By Elizabeth Spence
To say that Kaleb Schriefer is obsessed with honeybees is an understatement. They are his life, his reason for living.
Although professionally a carpenter, Kaleb ran a bee business in Ontario with the delightful name of Obeewan Kenobee before moving to this area a couple of years ago. He took over a local bee business and honey processing site in Tatamagouche.
Kaleb is one of several beekeepers employed by a large blueberry operation, Van Dyk Blueberries, which distributes hives across the province when their blueberries are ready to be pollinated.
Once the bees have finished pollinating the wild blueberries, Kaleb places the hives along the North Shore for the rest of the season to collect wildflower honey for his own use and for sale. Last year he harvested 800 hives and produced 44,000lbs of honey and 540lbs of wax in 15lb blocks.
You can find him at the Tatamagouche Farmers Market on the first Saturday of each month where he carries all kinds of honey and bee-related products. He also sells from home by appointment (see contact info below).
Kaleb will remove troublesome bees’ nests for you, collect swarms, set you up as a beekeeper providing you with all you need, rent you hives for pollination if you don’t have any of your own, and assist when you have problems with your hives. He’s the bee go-to man in the area.
When Jennifer and I sat down to chat with Kaleb, the first thing he did was to blow our minds.
“Bees are not very efficient pollinators,” he said.
“What!?!” we exclaimed, our eyebrows heading skywards. “We thought they were wonderful pollinators. Why are we always told to encourage bees in our gardens, then? Is that just propaganda out there telling us how incredible bees are when they’re not?” Etc.
“Well,” said Kaleb, “let me tell you a bit about bees before I explain.” We were all ears.
“The earliest bee fossil is about 90 million years old,” he began. “There are pre-historic cave-paintings of bees and there are drawings of them on Egyptian tombs.
“Over 20,000 types of bees are known, and 600 of them are native to Canada, 200 to Nova Scotia.” Our minds blown – again.
“Colonists brought their honeybees and hives over to Nova Scotia in the 1600s, so the insects are not native – they’re actually an alien species. But a nice one.
The hives were called ‘skeps’ in those days.” (That’s the Old English word for ‘basket.’) Here is a French illustration from about 1700 of a skep, or “ruche” in French, which the Acadians would have known:
Kaleb emphasized that the importance of honeybees over the millennia cannot be overestimated. Not only did early humans realize that the bees were essential to growing food through their pollination, but they used the honey to eat directly, used beeswax and produced mead which was the only thing people drank for most of history. Here’s a book from Amazon on mead making if you’re into that sort of thing:
Today, although we don’t drink mead much any more – I think our local “Hard Honey” meadery has closed down – there are still a lot of bee-related things that we do these days. In our Farmers’ Markets we see hand-made beeswax products, various creams and lotions, lip balms, honies from different flower sources and much more.
In this context, Kaleb blew our minds again with another astonishing statement:
“About 75% of the honey you buy is fake. It’s counterfeit. It’s part of an unregulated black market!”
“What??”
“It’s cut with different syrups to mimic real honey . Even the most popular brands! The labelling is often extremely misleading and it is not required to state all the contents.” Yikes! Again!! Diabetics beware!!
His advice: buy from a trusted local source, and luckily, we do have a few. He notes that if you use “real” honey, you will be less susceptible to seasonal allergies as well.
When you think about it, there is indeed a great difference between locally produced honey and store-bought brands, especially the stuff in squeeze-bottles. Why didn’t we realize this before?
Kaleb noted that products of the hive have been used since the beginning of time for medicinal purposes, but that there is an increasing scientific approach these days.
The proven antibacterial properties of honey means that it is great at healing wounds.
Propolis, a type of bee-glue used in the hive, is another popular medicinal product thought to be anti-microbial and useful as a wound dressing as well.
Then there’s royal jelly, a superfood for the queen bee, which is supposed to improve our immune system.
Pollen itself is of overall benefit to the whole system
Then there are the various therapies.
Kaleb talked about bee venom therapy, or bee-sting therapy where you are actually stung by the bee. There are claims that this has anti-bacterial, anti-fungal and even anti-cancer effects.
