CELEBRATING THE HUMBLE HONEYBEE
By Pirjo Raits - May 25, 2010

Bob Liptrot from Tugwell Creek Honey Farm and Meadery is concerned about the loss of honeybees and discontinuation of a moratorium on imported bees. Pirjo Raits photo

VITAL FOOD LINK DISAPPEARING

The sweet, sticky amber liquid that has been called the nectar of the gods is nature’s original sweetener — but the natural order is crashing. The honey industry is in a crisis situation and there is no solution in sight.
Many beekeepers have lost over 90 per cent of their bees, sending the industry into a tailspin. Add to that the lifting of a 22-year bee quarantine and you have a frail and failing bee industry.
Bees not only produce honey but they are essential for pollination. Without bees, food crops and fruit trees would not produce and much of what we eat would simply not exist.
“One of every three mouthfuls of food we eat bees are responsible for,” says Bob Liptrot of Tugwell Creek Honey Farm and Meadery.
Liptrot lost 60 per cent of his bees last year and feels he got off light. In the past three years over 50 billion honeybees have died. A large amount of research into what is called Colony Collapse Disorder is necessary to help.
He said the bee quarantine lifted by the Ministry of Agriculture and Lands on May 1, makes no sense as they don’t know what is killing the livestock. The quarantine helped keep out pests and pathogens, but did not include the varroa mite, 12 to 15 years ago, that took out hundreds of hives in the space of a few years, resulting in millions of dollars of damage.
“It’s like opening the barn door when you have mad cow disease,” said Liptrot.
Vancouver Island has 1,200 independent beekeepers and many of the older beekeepers are worn out, out of funds and are walking away.
He said if the situation was one where Fraser Valley chicken farmers lost 90 per cent of their chickens and had to start over, serious questions would be asked and something would be done.
Liptrot has been a beekeeper for 40 years and he, along with his partner Dana LeComte, opened their honey farm and meadery in 1998.
On May 29, Tugwell Creek Honey Farm and Meadery is hosting the Day of the Honeybee in an effort to raise awareness of the importance of honeybees and to raise funds for the Canadian Bee Research Fund.
“Our goal is to increase people’s awareness of what bees do for us and what we can do for them,” says Dana LeComte.
Between 12 and 5 p.m., people of all ages can take part in educational tours of the farm and meadery.
MLA John Horgan will make the proclamation and cut the cake to celebrate the first Honeybee Awareness Day in the Sooke region. There will be experienced beekeepers on hand to answer questions about bees and a demonstration hive will be on display so folks can see a hive in action. Children can take part in face painting by donation, a colouring area and a beekeepers dress-up area.
Inside the tasting room, past vintages and test batches can be sipped with 100 per cent of the price going to research. Tugwell Creek will be donating 10 per cent of all regular tasting room proceeds to the Canadian Bee Research Fund.
To help save the honeybee, there are a couple of things one can do, said Liptrot.
First, and foremost, is to stop using pesticides, especially synthetic nicotine-based ones, which are deadly to insect life.
He said it is important to encourage habitat for wild honeybees by planting flowers and bee gardens.
“It is important for the continuing well being of agriculture and food security,” said Liptrot.
The Tugwell Creek Honey Farm and Meadery tasting room, at 8750 West Coast Road, is open from Wednesday to Sunday from 12 to 5 p.m.
For more information go to: www.tugwellcreekfarm.com.

 

NORTHWEST PALATE
September/ October 2008
The Mystery of the Missing Bees by Susan Hauser

B.C. Beekeeper Optimistic Despite Losses
Bob Liptrot's beehives dot 12 oceanside acres west of Victoria on Vancouver Island. This is Tugwell Creek Honey Farm. Since 2003 its been a meadery, as well, producing up to 12,000 bottles of honey wine each year.
Liptrot says after learning beekeeping from his neighbor as a boy, his innate curiosity led him eventually to a Master's degree in Apicultural Sciences from Simon Fraser University.
During the summer, people stop by Liptrot's tasting room to sample the variety of meads he makes from his own honey. Invariable, the subject of colony collapse disorder comes up. Between sips, visitors can get an education.
Liptrot and other Vancouver Island beekeepers are somewhat protected from CCD and other problems, as the island maintains a quarantine against importing bees that may carry disease, except in special cases. Unfortunately, one of those special cases brought Nosema ceranae. Liptrot lost more than 30 percent of his hives this year. He's accustomed to only about a 10 percent annual loss.
Liptrot is doing what he can to help the honey bees by participating in a bee genetics study with the aim of producing hardier stock. Although he's limited by the quarantine to importing miniscule bee eggs for his research, he's getting interesting results, he says. " I think personally that's our way off the chemical treadmill that a lot of beekeepers have gotten onto, trying to fight various pests and pathogens that are causing our industry's grief and causing things like colony collapse."
Liptrot says the major paradigm shift necessary to change agriculture to more earth-friendly and bee-friendly practices is unfortunately highly unlikely. "It's difficult to turn things around," he says. "We've reached a level where we've strapped ourselves in for a rough
ride."
" Still," he says, "I'm mostly optimistic." The conversations in his tasting room, he hopes, will help keep the momentum of public concern going, leading to beneficial research and results.

