It is spring in the City of Gardens. Do you know where your pollinators are?

If you answered no, you’re not alone. Despite the current popularity of horticultural pursuits, few of us give more than passing thought to the busy insects that buzz amongst our blossoms, blessing us later with the literal fruits of their labours – from spring raspberries to autumn apples – and seeds for next year’s flowers and vegetables. However, a growing number of Victorians are discovering the sweet pleasures of beekeeping and are setting up hives in their own backyards.

Apiculture is an ancient science. In Valencia, Spain, a 9,000-year-old cave painting depicts a man gathering honey from bees. At some point in history, what began as simple pilfering developed into a form of farming. In British Columbia, beekeeping dates back to May 1858, when two hives of honeybees were unloaded from a ship at a Victoria dock. From these two colonies and subsequent imports, apiaries proliferated in both town and countryside.

In the century and a half since domestic bees were introduced here, the rough harbour town surrounded by woods and fields has become a bustling urban centre. Surely no place for housing swarms of stinging insects, some would argue (though, in fact, honeybees are gentle creatures that sting only if provoked). But we need only look to Paris to know that beekeeping is perfectly compatible with big city life.

In 1856, two years before Victoria got its first honeybees, Parisian Henri Harnet was given permission to set up 20 hives and teach apiculture in the Jardin du Luxembourg. The apiary and school are still active, now run by a non-profit society. Other beekeeping operations, new and old, are scattered throughout Paris and its suburbs. Perhaps the most famous, and certainly the most intriguing, is one established in 1985 on the roof of the Palais Garnier, the old opera house in the 9 tharrondissment, by a beekeeper who had trained in France’s lavender-rich Valensole region. The opera-house bees forage in the Palais Royal gardens and a nearby cemetery and produce honey of such high quality that it is sold in the city’s prestigious gourmet grocery, Fauchon.

While an exclusive Parisian address enhances the cachet, and the price, of a jar of honey, bees can be just as content in an ordinary Canadian backyard. The ideal location is sunny, protected from the wind and not in a depression where cold air will pool. Morning sun warms the hive and lets the bees get an early start. Light shade during the hottest part of the afternoon reduces the amount of energy they must expend to cool the hive. The hive entrance should face south or east. In urban areas it is important to have a tall hedge, fence or other barrier placed three to ten feet in front of the entrance so the bees are obliged to fly well above human head-height as they come and go. The yard should also have a drinking station, which can be as simple as a bowl of water with rocks for the bees to stand on so they won’t drown.

In North America, urban beekeeping is not as widely accepted as it is in Europe. In some cities it is forbidden, but Greater Victoria municipalities are more lenient. Saanich, for example, allows up to four hives on a residential lot, Esquimalt permits a maximum of three and Victoria specifies only that the number be “reasonable” and that the bees generate no complaints from neighbours. The most restrictive local jurisdiction is Oak Bay, which prohibits beekeeping on properties of less than 8,000 square feet and, depending on lot size, allows from one to four hives on larger properties. Oak Bay beehives must be located at least 25 feet from the property line, while the required set-back in Esquimalt is a mere five feet.

Among the attractions of backyard beekeeping are that it is neither expensive nor time-consuming. Grant Tuplin of Vancouver Island Apiary Supply in Duncan says the basics for start-up, including equipment and bees, run just under $200. “And depending on your level of bravery,” he adds, “there is a variety of protective gear ranging from $45 and up.”

For small-scale apiarists bee-care rarely requires more than a few hours a week. Victoria-area beekeepers start checking their hives in March to see how their charges have fared through the winter. For the next few months they monitor the hives every eight to ten days to ensure the bees have enough room. In spring, when the queen may lay 1,500 to 2,000 eggs a day, the colony increases rapidly. If bees start feeling crowded, half of them may depart in a swarm with the old queen to search for a new home, leaving their sisters to raise a replacement queen and carry on. Since swarming reduces the colony’s strength beekeepers try to prevent it, usually by adding extra boxes to the hive.

Urban beekeepers are further motivated to avert swarming by the desire to avoid upsetting their neighbours. A volleyball-sized mass of bees hanging on a branch or wall is terrifying to many people. In reality, however, a swarm poses no threat if left alone. Without a home to defend, the bees seldom sting and an experienced beekeeper can move a cluster with bare hands.

Eight years ago, curiosity prompted Fairfield resident Shirley Richardson to take a beekeeping course at Camosun College and she has had three or four hives in her backyard ever since. Like other beekeepers, she is busiest in springtime, when she spends about two hours every eight days checking her bees and making any necessary adjustments to their accommodations. Diligence is required until the end of the swarming season, which Richardson recognizes not as a calendar date but by when she eats her first raspberry of the year.

After the swarming season, the pace of work relaxes and beekeepers can concentrate on harvesting honey and doing chores such as hammering together new frames. In late summer and fall they prepare their hives for the winter dormant period, which runs from early November to late February.

Typically, a well-managed backyard apiary yields about 100 pounds of honey per hive each year. The promise of liquid gold and other products, such as wax for making fragrant candles, is what entices some people to take up beekeeping, but these are not the only rewards. “The main reason I keep bees is the fascination of working with them,” says Richardson. “The honey is something of an irritant that you’ve got to figure out what to do with,” she adds. But as a multiple prize-winner for liquid honey, honeycomb, mead and beeswax at the 2004 Saanich Fall Fair she clearly knows how to make the most of her bees’ gifts.

Richardson’s fascination with apiculture is shared by many members of the Capital Region Beekeepers’ Association, making this an excellent place for aspiring beekeepers to get started. The CRBA meets monthly at St. Aidan’s Church in Saanich (at 7:30 pm on the second Thursday of the month) and membership coordinator Lorraine Munro says non-members are welcome to attend. “We have a lot of people in the club who are really knowledgeable and keen and happy to help,” she says.

Munro was introduced to beekeeping by her late husband and has been an enthusiastic apiarist in her own right for 13 years, maintaining several hives at her South Saanich home and others on peninsula farms. One benefit of beekeeping that she has come to appreciate is its contribution to the cycle of life. “The pollination bees provide is worth ten times as much as the honey they produce,” she says. “We would have so much less food available if it weren’t for pollination. There are other insects that pollinate, but honeybees are the most important pollinator we have.”

Populations of wild bees, both native species and feral honeybees, are dwindling worldwide. In Canada, introduced parasitic mites and diseases are major contributors to this decline, but habitat destruction is equally to blame. Because rural farmlands are often heavily sprayed with pesticides and herbicides and dominated by monocultures these days, bees may be happier in urban environments than in the surrounding countryside. A recent study of bee diversity and abundance in urban Vancouver found plenty of bees of all kinds in and around community gardens, weedy vacant lots and residential gardens featuring herbs and native plants. Biologist Désirée Tommasi, the study’s lead researcher, concluded that “cities are oases for bees.” If that’s the case, it may be time for more of us city dwellers to make room for a beehive or two in our gardens.

***

SIDEBAR STORY: Solo Bees

Unlike the sociable honeybee, most of the worlds 20,000-plus bee species have a solitary nature. One of our local representatives is the blue orchard mason bee, an important native pollinator. These fast-fliers can visit more than 2,000 blossoms a day and are undeterred by cool weather. Their favourite flower sources include cherry, apple and pear trees. Orchard bee nesting sites are often lacking in the city, but “bee boxes” are available for sale at many nurseries, making it easy to encourage these helpful and extremely docile bees to make themselves at home in your garden.