From wildflowers to honey jars: A tour of a Squamish apiary

Creating something ‘bee-autiful’ can give you a buzz (maybe that’s ‘punny’), but it’s quite literally how an apiary in Paradise Valley came about.

Bee Wild is a family-oriented apiary, located at 4311 Paradise Valley Road, that actively works with nature in a reciprocal way, in order to remain self-sufficient. In other words, it works with what is known as a permaculture system, or regenerative farming, so that wildlife and biodiversity can thrive.

The Squamish Chief joined one of the apiary’s Bee Adventure tours on Aug. 15 to discover more about Bee Wild’s methods, and to capture some ‘bee-roll’ for visuals (ok, let’s stop that now.)

“It’s always been a passion of mine to make something beautiful out of the land [and] I really was passionate about making [Paradise Valley] a beautiful place. Just through [wildlife] interactions out here and seeing the world come to life… I thought, ‘Why not try beekeeping as another way I can interact with the world around me, and as a way that gives back to the land as well?’” Bee Wild founder and apiarist AnnaMarie Rutishauser told The Squamish Chief.

Rutishauser showed the tour group her permaculture-based garden, explaining how the native wildflowers, plants, and trees all worked together, and how she had wanted to re-create these interactions in nature.

She said the growth of flowers and fruit naturally attracted bees and pollinators, so bee-keeping seemed a logical step forward in conserving the beauty of the land.

Rutishauser also showed the group the bees, which were collected on each frame of the hives (each honeycomb frame takes between two and four weeks for the worker bees to fill), using a blower to create smoke and air pressure, so that the bees would move safely towards the bottom of the hive. She explained the smell of the smoke made the bees instinctively gather around their honey to protect it, as if defending it from a forest fire, and minimizing contact with humans upon inspection or honey harvesting.

She said bees typically begin to build their hives around May, and their honey is harvested through to September. It typically takes 12 bees to produce one teaspoon of honey.

Rutishauser explained the process of starting a bee colony to The Squamish Chief. She said bees can be bought as packages from New Zealand and shipped over. You place your bees in a hive body you have created, and the honeycomb frames can be bought ready-made to accommodate the bees’ honey cell and wax production. Their production expands over time, depending on how they thrive in the environment that you provide, until you can split the hives and raise “locally mated” queen bees.

Rutishauser said an aspiration for Bee Wild is to become a more self-sustainable apiary over time. More immediately, she hopes that one of the hives, which is currently without a queen bee, will produce its own “locally mated” queen.

She explained that queen bees, which can live for up to three to five years, are the only bee that mates with the drones—the fewer male bees, which are identifiable by their distinguishable black or brown colour, and are slightly larger in size—and that she can produce over 3,000 eggs per day.

Her eggs are fed royal jelly—a nutrient-rich secretion produced by worker bees—and the first egg to hatch becomes the new queen.

Rutishauser said that Bee Wild started with two hives, and to date, it now has 11, with around 30,000 bees per hive. Only the honey from the top tier of the hives is harvested, which is the surplus amount. This surplus honey accounts for around 10 to 20% overall, meaning the bees have enough food to survive.

The tour ended with a honey-tasting session; the group was able to dip teaspoons in a jar of the harvested honey (harvested on a separate occasion), to sample.

Rutishauser has been beekeeping for over four years now. Originally from Vancouver Island, she said she relocated to Squamish in 2008 to raise her family and to create a home where they felt they could thrive in nature, and learn about the impact of their daily actions.

She said she wants to keep expanding tours in the Sea to Sky Corridor to help people have a similar experience; to have them interact in a way that also makes them aware of their day-to-day actions in nature.

Bee Wild produces and sells raw, unfiltered, and unpasteurized honey that is “true to nature,” according to their website. On the website, folks may also book a Bee Adventure Tour, and /or a Honey Tour Experience this summer. Updates about the apiary and their tours are also on Facebook and Instagram. 

General inquiries may be sent to [email protected].

Ina Pace is The Squamish Chief's Local Journalism Initiative (LJI) reporter.

This reporting was produced through the LJI, which supports original civic journalism across Canada.

The Squamish Business Beat was developed in response to local demand for more business-focused news. To be considered, please reach out to [email protected].