His hand surrounded by hundreds of pulsating stingers, Phil Ellis admires an entourage of petite sidekicks in his lush Squamish backyard. The bees don't notice his presence - a bonus, really, as one doesn't want to attract the simultaneous attention of 300 bees - but Phil is more concerned about not distracting them from the task at hand - cleaning, eating, procreating, and making honey.
Whether the measure is bloodline or the length of time involved, Ellis - better known as Phil of Phil's Bee & Honey Farm (population 2,200,080) - is a beekeeper to the core. As he tells it his mother "caught a swarm" when he was a boy, as if that's something all moms do. So young Ellis was looped into a world dominated by regal Queens, larvae and thousands of pounds of sweet, golden honey.
After all this time Phil is still endlessly appreciative of the bees and their perfect communist ideals - a ruthless but exquisite system in which every member serves to further the common good. He takes me around his generous garden, pointing to various fruit trees and bushes the bees use for food. We pass a bench where, in lieu of television, Phil and his wife Hazel take cups of tea to watch the bees go about their business, which includes bathing in pollen and lapping up nectar like small, fuzzy lushes. Prior to retirement, the Ellis's ran Armchair Books in Whistler for 19 years before passing the buck to their son. Phil also operated a gas station in Squamish, though it's hard to imagine him surrounded by anything other than honey fumes. Now they are a regular fixture on the farmers' market circuit where they sell Phil's honey. You can often find his stand surrounded by small children sucking on the slim wooden sticks Phil dips in the bees' various triumphs - fireweed, wild blackberry, sweet clover, blueberries, plums, cherry, pear, apple and raspberry honey.
His golden nectar is also used by local restaurants like Gone Bakery in Whistler and The Cup Bistro & Deli and Health Food Heaven in Squamish. The general public can find it at the upcoming Squamish Winter Farmers Market on March 12 (and another on April 9) in the Roundhouse of the West Coast Railway Heritage Park at 39645 Government Road .
Because he has a huge brood of grandchildren running around his property on a regular basis, Ellis only keeps six hives at his place in Squamish. He keeps another 20 in Brackendale and another batch in Roe Creek south of Whistler. He's more interested in the health of his bees than the bottom line, so he doesn't keep track of how much he sells, saying it hovers between "sometimes a lot, sometimes not so much."
Bees are finely tuned to weather, so beekeeping in the Sea to Sky can be a difficult, finicky thing. If it's too cold, they won't work hard to bring in the honey. If it's too windy, they can't do their jobs properly. Given the factors, it's clear that Squamish can be a difficult place to rear bees. But difficult doesn't mean impossible and with the extensive know-how drawn from a life lived among hives; Phil mitigates the variables to produce thousands of pounds of honey each year. One of his biggest challenges is the local bear population, against which he wages a good-natured battle to protect his hives.
"Once they smell the honey, look out. They'll go for it," he chuckles.
Keeping bees isn't as hard as it seems, but neither is it simple - like all domesticated living creatures they demand a certain amount of dedication to thrive. It is, in Phil's eyes, an important contribution. Due to loss of habitat, sickness and unknown factors summed up as Colony Collapse Disorder, bee populations worldwide are in serious decline, an issue that has massive implications for all ecosystems. Backyard beekeeping helps sustain local populations and it doesn't take much effort. Bees require no training - each is born with a deeply ingrained role from which it never strays, so a beekeeper's most critical role is staying in sync with the processes being undertaken by various colony members. Each hive has one queen and her role is reproduction - she can lay up to 1,500 eggs per day. She's also the unifying factor in a hive and if she leaves (taking her pheromones with her), a colony will falter if she's not quickly replaced. Drones are male bees whose primary goal in life is to fertilize virgin queens, after which they promptly die. Workers - sexually underdeveloped females who typically don't lay eggs, are the smallest in size and make up the majority of a colony. They clean and polish the cells, feed the brood, care for the queen, remove debris, handle incoming nectar, build beeswax combs, guard the entrance and air condition and ventilate the hive during their initial few weeks as adults. After that they forage for nectar, pollen, water, and tree sap - all the key honey making ingredients.
The day after I met Phil I called a beekeeper in Nanaimo and ordered two nucs (hives). It wasn't a whim - I took a four day beekeeping seminar two years ago and have wanted to pursue it ever since but spending time with Phil and his bees gave me the nudge I needed. I'm sure I'll get stung and I don't expect to get much honey at first but Phil assures me that the process gets easier with time. Bees have been going about their business for millions of years so I suspect they'll teach me all that I need to know. In turn, I'll keep you informed of my stumbles in honey.
