Campbell's Honey

Beeswax is a natural secretion of honeybees in the hive,  for the purpose of building honeycomb.

As with all things in life, there is a cost involved. One pound of beeswax as produced in the hive, takes eight pounds of honey to manufacture. Young bees make wax by eating large amounts of honey, and then extruding fresh beeswax from pores in their stomach. Without this construction material, the colony would have no place to store their honey.

Before we extract the honey from the comb,  the wooden frames must first go through the uncapping machine to cut off the wax cappings.

Wax cappings are to  honeycomb, as lids are to jars. As the wax cappings are cut from the honeycomb, they drop into an auger below the tray, and are pushed (along with  a small amount of honey) into  the wax spinner where the honey is separated from the wax by a large centrifuge. After several hours of operation the spinner is unloaded , and the dry wax is stored in metal drums until time to render the wax.

At rendering time we wheel the drums filled with dry wax cappings into the boiler-room where we have a large tank partially filled with steam-heated water. The drums of wax cappings are dumped, and shovelled into the hot water where they are melted into a liquid and boiled for about 2 hours. The wax is clarified by boiling, and the impurities, which are called "slumgum,"  settle to the bottom. The wax is then skimmed off and molded in plastic trays and small pails.

One barrel of dry wax cappings will make a hundred pounds of solid wax blocks. There's always a demand for clean bright blocks of molded beeswax. This year we have already sold our beeswax, even before it is entirely rendered.

The Canadian Food Inspection Agency inspectors arrived this week for an annual tour of our premises. Their inspection takes over an hour as they scrutinize all procedures, practises, and processes used in the pursuit of our honey business. All applications of chemicals used for medication purposes on the bees in the apiary are closely monitored with respect to their proper use and duration, as well as any chemicals that are used for the eradication of honey house pests such as rodents, wax moth, and other insects.

All  procedures associated with the keeping of bees must be documented on a daily basis as well as records relating to the cleaning and maintenance of  honey-house equipment, and floors.  Personal Cleanliness is a high piority, as well as insuring that no personal jewellery, or  hair, contaminant the product .

The finished product must be tracable right back to the beeyard in which it was produced, so that if a  problem arises it can be identified and remedied.

The Inspectors walk around the premise checking for  such hazards as fire,  improper storage of equipment which could lead to rodent  or wax moth infestations, and other unsightly spaces.

Once they have covered these areas they take samples of honey from the sales room which are tested to insure purity of the product.

Comments are welcomed.

Some of the most stimulating taste sensations present in this area of Ontario are, Chocolate from the World's Finest Chocolate Factory in nearby Campbellford, and Maple Syrup produced at Sandy Flats Sugar Bush just down the road,  but the most salubrious local delight that's often imitated, but never replicated, is the all natural sweet flavour experience of pure Canadian honey, fresh from the bees.

For almost 30 years we have been taking pride in the production of our unique, naturally flavored honey. Where many honey operations mix all their honey into one product, we take the time and trouble to sort the flavors by taste, color, locality, and beeyard.

Our honeyhouse sales room opens with white honey from spring flowers in the first week of August. When the Purple Loosestrife honey is harvested, usually in mid August, we fill a separate tank in the sales room, and add it to our inventory. By this time we also have Creamed White honey available on the shelves. Then in early September, we have Fall White, and Buckwheat Honey in the tanks, and on the table in our containers.

You can bring your own honey containers. Our customers are encouraged to save money by bringing their own honey containers to be refilled,  and to purchase a year's supply of honey at a time, thus saving money and helping the environment. This idea has caught on, and we have many customers who bring their own honey pails to be  filled with large amounts, and different flavors of Campbell's Honey.

For the most part people are entranced with the salivary delights of sampling the different honey flavors. A possible exception are those, city born and bred, who have never tasted honey from the source.

Buckwheat Honey is dark and strong, with just a hint of the absurd. When I meet someone who is obviously unfamiliar with the flavor, I laughingly suggest (as she raises the sample spoon to her mouth) that she, "won't like it!" Sometimes I am wrong, but its always good fun, on a busy day in the sales room of Campbell's Honeyhouse.

A question often asked by our  customers at Campbell's Honey is, "How do you make creamed honey?"

We  appreciate our customer's interest, and take pride in their high esteem of our natural food products.

Honey Creaming begins with 600 lbs. of freshly extracted honey, which is pumped into a stainless mixing tank and allowed to settle overnight. Next morning the mixer is started, and 60 lb of seed honey is gradually added into the mixer, until the batch is completely blended.