One way to carry out this procedure is to take a bee with a pair of tweezers, hold it against your skin and let it sting you. Another way we found is this:
https://ucanr.edu/blogs/blogcore/postdetail.cfm?postnum=42666
Clarinet probably optional.
You can also get bee venom cream for your arthritis:
There are various forms of “hive therapy” too. Kaleb says that there are people who would pay to come and sleep on his hives for the beneficial effects. There are in fact Bee B&Bs where you can do just that.
Kaleb also talked about “hive air.” For health reasons people come just to sit around and breathe in “hive air,” particularly good if you have respiratory problems, apparently. I must try it. This picture is from Apitherapy.com
We are obviously not recommending any of these procedures or products, but if you would like to know the science behind them, have a look at this article.
We stayed chatting with Kaleb for about three hours and could write a book on what we discovered. Here are just a few points:
- Bees don’t have eyelids,
- Bees “taste” with their feet,
- Drones die after mating because their reproductive organ is ripped off,
- Honey from many bees is poisonous,
- 70% of hives survive the winter here,
- Worker bees only live for six weeks, and then die of exhaustion,
- Honey doesn’t need to be pasteurised because it doesn’t go bad,
- Bees see flower colours in the ultra-violet range, which we can’t see.
- The industry uses honeybees, Apis mellifera, specifically because they will always return to their hive even after it is moved. Other species will just abandon their nest and build a new one once disturbed.
But we should get back to the honeybee as an inefficient pollinator in the garden.
It fundamentally has to do with electricity, hairs and pants. Kaleb explained.
When a bee flies through the air, it generates a positive electrostatic charge. Flowers and their pollen have a negative charge.
Through its antennae, the bee judges the strength of the negative charge in the flower, and if the charge is adequate, the bee will approach the flower. The difference in charge causes the pollen to jump over to the bee.
Now comes the very interesting part. Bees have lots and lots of hairs – about three million of them. That means that if you add up the surface areas of all the hairs, there is a huge expanse for the pollen to land on. Because their hairs can hold on to so much pollen, the bees are not doing great favours to the flowers. They are keeping the pollen for themselves!
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Many pollinators – wasps, flies, etc. – are not so hairy, if at all, so they do not have that huge area to collect pollen. In fact, even though pollen may land on them, they can’t hold on to it very well and it drops all over the place making quite a mess, which is what the flowers love.
Another reason bees are selfish when it comes to pollinating is that they have what Kaleb calls “pollen pants.” These are pockets or baskets built into their legs where they store the pollen, and they’re very good at keeping the pollen in there.
In short, all bees use pollen as a food source – it’s the carbohydrate in their diet – and that’s what they want it for. They don’t purposely spread it around. Pollination happens by accident.
So, since honeybees have the advantage of a static charge, hairs and “pants” they don’t give up the pollen they have collected very easily, and therefore are not as efficient in pollinating flowers as other insects are.
Isn’t that a wonderful piece of information?? Although I do think Kaleb was playing us a bit here with that first provocative statement!
Phew! We needn’t panic. Honeybees still do a great job in our gardens and they provide us with so many other wonderful things as well.
Kaleb recommends this book Bees in Your Backyard as a really great information resource on bees.
If you are interested in starting to keep bees, Kaleb would be delighted to assist you. He suggests that you make your own equipment or buy it new, since used hives can carry disease.
He will suggest that you join the Nova Scotia Beekeepers Association and register your hive. As well as providing a discussion forum, the association provides many services, including tracking bee diseases
You can contact Kaleb through his website
As a final note, CONGRATULATIONS, Kaleb, for just being awarded “Firefighter of the Year” for Tatamagouche!
Did you know that World Bee Day is 20th May?
Do you know who the Patron Saint of Beekeepers is?
Don’t you just love it?
February, 2025
2 Responses
What a fascinating read! Now I want to find out more — I’ll have to go bother Kaleb! 😀
Fascinating interview with an incredibly knowledgeable beekeeper! Thanks