Seeking a hive close to home

When Les Simonffy, 73, started keeping honeybees in Hamilton, he had the perfect site – next door to Stelco.

Wait…what?

You read that right. In 1995, when Simonffy worked at the downtown Steelworkers’ Hall, he established two hives (each 60,000 strong) on its roof, four storeys above the bustle of Barton Street and Kenilworth Avenue.

It was a mini-experiment, carefully ignored by his supervisor, to see whether the bees could collect pollen in such an industrial environment.

The result was a major success. During the first year, Simonffy collected 80 pounds of honey from each hive. His coworkers started taking their lunch breaks beside the sweet-smelling rooftop tenants. He only dismantled the hives when it became too physically difficult for him to continue hauling his equipment to the inaccessible roof via an empty elevator shaft where he’d rigged up a system of ropes.

Today, the retired Simonffy (who fell in love with beekeeping at the age of 12 when, growing up in Hungary, he worked as an apiarist’s assistant) keeps 50 hives on five separate rented rural plots in Ancaster and Hamilton and sells his honey to friends and neighbours. His own home, just south of Mohawk Road, doesn’t offer the kind of space beekeeping requires.

While major cities like Calgary and Montreal make concessions for urban beekeeping, the Ontario Bees Act prohibits it in the province by stipulating that beehives must be kept at least 30M from neighbouring properties – an impossibility in much of Hamilton.

To some people, this makes sense. After all, why would you want to keep tens of thousands of angry, stingers-at-the-ready insects in your own backyard?

Honeybees, however, have been ascribed much of the bad rap owed to yellow jackets and wasps – the real culprits when it comes to summertime stings.

“Bees are concerned only with gathering pollen and bringing it back to the hive,” says Joanne Kasprzycki, whose grandfather was an apiarist. “If you don't bug them, they won’t bug you.”

Kasprzycki visited the Heart of the Hammer Café earlier this spring to post an ad looking for an avid beekeeper willing to trade knowledge for work.

The Bees Act has so far halted her plans for a hive at her home in a densely populated area near Gage Park (her yard is 250 square feet), but she’s now looking for a local apiary where she might volunteer.

For her, the draw lies in producing some of her own food, while simultaneously feeling more in touch with the natural world – something that’s not always easy to do downtown.

Brandi MacDonald, 28, would also jump at the opportunity to keep bees in the core like Simonffy did. MacDonald, an archaeologist and research associate at McMaster University, was charmed by her first experience with honeybees – a tour of the colonies kept by a biology professor at Boston’s Wellesley College.

She was so impressed by the bees’ sophisticated social structure and tireless work ethic, she contacted Jessica Morris – a colleague she knew was a member of the Ontario Beekeepers Association Technology Transfer Team.

With Morris’s assistance and instruction, MacDonald established and now maintains two of her own colonies on a farm in Carlisle. Later this summer, some of her honey will be for sale by Buttrum’s at the Hamilton Farmers’ Market.

Russell Gibbs, 32, is in a similar situation. A third-generation beekeeper, Gibbs lives in Dundas while his colonies are located on a property in Canfield, almost an hour outside Hamilton.He makes the weekly drive to monitor his hives because of a passion for the practice and a hope of potentially selling on a larger commercial scale.

“I find bees completely fascinating,” he says. “The more I read the more I want to know and experience.” Gibbs says there is only so much reading you can do though, before you realize trial-and-error is the best way to learn.

The hands-on relationship can be very rewarding, and not just because of the sweet syrupy benefits at summer’s end.

“There’s something so amazing about it that’s hard to describe,” he says. “The more at ease you are, the more at ease [the bees] are. It’s a really interesting relationship, very harmonious.”