East Vancouver Beekeepers. Local Honey, Local Queens
We are a beekeeping company based out of East Vancouver, producing local honey, beeswax, and locally raised queens. Our bees are located in backyards around Vancouver and Surrey.
We are incredibly excited to announce that we received funding from the Lush Sustainable Fund! We are using it to double our queen production capacity which is now complete; many more 3-way boxes at our new mating yard.
We had a bbq recently, and gave guests the option of stenciling onto equipment, if they felt crafty. Bees can see shapes, so I hope it will help the newly mated queens find their way! Thank you, friends, for being waaaay more artistic than me.
Part of doubling our capacity has meant hiring our very first part-time employee; welcome Courtney, we are so happy to have you! It’s meant a big learning curve for us, as we’ve never had an employee before, but I think we’ve got all the things in order for now (also hence the absence of posts — see? another excuse reason). But it is just amazing to have a capable beekeeper like that out there with me; we can get so much done, which really matters in the June-uary weather we’ve been having, where you might only have half a day of sunshine before the downpour begins. It’s also a huge mental and physical relief to me at times when the workload is heavy, time-sensitive, and accomplished while sweating buckets in a bee suit.
Dandelion has come and gone. Maple and Horse Chestnut too. I always keep meticulously detailed records of those early blooms, with pictures, because I am so excited that winter is over. Then everything blooms at once, swarm season comes, and I stop keeping track. Swarms are over, too, for the most part. We had most of our swarms in late April, owing to the early hot weather (that was a particularly galling swarm on the upper right there. I climbed that cherry tree maybe 8 times, and in the end, still didn’t get the queen — they just fly back up if you don’t get her. That was also my “car2go” swarm, as Liam had the truck). We had many swarms during that unexpected hot patch…but it seems to have evened out now, as we have been religiously taking bees and brood out of hives to make up our mating nucs.
The Bee-Team
Six Legs Good Apiaries is owned and operated by husband and wife team Deborah Tin Tun and Liam Brownrigg.
We both started beekeeping in 2008 on Vancouver Island, working for a commercial honey farm. We have also worked for several other beekeeping operation over the last few years. We have been keeping our own bees since moving to Vancouver in 2012, working to increase our honey production, as well as expanding into queen breeding. Our hives are located in backyards in East Van and Surrey.
Our Products
Honey: 500g $10; 1kg $18; 3kg $50
Bulk Honey (only available seasonally): $15/kg
Queens and Nucs: Please contact us for more information, or to place an order.
If you are interested in beekeeping instruction, please contact us and we will work out a suitable program
