Farms to Tables: Diehl's Bee Well honey has been a nine-year labour of love

BY SHAWN LOUGHLIN

In the long days and isolation of the COVID-19 pandemic, many people found their way to a number of homesteading activities, like growing their own vegetable gardens, baking sourdough bread and harvesting their own honey. Dianne Diehl from the Ethel area was ahead of that curve on having her own small honey-making operation, Bee Well, which has now been going for about nine years and has won a number of accolades along the way.

 

Diehl and her husband Dave, who live on Cardiff Road near Ethel, had always expressed a bit of an interest in having their own hives and harvesting their own honey, so when the opportunity presented itself, they jumped at the chance. Dave, however, says that the bees are Dianne’s babies now and that he leaves most of the operation to her. He’s on-call for manual labour, lifting and moving things as necessary, whenever it’s needed.

 

A friend was heading up to Meaford to pick up some bees and Dianne asked if she could have two nuc boxes and that was how she got her start. She had read up on some of the basics of keeping your own bees and she hit the ground running. Nuc boxes are small boxes of bees, usually used to start your own hives. 

 

One thing she’s learned, however, from season to season, is that what might work for one person may not work for another and what may work one season may cause problems the next.

 

On that point, Dianne began with those two small nuc boxes, but has since grown her operation, but the trick is to always get the bees through the winter and it doesn’t always work.

 

She said there is a lot of trial and error to the process and a lot of learning on the spot and along the way. In winter, for example, she would jacket the bees with a foam and plastic wrap and retain nearly all of them the following spring. Then, the following winter, with the exact same process, she lost about half of her bees. So, it’s hard to know what to do from season to season when you’re still learning and doing it at your home farm.

 

When it comes to expansion, however, Dianne says you’re able to split the hives when they grow large enough, thus, growing your operation. 

 

At one point, Dianne had as many as 15 hives operating - that was about four years ago. However, through winter loss, she was down to only four at one point and now sits at seven for the operation, which has a home near the back of their property, which still contains several dozen workable acres that are currently planted with beans this season.

 

The process has its ups and downs, Dianne says, but she’s always learning and adjusting.

 

As for the finished product, Dianne and Bee Well don’t exactly have a retail presence, but she gets her 100 per cent local, raw honey out into the community when she can. She has jarred batches for wedding favours and the like and will sell jars when she can (if you’d like to get in touch with Dianne and Bee Well, call 519-291-7855), but where she’s really made headway is on the awards circuit.

 

Dianne and her Bee Well honey have been awarded by the Brussels Agricultural Society at least twice in recent years at the group’s annual Brussels Fall Fair. Last year, Dianne’s honey won at the local level and then the district level before earning her a bronze-medal finish at the provincial level.

 

After her third-place finish in Ontario, Dianne said she was docked a bit because there was some pollen in the honey, but, as far as she’s concerned, that’s a matter of personal preference. (Bee pollen has many benefits and it is full of nutrients and antioxidants.)

 

She says the honey is great but, of course, she can hardly take credit for it. Her role in the process, as she sees it, is to do her best to keep her bees alive so she can harvest their honey when it’s ready. 

 

Dianne has also been open and welcoming to those who are interested in keeping hives and harvesting honey, hosting tours for local groups like the Majestic Women’s Institute and others.

 

As for how she uses it, Dianne says that she and Dave use the honey a lot at breakfast and that she bakes a lot of bread with honey in it. One of her fellow Huron East Councillors has encouraged her to make some fermented hot honey, but she has yet to take the leap.

 

To learn more about Dianne Diehl’s Bee Well honey, call 519-291-7855.