GLOBE AND MAIL August 3, 2006
By Shannon Moneo

SOOKE, B.C. -- When Bob Liptrot was just seven years old, he began helping a neighbour in east Vancouver with his beehives.
Now, 43 years later, Mr. Liptrot has a 100 hives of his own, and millions of bees, producing not only honey but also an ancient libation -- mead. The honey-based alcoholic drink, which dates back at least 8,000 years, is being embraced by people looking for a new buzz.
"The big attraction of mead is that you're drinking a piece of living history," said Mr. Liptrot, who with his wife, Dana LeComte, opened Western Canada's first commercial meadery in 2003.
Since then business at their Tugwell Creek Honey Farm and Meadery, 50 kilometres west of Victoria, has doubled each year. Last year, they sold 2,500 bottles of mead, infused with fruit, herbs and spices and bearing names such as solstice spiced metheglin, wassail blush and summer melomel.
Ms. LeComte, 36, attributes the blossoming interest in mead to a mix of customer sophistication and curiosity.
"When you've seen it all and done it all, mead is something new," she said. "People are really looking for something unique. A chardonnay is a chardonnay is a chardonnay."
Tugwell Creek's mead, which sells for $20 for a 750-millilitre bottle, has been enjoyed by customers around the world. It comes in many varieties, limited only by the producer's imagination.
Each year, the farm's 7.5 million bees produce about 2,500 kilograms of honey, with 60 per cent dedicated to mead-making and the rest sold as pure honey.
The couple, who have two young daughters, moved from Vancouver to their five-hectare farm in 1996. Two years later, they began selling wildflower honey after buying bees, installing hives, building a storeroom and bear-proofing their land.
But honey production was labour-intensive, with 80 per cent work, 20 per cent profit, Ms. LeComte said. So, searching for a more lucrative product, the couple made a beeline to mead.
Mr. Liptrot, who has a degree in entomology and had worked as an instructor for Outward Bound outdoor-adventure courses, had been experimenting with mead, making it for his own consumption for 25 years.
After meeting strict regulations from the provincial Liquor Distribution Branch (a "meadery" category does not exist so Tugwell Creek is classified as one of B.C.'s 110 wineries), the couple bought special equipment including a $10,000 filter, $10,000 extractor and $7,000 mixing tank.
Now, Mr. Liptrot said other honey producers call, wondering how their venture is doing and inquiring how to become mead makers themselves.
Ms. LeComte said their customers span all age groups. People in their 50s and older seem to especially enjoy dessert varieties of mead, such as the rich, thick sack mead, she said.
University students visit Tugwell Creek to buy a variety of bottles of mead by the case, often to give as gifts.
Drinking mead has become trendy among young people, agrees one of the owners of B.C.'s second mead operation, which opened last July.
"People are totally fascinated with anything that relates to our ancient history," said Helen Grond, who with her husband operates Middle Mountain Mead on Hornby Island.
Ms. Grond, 48, said young people of drinking age who are drawn to works like Beowulf and The Lord of the Rings are making mead their elixir of choice.
"Trends seem to start with young people."
She and her husband, Cam Graham, 50, have a five-hectare farm where they grow fruits and herbs to infuse their meads.
They don't have their own bees, however, so last year they had to buy 1,350 kilograms of honey.
Middle Mountain expects to sell about 3,000 bottles of mead, priced between $18 and $22, during its first year.
Ms. Grond, who used to be a red-wine enthusiast, says mead is now her drink of choice. She notes that a bottle of mead will keep for weeks in the fridge, thanks to honey's preservative qualities.
Because a minimal amount of chemicals go into mead and there are no heavy grape tannins, mead drinkers usually don't get tannin- or sulphite-induced headaches.
Ms. Grond believes the mead fad grew out of the microbrewery trend. Many U.S. mead producers were launched by those in the microbrew business where the trend was to explore ancient ways of making traditional beers, such as oatmeal stout.
As their beers became stranger and stranger, reaching into varieties from the Middle Ages, the microbrewers were eventually producing meads. Until the 1300s, when hops were discovered, beer was made with honey, Ms. Grond noted.
A Victoria restaurant, Cafe Brio, which focuses on regional cuisine, began serving Tugwell Creek's harvest melomel this spring.
Greg Hays, the restaurant's co-owner and wine buyer, had tried mead about 30 years ago. He expected the melomel to be syrupy. "But it's not some sloppy, sweet thing at all," he said. "It's much like a glass of wine."
Mr. Hays, who tastes dozens of new products each week, said he often talks wary customers into trying the mead, but once they do, they're converts.

Mead at a glance
What it is: Mead is the world's oldest fermented beverage, likely first imbibed by a pleasantly surprised cave-dweller who accidentally left some honey and water in a leather pouch, Vancouver Island mead maker Bob Liptrot says.
How it is made: Honey is mixed with water. Depending on the type of mead desired, fruit juice, spices or herbs are added.
At Mr. Liptrot's Tugwell Creek Honey Farm and Meadery in Sooke, 50 kilometres west of Victoria, the mixtures are placed in four oak barrels, which were imported from France, each one holding 230 litres, or in stainless steel tanks. The mead then "ferments out" for as little as two months or as long as two years. The shorter the duration, the sweeter the mead because the sugar in the honey causes the fermentation.
Where it is made: There are about 200 commercial mead operations around the world, including 15 in Canada and 60 in the United States, most of which began operating in the past five to seven years. B.C. is home to two (Tugwell Creek and Middle Mountain Mead, on Hornby Island) and a third is preparing to open in Langley. Three mead producers are expected to open in Alberta in the next couple of years.