Seed honey is simply creamed honey from a previous batch, that was saved especially for this purpose.  All honey granulates naturally, but often in a coarse granulation that is not taster friendly. This is why the seed  honey is has been selected because its fine crystals insure a smooth, delicious taste on the tongue.

An interesting note, the seed we use to make our creamed honey was selected by a beekeeper for its fine quality, and smooth taste, over seventy years ago.  Each succeeding batch of Creamed Honey over the years has been made utilizing this specially selected seed. Sometimes we wonder if there are still a few of the original crystals left in the mix from the very first batch?

The seed honey is gradually added to the mixer and slowly blended into the new honey,  which is still a warm liquid in the stainless steel mixing tank. The machine  slowly stirs the combination for twenty minutes, after which the blend is poured into plastic tubs and placed in a nearby freezer where it cools overnight.  The honey must be cooled quickly to keep it from melting the seed crystals.

Next day the tubs of honey are moved again, out of the freezer, and into a  refrigerator set at 59 degrees F. ( the ambient earth temperature) so that the seed crystals induce other crystals to grow around them. The  honey mixture then begins a controlled granulation lasting about14 days, at which time those fine crystals will have turned the liquid into a solid, and our delicious spreadable, 'Creamed Honey' is ready for the table.

It is interesting to know that the same batch of honey, whether liquid or creamed will always taste differently. This taste difference is caused by your taste buds playing a trick on your brain.  For some reason the tiny honey crystals send a different signal to the brain than does liquid honey. 

Lorene enjoys creamed honey at breakfast every morning, while I prefer the liquid. She likes to put it on thick and pile it up high, secure in the knowledge that it won't drip through the holes in her toast.

Of all the food we eat, there is nothing quite so genuine, as close to nature , or as wildly delicious, as honey in the comb.

To pass around a piece of honeycomb, and watch a wide-eyed, wondering child taste the sweetest most delectable food  known to man,  is a joy beyond  description.

There are many ways and methods of producing comb honey, and all beekeepers have their own favourites. An interesting fact about comb honey, is that the bees are never happy with the process, and usually have to be tricked into doing it.

Comb honey can be made in 2 designs. Ross Rounds are circular combs in a plastic holder. These come in a special plastic super in a circular design, and the bees will not work in them unless they are forced into it by cutting down on their available storage space.

The other method, and my preference, is 'cut comb,' or wax foundation in a  deep frame that  can be cut to size.

I use a regular full super frame (5 5/8" by 16 3/4") with a single wire across the center to hold the sheet of wax foundation firmly in the frame. Each frame thus prepared,  will yield  a possible 8 pieces of comb. The ideal time to  place these frames in the hive (in this area) is the first week of July.

By early July,  many colonies will have at least one super with 5 or 6 frames of honey. When I find one of these, I pull  the 2 side frames out, and move 2 full center frames to the edges, and replace  these full frames with two 'cut comb' frames, leaving a full frame of honey between the two empty 'cut comb' frames.  The bees like to fill the center of the super first, and as there are already full frames surrounding the 'cut comb' frames in the center, the bees will go ahead, draw out the comb foundation and cap it quickly.

Its important to watch these comb frames carefully, and take them off as soon as they are capped, because thousands of tiny feet walking over them day and night, will soon darken the bright new wax cappings.

As soon as the full comb frames are taken from the bees, we place them in a freezer over night, to kill any wax-moth eggs that  could be waiting to hatch.  The comb is then cut to size, and placed in clear plastic containers for sale

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Its been a busy week at Campbell's Honey, as we begin to harvest the  early honey crop, and fill the shelves in the Honeyhouse store  for our annual August - September honey sales.

Every beekeeper has a different  technique for honey harvesting. The problem, of course, is to get the honey on the truck, minus the bees.

This can be accomplished by many different means. Years ago, "bee escapes" (devices which allowed the bees to pass one way only) were popular, but the downfall was in lifting the heavy honey boxs, to install the device next to the brood chamber.

Later, "Beego,"an acid, was brushed on a fume board, and placed on the top of the hive. The heat of the sun on the metal board caused the acid to fume, and the bees were chased down.This was effective, and widely used, until evidence of the acid was found in the honey.

This season, our approach is quite different.

