in story Follow: @blacklivesmatter @laylafsaad @ibramxkendi @theconsciouskid @jessicawilson_msrd @blackandembodied See others posted in story Read: Between the world and me Ta-Nehisi Coates How to be an Anti-Racist Ibram X Kendi Stamped from the Beginning Ibram X Kendi The New Jim Crow Michelle Alexander The Skin Were In: A Year of Black Resistance and Power Desmond Cole White Fragility Robin DiAngelo

Nice red pollen pants!

These bees found our queen hideout! The bees are not included with Humble Bee hats. @ Aldershot, Burlington