Catching The Buzz

Beekeeping is an ancient art. The art of beekeeping goes back not just centuries, but millennia, into our pasts. Honey is prized not just by humankind but by bears, apes and dozens of other animal species on the planet. Just as agriculture is the cornerstone of all civilizations, beekeeping is the cornerstone of agriculture. It could even be argued that modern flowering plants evolved in the presence of, or at least parallel with, pollinating insects—bees. The structure of the honeycomb has appeared continually in art and engineering throughout the centuries. It wasn’t until the industrial revolution that honey was supplanted by “neat and tidy” white sugar and beeswax by “clean, modern and efficient” petroleum products—principally paraffin. The health benefits and healing properties of honey and other bee products where well known and highly valued until the wholesale introduction of modern antibiotics. Honey was buried along with the Pharaohs in ancient Egypt. The bee, singularly among insects, has been a constant partner in the development of human civilization. “They’re amazing creatures. They’ve been around as long as dinosaurs. They’re still doing their thing. They’ve found fossils of bees [that are] 52 million years old.” says Trudi Simonson of Purple Gold Apiaries.

Trudi is a modern beekeeper who stumbled onto this ancient art somewhat by accident. She was living on a boat moored in Richmond with her husband Ron when, one day, he went off to his aunt’s farm to buy some honey. “Ron said he was going to go see Auntie Jean and buy a jar of honey. I [said], “Okay, sounds fine, see ya later.” He didn’t come home with the jar of honey—but the wooden box in which to grow the bees. We got our first hive that same summer. Within a few months we had fifteen hives stored in our boat yard.”

Before getting into beekeeping Trudi already had experience in the food industry. She got her journeyman ticket in baking and worked for five years as a pastry chef. She’s taken on a number of different jobs where she developed the skills to run a business. After moving into the marina she became moorage manager and then the bookkeeper for the marina. She is also currently the bookkeeper for FarmFolk/CityFolk.

The Business of Bees

It may be difficult to imagine keeping bee hives while living in a marina, but Purple Gold Apiaries has always done things a little differently.

Their first major business opportunity was in pollination. The hives where placed on a number of farms in the area—primarily to pollinate raspberries, blueberries and cranberries. They quickly when to running about 40 hives and business was booming. It wasn’t very consistent, Trudi notes. “It was pretty fickle. It’s one of the first things the growers drop when things aren’t good, even though it’s probably the most important thing it’s [often] not where the finances let them go.”

The next obvious step was to gather honey. They worked out a schedule that allowed them to keep their pollination contracts in the Spring and early summer and then move the hives to up into the mountains to produce honey.

At one point they peaked at about 700 hives, but now are running between 300 and 500. In part this is because they expanded their business into a value added products. Trudi found there was a lot more potential in the hives than just honey. “We’re finding [that] as the last year has accelerated in our value added products, we can still get a lot of product out of less hives,” she says. “We realized the value of the other products in terms of health. There’s pollen, and propolis and royal jelly. We started building pollen traps and setting the hives up for honeycomb, instead of extracted honey. You can basically get what you ask for that stuff, because not much of it’s being produced by beekeepers. Currently, they are marketing candles, bee pollen, royal jelly and propolis as well as ceramic honey pots—all manufactured from their home in Surrey.

A more recent challenge they faced is similar to that of many people in the agriculture industry—how to take a seasonal occupation and turn it into a year-round profession. This is particularly a problem for small operations that find it difficult to keep experienced and skilled workers on a seasonal basis. Trudi reflects on the implications of the process. “It’s easier to just sell your crop off to one purchaser, get your cheque and your season’s done. Same with pollination. Your season’s done—you just put them to bed and wait for spring, like the bees do. That’s sort of suffocating, though,” she asserts, “when you’re trying not to be a seasonal business. Over the last three years, we really started into retailing. There’s more markets out there now. Nobody’s doing what we’re doing.”

Being An Ambassador

Like many small producers, promotion and education is a major part of the job. Trudi spends a lot of her time telling people about the benefits of bee products and correcting misconceptions about bees. She is often dismayed at the level of knowledge even amongst other beekeepers. “I go to Alberta for visits or to pick up equipment. I’m sitting across [the table] from a beekeeper who might have six or seven thousand hives and telling him why propolis is good.” Her conviction comes from personal experience. “I started taking bee pollen before I was a beekeeper. It’s the only complete food known to man and I have to tell people that. I feel like a snake oil salesman sometimes.”

Personal Vision

It sounds like a very full plate—moving hives around two provinces, manufacturing retail products, and running a kiosk at Lonsdale Quay. But Trudi still has other plans. One thing she’s like to do is open a honey bakery. Success seems likely for this person with incredible energy, optimism and a very positive attitude. Her vision is large but not grandiose. Not only does she have enthusiasm for bees—she has respect. “I don’t consider myself in a farmer in the usual sense of the word. I benefit from what’s in the ground, by the nectars and the bees pollinating it. Pollination is the catalyst. It’s the sparkplug to agriculture. I guess I am an advocate, or an activist, in a way, but I don’t feel like one. I don’t have a really big soap box,” she says. “To me being a beekeeper is about keeping the bees safe. I want them to be around because they need to be here.”

Michael Marrapese,
January, 2003