Your first-year calendar, and where to get hands-on help

It's May again, a year after Anne stood in her field with her heart pounding. One colony came through the winter strong. The other didn't, and she found out why. Now her neighbour is asking whether he should get bees, and Anne hears herself answering with a calendar. So let's finish the course the same way, with your first year, month by month.

In the fall and winter before you start: register with the province, for free. Measure your setbacks and choose your site. Reserve two nucs, because spring nucs sell out. Assemble and paint your boxes. And find a local club.

Late May to early June: your nucs arrive. Install them, feed one to one syrup until the nectar is flowing, and check for eggs about a week later.

June and July: inspect about every two weeks, and every seven to nine days in swarm season. Look for eggs, a solid brood pattern, stores and queen cells. Add honey supers when the bees need room, and never feed syrup with supers on. Count mites every month; Ontario's ministry now advises monthly sampling.

Late August to mid September: sample for mites and treat promptly, because the winter bees are being raised now. Take the supers off by about mid September.

September to mid October: feed at least fifteen litres of two to one syrup, and heft until a single box weighs thirty two kilograms or a double forty five. Aim for mites below three per hundred bees by the first of October.

Late fall: wrap the hives, reduce the entrances, and give them an upper vent. Then, through the winter, leave them alone.

March and April: on a sunny day of five degrees or more, check that the bees are alive, and heft the hive. Feed if it's light. Keep the wraps on until the nights have stayed above freezing for a week or two. And if a colony has died, find out why.

Now, the mistakes. Ontario's reports and guides point to the same handful again and again. Not counting mites at all, which one in five small scale Ontario beekeepers reported. Treating too late, or not testing again afterwards. Feeding too little, too late, or too thin in the fall. Feeding syrup with supers on. Unwrapping too early. Letting a strong colony get crowded until it swarms. And buying bees or used equipment without an inspection permit.

You don't have to learn all of this alone, and you shouldn't. In eastern Ontario, the Limestone Beekeepers' Guild meets in the Kingston area, and the Eastern Ontario Beekeepers' Association covers the Ottawa region. The Ontario Beekeepers' Association runs hands on workshops each spring, and the University of Guelph's Honey Bee Research Centre offers introductory courses. Nothing replaces standing beside an experienced beekeeper at an open hive.

And the province is on your side. The Ontario Apiary Program's inspectors are there to help you catch disease early. If you find something on a frame you don't recognise, contact them.

Now let's change one fact. Suppose Anne had tried to do all of this alone, from videos, without a club or a mentor. She might have managed. But the day she found strange, bulging cappings on a frame, it was a guild member who came over that evening and showed her they were just drone brood. That kind of help is what turns a nervous beginner into a beekeeper.

The mistake beginners make is thinking the first year is the hard part. The first year is where you learn. Keep your records, keep asking questions, and let every colony teach you something.

Here is the rule, in one breath. Register and reserve your bees in the winter, install them in late spring, inspect every two weeks and count mites monthly, treat and feed from late August, wrap in late fall, check and heft in early spring, and never stop learning from other beekeepers.

That's the end of the course. Thank you for spending this time with me. Find your local club, register before your bees arrive, and when you lift that first frame into the sunlight, take a moment. You're a beekeeper now. Good luck, from me, Buzzy Brannigan.