{"id":9061,"date":"2025-08-14T17:50:18","date_gmt":"2025-08-14T20:50:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.qccrfm.com\/news\/?p=9061"},"modified":"2025-08-14T20:00:33","modified_gmt":"2025-08-14T23:00:33","slug":"sweet-second-act-for-queens-county-beekeeper","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.qccrfm.com\/news\/2025\/08\/14\/sweet-second-act-for-queens-county-beekeeper\/","title":{"rendered":"Sweet second act for Queens County beekeeper"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Chris Radimer, owner of Tiddley Bee Honey, near his hives in his backyard in Brooklyn. (Rick Conrad)<\/p><\/div>\n

It’s a sunny day at the Privateer Farmers and Artisans Market in downtown Liverpool, and Chris Radimer’s table is buzzing with people looking for local honey.<\/p>\n

Radimer, the owner of Tiddley Bee Honey in Brooklyn, sells his raw, unpasteurized honey from his property and at markets in Liverpool and Shelburne.<\/p>\n

He also uses some of the beeswax his bees produce to make things like furniture polish and candles.<\/p>\n

Radimer has been beekeeping since 2019 after a 33-year career in the Canadian Navy.<\/p>\n

He explains how he arrived at his business name: “Tiddley in the navy means something that is done neatly and tidily and expertly, and so I thought, that would work pretty well because that’s what you want from your bees. You want your bees to take care with the building of the honey, building of the hives, building of the comb.”<\/p>\n

Radimer and his wife moved to Queens County from Ontario in 2022. Since then, he’s been tending to his 26 full colonies and two half-colonies spread on his own and other properties in the area.<\/p>\n

He keeps four colonies and two half colonies on his own property. The others are hosted by homeowners in Brooklyn, Mersey Point, Western Head, Beach Meadows, and near Lockeport.<\/span><\/p>\n

“I retired from the the navy in 2017 and sort of didn’t know what to do or where to go,” he says.<\/p>\n

“We were in Port Colborne, which is on Lake Erie, which has Niagara College pretty close by, and my sister, who works there, knew about this beekeeping program. And Veterans Affairs was offering to send us back to school, and I went to one of their open days, and the person that was representing the commercial beekeeping group was so incredibly enthusiastic that I just got swept into it. And after that, I was reading books and applying and spent the next full year at that school learning.”<\/p>\n

Each of his hives has a queen and a minimum of about 20,000 other bees bringing back pollen and nectar. When it’s loaded with honey, one section of a hive can weigh up to 50 pounds.<\/p>\n

“And if you have a very healthy colony, there’s a couple on this property here that are very healthy right now, they could go up to 60 or 80,000 bees for the summer,” he says.<\/p>\n

“And then that number would back way down over winter.”<\/p>\n

Without a lot of agricultural activity in south Queens, it would be difficult to have a large beekeeping operation.<\/p>\n

“To make a living off of it, you need commercial-level agriculture, where you have a stable stream of crops to pollinate, or crops that produce nectar that you can draw from.”<\/p>\n

Radimer says he’s happy with the number of colonies he has.<\/p>\n

“To have a viable, small-scale honey operation, you probably need about 150, and I’m never going to do that. Thirty is probably going to be my limit, just because I’m getting a little older and it’s a lot of weight to lift.”<\/p>\n

He’s quick to point out that beekeeping is agriculture, which is why the year-long course at Niagara College was important. You need to know how to keep your flock healthy. You also have to learn to adapt to extreme weather or other conditions.<\/p>\n

He says the season this year began slowly, but the spring conditions soon improved, bringing a mix of rain and sun to help produce the pollen and nectar that bees need.<\/p>\n

“It was just a very slow start, but once they got going, there was a lot of nectar for them to produce. I was really shocked at the amount of honey that was generated in late May and through June, early July, but now it’s stopped.<\/p>\n

“So the challenge right now is that with these drought conditions, with no rain, even if we have flowers, the flowers aren’t producing nectar to the degree that the bees need.”<\/p>\n

And because bees need the honey to keep their colonies fed and thriving, a shortage of the golden stuff creates another problem – robber bees.<\/p>\n

“And robber bees are nasty,” Radimer says.<\/p>\n

“They’re more aggressive and they’ll attack other hives to try and steal the honey.”<\/p>\n

Radimer says many beekeepers will harvest only once a season, usually later in the year, but he harvested about 30 to 40 litres in July and he’s hoping for better weather for a bigger harvest this fall. The late summer plants like aster and goldenrod produce a honey that customers like, but bees, not so much.<\/p>\n

“The problem with that honey is it’s not actually that good for bees. It’s not as nutritious as the early honey. So we like to take as much of that as we can. And then as soon as we’ve taken that honey, most beekeepers with more than one or two hives will start feeding sugar water. The (bees) can process that better. The goldenrod honey actually gives them the runs.<\/p>\n

“So, if you’ve got bees nearby and a black truck, such as me, you notice when you’ve left too much goldenrod (honey). It’s just yellow streaks, yellow streaks (on the truck).”<\/p>\n

And as if robber bees and the weather weren’t enough to deal with, there’s also the constant threat of predators like wasps, hornets, skunks and bears.<\/p>\n

“What skunks do is they’ll sit at the bottom of the beehive and they’ll tap on the box with their paws. And as the bees come out, they’ll eat the bee. And a skunk can go through a beehive pretty quick. They’ll eat a lot of bees. They want protein.<\/p>\n

“Bears too, bears don’t tend to go for the honey. They tend to go for the brood. They’ll scrape off all the eggs and the brood. <\/span>Bears apparently can smell a beehive for about three kilometres.”<\/p>\n

Radimer is constantly monitoring and maintaining his hives, especially during swarm season in May and June, when the colonies are more likely to make new queens. Every 10 days or so, he’ll suit up and open the hives to make sure everything is tiddley.<\/p>\n

One thing’s for sure, his bees keep him buzzing.<\/p>\n

“I like a challenge and I like puzzles. And so, you know, when something’s not going right, I can do research. I can look at what I’ve done, what others are doing and try and figure out if there’s a way to solve it. Ultimately it’s agriculture. So sometimes the solution is just walk away from it and start another colony. But usually, you can bring them back if they’re having trouble. … I was just out at one of my yards this morning and it was struggling a little bit last month. I wasn’t quite sure why. And I did a few adjustments here and there and I left it for a few weeks and it’s fabulous. It’s fantastic. Better than it was at the start of the season. So that’s what you want to see.”<\/p>\n

You can look for Tiddley Bee Honey online<\/a> or at farmers markets in Shelburne and Liverpool.<\/span><\/p>\n

Email: rickconradqccr@gmail.com<\/a><\/p>\n

Listen to the audio version of this story below<\/p>\nhttps:\/\/www.qccrfm.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/tiddleybeefullaug1425.mp3<\/a><\/audio>\n


\nBEE BITS<\/strong><\/p>\n