I stepped into an apiary for the first time just over a decade ago.
The bee yard had been set up when use of neonicotinoids, a dangerous pesticide, near the bees’ original home threatened their livelihood. They were quickly spirited north to the Saugeen Bruce Peninsula, close to where I was spending my days at an organic farm and bakery called Harvest Moon (on a working holiday from my native Toronto). I could feel the bees buzzing in my own body as I stood by the hives – roughly eight in all.
What I remember the most is being mesmerized by their vibrations that resonated under my own skin, the arcs of their flight through that space, hazy with summer and smoke, the gentle way the beekeepers moved from colony to colony doing their hive inspection.
I don’t consider myself a spiritual person, but that day, it felt like stepping into a sacred space.
The experience stayed with me, and my interest in bees slowly grew. I wanted to learn more. In summer 2020, I decided to take an in-person course on beekeeping at a park in Toronto. When the pandemic hit, the course was cancelled, and I ended up doing my education online through American beekeeper and teacher David Burns. The content was fantastic, but all theoretical. I desperately wanted to put my hands on the frames. I wanted the bees in the air around me. I wanted the smell of wax and honey on my clothes.
I moved to Lion’s Head that same summer, fulfilling a dream of leaving the city for the place I had grown to love after years of working there. Being a beekeeper was suddenly within reach, but I still wanted hands-on experience before I got started. I was able to connect with two local beekeepers to shadow them during hive inspections, and then in 2021, I got my first two nucs.
A nuc, or nucleus, is a ready-to-grow colony, complete with a mated queen, worker bees (females), brood, and food resources. Over a season, a healthy nuc will expand into a hive many tens of thousands of bees strong.
That first year of beekeeping was a trial by fire, both punishing and rewarding. I got my first stings, mistook drones (males bees) for queens, watched foragers come in by the dozens sporting bright yellow pollen “pants”, had my smoker go out (repeatedly), mislaid my hive tool (even more repeatedly), and licked honey off pearlescent comb.
The second year, 2022, felt easier, but ended in tragedy. I lost both hives that winter as bee death swept the Peninsula.
In 2023, I hit my stride, and it was time to expand.
I had worked since my arrival on the Peninsula as an outdoor guide, leading hikes and other excursions all over the Saugeen Bruce, and I knew I loved to teach. I also knew that I wasn’t all that interested in honey – or rather, I was far more invested in the bees than their sweet golden bounty. I thought back to 2020, when I was so desperate to set eyes on a hive and decided I could give people that chance. I could teach people about honeybees and other pollinators, let them look inside the hive, marvel at the workings of a colony, and maybe even pay homage to the queen bee herself.
The first thing I needed was a location, and I already had the perfect place. I’d worked there every summer for ten years, and it just made sense to start there. Harvest Moon had rebranded as Raven Star and reopened in 2023. The property featured sculpture gardens, trails, and a bistro. Tina Chladny and Graham Thomas enthusiastically welcomed the addition of a two-hive apiary, located in a raspberry patch that grew over with phlox every summer and goldenrod each autumn. My bees would be right at home.
I installed one second-year hive and one nuc, put up an electric fence, and started marketing the experience. I got a booking right away with five participants. The experience began with some background information on bees, the hive, our equipment, and safety. We practiced queenspotting and frame handling, and suited up and meandered to the bee yard. Then we opened a hive.
That perfect moment, repeated in so many tours since (most of my participants are actually not looking to get into beekeeping, but are simply curious about – and sometimes afraid of – bees), is one that takes me right back to my afternoon in an unfamiliar apiary over ten years ago. Everyone went quiet for a second when the inner cover was removed and the hive was revealed: scurrying, shuffling, dancing, speaking to one another in the language of bees. There was an intake of breath and then a few people said, “Wow.”
It was a wonderful first tour. We finished with a honey tasting, and I floated home on a high.
The next day, disaster struck.
Graham called me to tell me the news: A bear had come in the night. One of the hives was completely destroyed.
I drove up right away to assess the damage. The bear had climbed a tree to drop inside the perimeter of the electric fence and knocked the hive to the ground. The apiary was littered with dead bees – thousands of them – and the queen was among them. Claw marks scored through carefully constructed comb and piles of bear scat edged the yard. It had not been an easy night for anyone, least of all the bear, who had escaped with difficulty, judging by the state of the fence, and probably walked away with several hundred stings to the face. (Bears go after hives for fatty bee larvae, a high-reward snack for a hungry forager.)
The bees remaining in the hive were edgy and numbered so few that I knew the colony was doomed. They were already raising queens from the brood that had survived, but I didn’t want a queen with this trauma in her genetic memory, so I broke open the queen cells and instead introduced a new queen that I bought off a nearby beekeeper. Graham and I fixed the fence and improved the layout to avoid a repeat of the event, and I put bait strips on the wire to discourage peckish animals from lingering.
That hive recovered and is now my strongest colony.
Beekeeping is like this: lesson after brutal lesson. My job as a beekeeper, I tell tour participants, is to keep the bees safe and happy so they won’t leave. Bears are just one challenge. There are varroa mites, wax moths, skunks, mice, moisture, and cold. There are sweltering summer days, and neighbours who use pesticide, and hive beetles, and other bees who come robbing.
But there is fresh, pale comb, laid so carefully; there are eggs standing upright in the bottom of a cell, destined to become foragers; there is a bead of sunbright honey, shared between sisters; there is a spray of pollen on a softly furred back. There is a beekeeper, trying and teaching and failing and learning.
The bee yard is a sacred space. I invite you to come and see it.
Written by Caeli Mazara
Photos by John Fearnall of Good Noise Photography
Caeli’s tours run June through September and can be booked at: https://www.airbnb.ca/experiences/3883126
