Raising Bees

September: Chatsworth Honey Bee Tour and Small Scale Extraction

When: Sunday, September 19th, 10 am – 4 pm

Where: starting in Chatsworth (Grey County) View map.

Keeping bees can be a commercial enterprise, used for pollination or complementary to your fruit and/or vegetable business since just one colony of bees can increase your harvest. Kelly Rogers and Toby Bruce of Chatsworth Honey have been beekeeping commercially for over 22 years. With over 700 colonies in 30 yards, they direct market their honey through an on-farm store. The rest of their honey is sold wholesale, after being extracted in their large scale extraction setup. Just before lunch, we will visit one of their yards, and discuss what makes a commercial operation viable. From there, we proceed to Peter Noddle's home, where he keeps two of his hives close by for monitoring. We will have lunch and discuss keeping one or two hives and how to get started. Learn to identify worker bees, drones and the queen bee. You will be exposed to the different types of frames, brood chambers and honey supers and see the minimal equipment needed to harvest the honey. To attend this workshop, you must sign a liability waiver. You will be exposed to a calm strain of bees, but there is a good possibility of being stung! If you would like to purchase any equipment, please contact gayl@farmstart.ca to arrange this.

FarmStart in partnership with the Ecological Farmers Association of Ontario (EFAO) and other organizations is planning at least one farm tour a month from April to October, across Ontario. The format allows for a farm tour in the morning with an emphasis on how each enterprise contributes to farm business viability (10 am to noon), and then during the afternoon, the farmer teaches a particular skill used on their farm (2 hours after lunch).

Networking: BYO bagged lunch, lunchtime is for networking.

Cost: $20, or $30 per family.

RSVP (required): admin@farmstart.ca or call Cherie Bauman (519) 836-7046 ext. 103. Please bring cash or cheque (made out to FarmStart) on the day of the tour.