First we checked each colony for full honey supers, which we  pried off  and set on their ends, on  a hive top (see picture). When the beeyard was completely checked, and all the full boxes were sitting on the hive tops, we went along and smoked each super. This moved the bees out of the honey frames, and onto the outside of the super, where they be could easily blown off with the bee-blower.

Then, before the bees found it again, we quickly carried the honey to the truck, where we stacked the supers on pallets.

Back at the honeyhouse,  the heavy supers are easily wheeled from the truck to the cooling room.

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When I bought my first 40 colonies of honeybees in the early 1970's I knew very little about beekeeping, except that my brother and oldest son already had five colonies and were talking about expanding.  I jumped into the business on a whim, and from that day forward we all learned the science of apiculture together, and called our business "Campbell's Honey."

Shortly after starting out, we began to purchase more  bees. Our first venture was 150 colonies from  an elderly beekeeper  who was suffering from heart disease.  To this day I can still remember his blue lips. As his wife told us later, she had never known him make a deal on paper, but  he wrote it out for us on Saturday, and died the following Monday. The deal had been signed, and we were able to buy the bees from his wife. Shortly thereafter we were approached by another retiring beekeeper who had been in the business for forty years and was firmly established with over 350 colonies. Again we were able to make the deal, and at this point we began to think of ourselves as Commercial Beekeepers.

We were able to get established in a hurry, but with old and worn equipment. The beehives were made of  pine lumber and had been sitting outside in the weather for many years. Although they were still serviceable, they were definately showing signs of wear. Its also worth noting that the wooden equipment had been made by many different bee-men, and came in all shapes and sizes. Many pieces were a loose fit  that allowed field mice to crawl  under a hive lid in the fall, and find a warm place to spend the winter. Field mice build their nests in the brood chamber, and chew holes in the comb of several frames. The bees will not repair the comb and the damaged frames must be discarded.

What happens to the mice? The bees get their revenge in the spring. The mice enjoy the warmth and shelter of the hive in the winter, and they get to eat some of the  wintering bees, but when warm spring weather arrives, the bees regain their freedom of movement. Honey bees are very clean insects and the rank smell of a mouse is enough to get them enraged. Venom from bee stings acts by slowing the muscle movement of warm blooded animals, and although some mice do escape,  ten bee stings or more, can be fatal, and quite enough venum  to stop the heart of a field mouse.

Swarm season is an exciting time for a hobby beekeeper with a swarm box set up and ready to (hopefully)  catch a swarm of honeybees looking for a new home. But more experienced commercial beekeepers are all about preventing swarms, and properly managing increases before the bees draw out a queen cell and 'split'.

In the old days, commercial beekeepers counted on swarms to make an increase in their  colonies.  Here's an old-time beekeeper's rhyme,

A swarm in May, is worth a load of hay. A swarm June is worth a silver spoon.  A swarm in July is not worth a fly.

There are several good reasons why catching swarms has gone out of style with commercial beekeepers. A swarm is an unknown quantity. Nobody knows if the bees are carrying mites, foul brood, or some other bee disease. Bees that swarm are not as able to produce honey because their efforts are focused on producing bees.  The swarming tendency is inherited, so the commercial operator is not usually interested in catching swarms. But he is very interested in preventing his bees from swarming.

I begin to split  colonies as soon as the queen bee is forced down into the bottom box (around May first) where she resumes laying eggs. I make continuous trips about every two weeks to each hive, until the honey flow begins around July first. I pry the supers apart and search for swarm cells that are built on the bottom bars of the top super.  A swarm cell is a queen cell built to expedite a swarm. When I see this cell I split the hive, and this usually succeeds in keeping the colony from swarming.  I want my bees to stay home and produce honey.

There are two kinds of beekeepers, honey producers and queen and nuke producers.  (A nuke is a four frame nucleus of a hive complete with a queen bee).  The queen and nuke producers (bee breeders) produce honey bees and queens for sale. If you are a member of a Beekeeper's Association, it's doubtful you will hear much about splitting bee colonies from the membership, because if everyone split their bees to make an increase the Bee Breeders sales would be flat.

There were an estimated five thousand beekeepers in the Province of Ontario in the 1980's. Many of these people were hobbyists and not up to speed on the prevention, cure or even the proper diagnosis of honeybee diseases. Consequently a malady known as 'American Foul Brood' became a huge problem in Ontario honeybees during that decade. This is a contagious disease that spreads quickly when bees from strong hives rob the spore infested honey from weak (diseased) beehives.

