Honey harvest time at Ewelme Colony

Ewelme apiarist Phillip Walter

Chris Davis

Ewelme Hutterite Colony occupies a pretty piece of Alberta prairie next to the Waterton river north of Glenwood.  Equidistant to it are the towns of Pincher Creek and Fort Macleod.  The village of Glenwood just down the road to the south.  I visited during the final honey harvest of the year, earlier this month.

Ewelme was established in 1927 as an offshoot of the East Cardston Hutterite Bruderhof (founded in 1918), and is home to 87 people.  "We have branched off three times already," explained Ewelme apiarist Phillip Walter, when asked about the construction and beautification efforts evident at the colony.  "Things are looking up."

Phillip, his mother Rebecca, and his father Darius Walter look after Ewelme's honey production, centred in a small but tidy building on the colony.  The colony was already involved in bee management when honey farmer Bob Lyons sold off his honey operation in 2010.  Lyons and his wife Karen sold their operation after more than 30 years in the business.  The Lyons farm was located west of Pincher Creek, near the Pincher Creek Hutterite Bruderhof, along the gravel road known for many years to local residents as 'Honey Lane'. The Walters used some key pieces from the Lyons' auction to expand.

Bob Lyons also helped with training.  "In 2006 I worked with Bob Lyons. (I was) 16,  just out of school," Phillip said.  He later earned a Beekeeper Certificate of Registration from the Government of Alberta, Agriculture and Rural Development.  "He went to school and took a course," explained Rebecca.  "He couldn't decide: horses, cows, chickens, pigs, they are all over.  So we thought maybe we could go into bees.  And look where we are."

Bees fanning a hive

The Langstroth style bee hives are constructed in five parts - a floor, a brood-box,  honey supers, a crown-board and a roof.  Most visibly, the bottom two boxes remain during harvesting and are home to the queen and her brood.  The top two boxes are honey supers containing removable frames that hold the honey which is harvested.  The two top boxes are offset from the bottom two, with a small gap at which many bees were gathered to fan the hive on the warm afternoon of my visit.  "That's what they're doing right now, they're fanning bring in cool air to cool the hive," Phillip explained as we watched the phenomenon.  "We have the supers offset, it's like opening a window.  That's where they put the honey."  There are 90 producing supers producing in total, at two different locations, at any given time during the honey season at the Ewelme operation.

A divider is placed  between the second and third boxes.  "That is the queen extruder.," Phillip explained. "The queen cannot go up into the honey super.  We don't want her to lay in a honey super, we want the honey clean.  She stays in the bottom two boxes there and lays her eggs, that's where they raise the brood.  That's where they stay, all year." 

Bees fanning a hive

"What you see out there, we take the two top boxes off,  two always stay out there.  We put the empty ones out and when they're full, we bring them back and put  more empty ones out.  They just keep working for us.  Toward the end of the season, they get pretty aggressive.  They like to hold on to their honey.  They know what's happening.  They know there's no more blossoms."

Although he's relatively relaxed around the hives, "We do get stung," Phillip said.  "There is no bee keeper that doesn't get stung."

Rebecca removing the caps from a frame

The supers hold frames, which hold the honey.  "This frame, when it's full like that, holds about 10 pounds of honey," Phillip explained.  After the frames are removed, the caps are scraped off.  The wax caps hold the honey inside the hexagonal wax cells (the honeycomb).  Rebecca demonstrated removing the caps to free the honey contained within. 

Then the frames go into an extractor, which spins out the honey.  Later on in the process a wax spinner is also used, which separates the remnants of the honey from the wax.  

Extractor

Phillip loading the extractor

Honey leaving the extractor

From there the honey is moved into two large blue tubs that hold 650 pounds each.  "When they're full, we have to quit until we empty these, then continue," Darius explained. 

The honey is left in the blue tubs overnight, during which time everything not-honey rises to the top to be skimmed away.  "We use that too," said Darius.  "We heat the wax, and make candles. We use 6 to 7 hundred pounds here (on the colony)."  Some of the candles are sold at craft markets in the area, alongside the honey products and various other hand-crafted goods, including belts, baking, clothing, and saddles.

 "The honey goes from here (the blue tubs), into the buckets.  We got 1900 pounds, last time."

Phillip at Pincher Creek's Farmers Market

The honey is filtered for impurities, and is then transferred into smaller tubs for consumption and sale.  "We heat it up to 130 degrees, Fahrenheit, then we pour it through this bottling bucket, it has a filter inside," Phillip explained. The honey is stored in 50, 30, and 10 pound buckets.

Two kinds of honey are produced, liquid and creamed.  The creamed honey is simply liquid honey that is whipped.  In fact, simple is the keyword of the whole production.   "This is probably the most natural food that I can think of in the world," said Phillip.  "Honey doesn't need to be inspected as of right now.  They are probably working on it.  Honey will not go bad, it can't spoil."

"Bob Lyons has checked our honey, a moisture taste," Rebecca clarified."  "If you don't let it cap all the way over the frame, there is moisture in there."

"It ferments into wine," Darius added.

"That's why we call it 'Pure Honey'," Rebecca continued.  "There's no moisture in there."

Of course, the bees are the heart of the operation.  For a honey bee colony to thrive it requires a good source of water, primarily for cooling the hives.  A healthy food source for the bees is critical.  Ewelme bees feed mainly on alfalfa, canola, clover, and wildflowers, abundantly available in the area.

"Every bee has their home, and they know where they belong," Rebecca said.  "These bees here will never go into the other yard."

"The honey flow is winding down," Phillip explained.  "We feed them in the fall, after we take all the honey supers off, we put a feeder on top of the hive and the bees come up."

"We feed them sugar syrup," Darius added.   "We buy it from the sugar factory in Taber."  The feeder is split in half and the two areas have a channel between them.  Each side is filled with syrup and has a floating wooden panel the bees can rest on so they don't drown while gathering the syrup.  "They take it down to where they live over winter, that's how they stay alive," Darius explained.  "They survive on that.  If they have food, they can live in a deep freeze."

"Winter bees don't live more than 3 to 6 months," elaborated Phillip.  "Whatever bee is born in October will live maybe to April.  Summer bees, they only live 6 weeks.  35 to 45 days is the end of a bees life."

In the wintertime they cluster around each other and the queen.  "They vibrate to stay warm, generate heat."

"We check for the queen in the spring, make sure she's laying," he continued.  "There's just one queen in each hive, and the queen lives about 3 years."  If she dies "We will replace her, if we catch it, or else the bees will.  They will raise their own."

"It needs to be hot weather, for a new queen," Rebecca added.  "If there's no queen they don't bring any honey, and they don't build up.   The queen lays the eggs, no eggs - no bees.  They could die.  If there was a hive right now with no queen, they would be dead by Christmas. They can't survive."

I asked Rebecca what it was like producing honey.  "It's different, very different," she said.  "It's enjoyable to bring honey to you."

You can find Ewelme honey at the Pincher Creek Farmers Market every second or third week, in Fort Macleod three times a week, at Craft sales and Christmas sales, and you can go straight to the colony to purchase it as well.  It's $3.50 pound for liquid honey, $5.00 pound for creamed.  Ewelme colony makes about 4,000 lbs per year.

Ewelme sheep

Ewelme garden, rotated every year so one half is always fallow to regenerate