Bee hives near here

Here is the single bee hive behind Mountainview School. My impression is that the bee hive was placed here for educational purposes, but I didn't see any children in the area so I am probably wrong about this. The bee keeper made some honey, and now the hive will be relocated to where he winters his hives. I really enjoyed seeing the bees, it reminded me of when I had a dozen or so bee hives where I lived in the country; it reminded me of two friends, George Johnston and Reg Skinner, who helped get me into bee keeping. 

Honeybees at Mountainview School

I was walking through the parking lot at Mountainview School, just a few blocks from here, when I discovered they have a beehive. The bees are being fed sugar water, which is common in spring, to build up the hive and it looks like a pretty robust hive; the bees are coming and going. I hope they visit my garden, I like seeing honey bees on my flowers, it's one of the things I really like to see as it reminds me of when I was an amateur beekeeper many years ago. The school also has a garden and it looks like they're growing a lot of garlic, and nothing else. 

All garlic?

Mountainview School, beehive is behind the fence on the right

I returned the morning of July 8 and the hives are doing well; the beekeeper has added another box for the bees to expand making honey.

Montreal and Vancouver, the two best cities in Canada

Here are final photographs of honey bees in Vancouver, this time on the UBC campus overlooking Chancellor Road near the Chan Centre parkade.

What we love about cities in the east, history, access to culture, a feeling of man's presence for decades and in some instances for centuries, is not found in Vancouver. Of course, there is "culture" here, but the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts or the Art Gallery of Ontario in Toronto, or the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa, are all superior to the Vancouver Art Gallery and comparing them isn't fair. You don't go to Vancouver for "culture." Vancouver is a very young city compared to most eastern cities.

Only a "young" place, Vancouver and British Columbia, would have on their license plates "The Best Place on Earth." On the other hand, on Quebec's license plate you'll find "Je Me Souviens" which means "I remember myself," and refers to remembering the past, looking backwards, the ethnocentric side of French Quebec which would sacrifice the future in order to hang on to the old, the past, what has been, what never was, including all the perceived injustices, the desire to separate from the Rest of Canada, and so on. BC's license plate is young, naive, and annoying; Quebec's license plate is representative more of people off the Island of Montreal; Montreal has always been a city of tolerance of other people. 

There is a connection between Vancouver and Montreal, maybe it's a spiritual connection. You'll find evidence of spirituality just about anywhere you go in Montreal--it is, after all, "Ville Marie," the City of Mary--and spirituality seems to emanate from the very heart and being of Montreal, past, present, and future. Visiting Montreal you'll see Mount Royal with an illuminated cross at the eastern side of the mountain, the Oratory, St. Patrick's Basilica, the many churches that are found in every neighbourhood, and so on. Vancouver's spirituality is in nature, whether the mountains that can be seen from just about any part of Vancouver, the mild climate, the ocean, Pacific Spirit Park, Stanley Park, honey bees in lavender beds on Cornwall Street or at UBC, there is a quality of spirituality here that comes directly from the close proximity of nature. 

Honey bees on Cornwall Street in Vancouver

Walking on Cornwall Street, in Vancouver, someone had an enormous display of lavender growing by the sidewalk. I tried for years, with little success, to grow lavender, and here in Vancouver you see it growing in abundance and without any special care as far as I can see. The curious thing about this particular lavender is that it was full of honey bees, they were having a great time collecting nectar and pollen. Based on the number of bees, which isn't evident in the photographs, there is probably a local beekeeper to whom these bees belong, or they are from a hive located in someone's attic, or a tree not far away. At any rate it's possible someone will have quite a lovely harvest of this honey.

Many cities are now allowing some urban agriculture, trying to blend in rural and city occupations. I am of two minds on this. In many English villages or towns, keeping bees, gardening in an allottment, or keeping pigeons, is fairly common. However, I wouldn't want chickens next door to where I live, we hear of diseases that come from birds in too close proximity to humans. I certainly wouldn't want pigs or sheep next door, avoiding the noise and smell and dirt of livestock is one advantage to living in the city. We've worked hard in western society at achieving a level of sanitation that has resulted in standards of health never seen before. However, it seems to be fashionable to be in favour of keeping domesticated animals in people's backyards today, other than dogs and cats, and this strikes me as  rather silly affectation, or ignorance on the part of, some middle class people. I still remember when many people had a dog that ate table scraps (God forbid!), which is a dog's natural diet, and you opened the front door in the morning and let the dog out for the day, he'd return about 5 p.m. and you didn't know where he'd been. Our dog, Buddy, visited Willingdon, our grade school one day and ran through the halls with Mr. Pitcairn, the principal, running after him. I remember keeping a low profile that day. But, despite this about people's dogs, no one kept chickens or livestock in their backyard. Isn't that right, Veeto?

