The love affair with bees
Serge's love affair with bees goes back more than 45 years when he worked for a beekeeper in Alberta. In pre-retirement, he began to assemble a colony of bees behind the family home. It was in 2011 that we officially started beekeeping in the wild forest of Scotstown at the foot of Mont Mégantic.
Today, there are colorful apiaries in a few places in the valley. Our bees are now treated with great care by Marie-Michèle and Étienne who have taken over. In return, they generously offer us their work as relentless pollinators. From the flowers of the fields in which their hives are installed to the fruit trees in our orchard, they gather pollen from an impressive variety of flowers and produce a velvety honey with the melliferous flavors of the valley.
Did you know?
- To produce 500g of honey, bees have to make 10,000 to 20,000 trips and visit more than 8 million flowers, which represents 7,000 hours of work.
- The bees deposit the honey in cells. Some bees are dedicated to ventilating the hive with their wings in order to evaporate the water from the honey. When the honey reaches the right percentage of humidity, the bees seal the cells with a thin layer of wax. Wax is produced by the wax glands of the bee located under its abdomen.
- In addition to working hard in the apiary, bees contribute to the survival and evolution of more than 80% of flowering plant species.