June 1990 I was asked to join a special task force of provincial government funded bee inspectors and work for the Dept of Agriculture and Food to stamp out AFB and other bee diseases while educating hobbiests on how to feed antibiotics. We were sent to inspect many different problem areas in the province to 'search and destroy' diseased beehives.

Once identified, American Foul Brood must be burned, as there is no known cure, and the spores of the disease will live in the ground for up to 70 years.  We found some bee operations that were totally inundated with the disease, which looks like brown sticky gravy and has a very distinctive sweet and moldy odour. An AFB Stick Test is conducted when a beekeeper pokes a brood cell with a stick and brown rope gravy clings to the stick as its removed.  At that point our only recourse was to have a large hole dug in a local gravel pit. Here the unfortunate beekeeper's infected hives and equipment was burned, often by the truckload.

The first procedure after finding the disease was to pour half a gallon of gasoline over an open colony to kill the affected bees. This made moving the colony easier, and facilitated burning.

Not everything had to be destroyed each time. When there were only a few colonies affected, we dug a small hole by hand, lit a fire, and burned the diseased combs. Then the empty brood chambers were stacked together with paper, and ignited at the bottom. As the fire caught,  the beeswax coating on the inside of the supers ignited, and the temperature soared to over 1200 degrees F. which is hot enough to kill the spores. Equipment scorched in this way could be safely reused.

One adventure that comes to mind, was an incident at a large apple orchard in the fruit growing area of Niagara. The owner had a few colonies to pollinate his apples, and when his bees became sick he called the Department of Agriculture.

I was dispatched along with a young helper to inspect these colonies. After diagnosing the disease as AFB, we conferred with the owner, and proceeded to burn the two affected colonies. After soaking them with gasoline we lifted them onto my small truck to take them to a suitable place to be burned. My helper was sitting on the open tailgate of the truck, with his smoker still lit. As we drove down the lane the breeze fanned the smoker, which flamed up, and caught in the  fumes emanating from the gasoline drenched hives. Suddenly I heard a  loud "Whoosh" as both hives exploded at once.

Thankfully, nobody was hurt, and no damage done!

I stopped the truck  backed around, and we kicked both burning hives off  the back of the truck and into a grassy ditch where they burned without any more problems.

If you had  10 colonies of honey bees and half of them died during the winter, that's quite a loss!  But if you could walk into that same beeyard in the middle of May, and manipulate those  colonies, and half an hour later see 10 living colonies, with busy bees flying in and out, wouldn't you call that a miracle?

Of course you would, unless you were the beekeeper who made it happen.

How To Make 'Splits'

It's all about  watching and working  with each live colony to get them up to full strength in the spring. Feeding sugar syrup if  they are hungry,  checking the Queen's brood, and adding a frame of fresh eggs from the strong colonies to equalize all the live hives.

Then, by mid May the queen has filled the top super (brood-box) with larva, and the bees have been bringing in nectar and pollen. The queen is forced to go down to the bottom super where she begins to lay in the freshly cleaned honeycomb the workers have prepared.

Along comes the beekeeper and checks the hive. Prying the supers apart , he sees the newly laid eggs, and the abundance of bees in the bottom super, and the miracle begins to happen. He sweeps clean the parts of a nearby dead hive, and sets an empty super on top of a bottom board. Then he takes the top brood chamber from the live colony and sets it on  top of the dead box, making a live two super hive again. Revisiting what's left of the live hive, he switches the remaining supers and puts the remaining super (the bottom box of the live hive), on top of the 2nd empty super from the dead hive.

The Workers Make A New Queen

It makes no difference which hive the Queen is in, because the workers will raise a new Queen using the fresh eggs which can be found in either super of a strong hive. The workers will know immediately if the Queen is absent, and will begin at once to raise a new one with a freshly laid egg in an elongated Queen Cell and  will increase the feeding of Royal Jelly. In less than 25 days a new Queen will hatch, mate with a drone, and begin laying eggs a few days later.

Special note - When making splits, the live bees are always placed on the top of the empty 'dead' supers, because heat rises, and bees are very prone to chill, esp the fresh brood, and eggs.

Sadly enough this Miracle Story is the best case scenerio.  It doesn't always happen. If the live hives are weak and  the bottom supers empty, the Beekeeper must wait until the colony gets up to strength. My success rate with splits is about 95%, but this year I've been through all my colonies and I am still short  35 colonies. I was lucky, in that many of my remaining live hives came up to splitting strength by mid May. Any splits I make later, may not be strong enough to gather honey, when the flow begins in July.