Honey bees on UBC campus

Walking by the L.S. Klinck Building on the UBC campus last week I noticed honey bees gathering nectar and pollen in the flowers (pictured above). Notice the large pollen sacs on the honey bees' legs. There were also a few bumble bees, and other bees, but the honey bee is always of interest and anyone who has kept bees has a fondness for them. Back in the mid-1970s my friend R.R. Skinner opened his hives for me to observe his bees. That was interesting and I knew right away that one day I would keep my own bees. On my visits to R.R. I would write down pretty much everything he said--I seem to have the ability of sitting and listening to people talk about themselves for many hours in a non-judgemental and fairly passive way--but R.R.'s stories about beekeeping were always interesting, including moving hives on his bicycle and overwintering a hive in his bedroom. Beekeepers can be quite obsessive about bees, and this obsession seems eccentric to people who have never kept bees. But one man's eccentricity is another man's normal life.



Above, the L.S. Klinck Building on the UBC campus.

It was in the early 1980s that my friend, the poet George Johnston, sat down with me and went over what I would need to establish my own apiary. I ordered some beekeeping equipment through the mail but also drove to Bedford, Quebec to pick up boxes of bees. That's how you buy honey bees, several thousand come in a wooden box with a wire mesh front and a queen bee contained in a small box inside the larger box. You literally dump the bees into a hive like bits of Styrofoam; however, the queen bee is released into the hive only gradually so that she will be accepted by the other bees. How do you release the queen gradually? There is a sugar plug that the worker bees and the queen eat opening a space for the queen to emerge into the hive. If, for whatever reason, the worker bees don't like the queen, they will quite literally kill the queen, which means more work for the beekeeper as she will have to be replaced. There is also a smell to bees, it is feral and reminds us that bees are never domesticated, only contained. I went with George, and possibly with George Elliot, about whom George has written some memorable poems, to beekeeping seminars across the border in New York State. These events were always memorable and enjoyable to attend. I also remember, one time, driving home from Bedford with boxes of bees and beekeeping equipment and the brakes failing on the car... somehow I still made it back home, maybe fifty miles distance. That was interesting...

I used to have about ten hives that I kept in the field, near some apple trees, about a hundred feet behind The Cedars, our house on the Trout River in Huntingdon, (more correctly, Godmanchester) Quebec. I had a big hand-turned honey extractor that I bought second hand, but like many beekeepers I preferred making comb honey. Comb honey is cut directly from the frame, it's honey the way bees make it in a hive, but it also means you've destroyed the comb the bees have made, while with liquid honey you can recycle the frame with the comb on it because all you've done is cut off a surface layer of wax before extracting the honey. You extract the honey by the centrifugal force of spinning the frames. There's money in bees wax that can be made into candles and pollen that some people believe has health benefits, but this should be qualified, if you want pollen for allergies or whatever, you need local pollen since your allergies are to local plants, not pollen from China that has dubious if any value. Beekeepers have always known that bee stings can help relieve arthritis, and this seems to be getting some press in recent years; however, I remember R.R. suggesting that the bee sting acted as a kind of accupuncture treatment, and maybe this is a correct explanation for this .

Unless you've kept bees you may not understand the happiness one can experience opening hives on a hot summer day. The bees are probably fairly passive on such days, but a whiff of smoke passed over the top of the frames seems to keep them busy and diverted from the beekeeper's activities. Never wear perfume or any other scent to an apiary, I've had a nasty experience being stung by doing that. I kept bees for about ten years and was put out of business by mites from across the US border infesting my bees. Don't worry about killer bees, thirty years after I began beekeeping I still don't see them as a problem here in Canada. I remember, as well, lying in the grass near the entrance to the hives and watching bees coming and going, what a wonderful sight that is! They're bringing in nectar, their pollen sacs are full, and some bees are removing dead bees; in the fall the drones, male bees that inseminate the queen on her single maiden flight, are being expelled. Don't forget, all worker honey bees are female. Lying there, in the grass on a summer day, that's when you realize the genuine affection one feels for the honey bee.