Village Squire, 1978-10, Page 10A
sweet
harvest
The people too
are as busy as bees
PG.8. VILLAGE SQUIRE/OCTOBER 1978.
Mrs. Russell Fear operates a machine that cuts the caps off the
honey combs.
Of all the growth industries in Canada spurred by the back to
the land movement. next to goat herding. beekeeping might be
the biggest.
Magazines for the back to the landers like .Harrowsmith
feature how to articles about how to get into the business and
others sing the praises of the pleasures of beekeeping.
According to Mrs. Russell Fear of Wingham more and more
people are setting up a few hives of bees for hobbies.
To many people the lure of bees is hard to understand. Why
would anyone want to get stung? Well the price of honey and the
apparent ease involved in collecting that liquid gold seems to
lure many people but those who seek easy money are those really
apt to get stung, according to Mrs. Fear.
The Fears should know about bees. They're one of the area's
larger bee operations. Mr. and Mrs. Fear have about 740
beehives and their son has another 60 meaning some 800 hives to
be serviced. The family has been beekeeping commercially for 10
years and before that Mr. Fear kept bees for another 18 years as
a hobby.
Russell first caught the bug about beekeeping from a teacher
when he was in school. The teacher had bees and he became
fascinated by the little creatures and by age 13 or 14 had his first
hive. Since then bees have been part of his life. For several years
he made his living at other things and kept bees as a hobby but
10 years ago the family decided to turn to bees full time.
Mrs. Fear also had bees in her background. Her father kept
bees. Today all the children are involved in one way or another.
One son has his own hives and another son and daughter don't
like bees, but they work in the honey house extracting honey
from the supers.
The Fears have a family operation. Some beekeepers haw
larger operations. some with up to 2000 hives, but these make
use of hired labour. The Fears prefer to keep it in the family. Still
it means a lot of work. They have bee yards in 33 locations within
about a 30 mile radius of their home on the northwest edge of