OCTOBER 2017 • COUNTRY LIFE IN BC


Kootenays' largest apiary has new owners


Jeff and Amanda Lee scale up in a bit of "bee heaven"


by TOM WALKER


CRESTON – Jeff and Amanda Lee are truly buzzing with excitement. You can imagine them pinching themselves as they recount their move from downtown New Westminster to the East Kootenays. The cell connection cuts out frequently as they recount their story but it doesn’t seem to matter. “It was meant to be,” says Amanda Goodman Lee, who along with her husband, former Vancouver Sun reporter Jeff Lee, purchased Swan Valley Honey based just north of Creston. “A year ago, almost to the


date we purchased, I was travelling through Creston and I was asking my cousins what the area was like.” “We ran into two minutes of traffic through Creston on our way home yesterday but don’t tell anybody about it,” quips Jeff. “I have travelled a lot of places in my 40 years as a journalist, but we absolutely love the area.” “We outgrew our business


in New Westminster,” says Amanda. “We were literally bottling honey on our kitchen table. We had no room to expand.” “We were seeing a problem with our hives as well,” says Jeff. “We were always fighting to keep them healthy. Other beekeepers I talk to call the


Lower Mainland a ‘pesticide bowl.’”


When the opportunity came up to purchase Swan Valley, they jumped at it. “The bee inspector in the


Kootenays is a friend of ours and he has been trying to get us to move here for some time,” recounts Amanda. “He told us about it on a Friday. Very early Saturday, we dropped 10 hives at a blueberry farm in Abbotsford and were looking at the place in Creston on Sunday morning. Our offer was accepted, we had multiple offers on our house in New West and everything clicked into place.” Swan Valley is an established company that has been built over time. “This business has


produced up to 44,000 pounds of honey in a year, ” Jeff points out. “It has an established honey route across the Kootenays.” Several components of the business made it really attractive, Jeff explains. There are almost 400 hives spread over 25 honey yards, with equipment to supply up to 600 hives. They have an established honey processing plant with a 70-frame and a 50-frame extractor. “Our first purchase was a new uncapper and wax press, so we are changing the way we handle the honey,” says Jeff. “As a result, we will have


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Apiarists Jeff and Amanda Lee now call Creston home. NATASHA ASSELSTINE PHOTO


more first-grade honey for the prime market.” “For perspective, last year


we were uncapping our honey by hand,” says Amanda. “We had a 20-frame extractor, so we have gone from doing it by hand to a mechanized system.” “We are keeping the Swan


Valley name, a brand that’s been around for, I think, 50 years,” says Amanda. She adds that they will also keep the Honey Bee Zen line and the specific varietals that brand has produced. “We will do a creamed honey under Swan Valley – something we get asked for all the time.” They have their eye on the price of honey in the


Kootenays, which they think is fairly low, and Amanda is looking to use her marketing background to expand. “There is a need for honey


bee livestock in the Kootenays,” says Jeff. “We are experienced at breeding queens and building nucs (nucleus colonies) so we will be supplying those. There is also a strong demand for pollination services in the apple and cherry orchards in the Creston Valley.” “We will probably keep a couple of contracts on the coast,” says Jeff. “We have a blueberry, raspberry and blackberry grower that we love to work with and we get some great honey out of it. But we are here now.”


“I call the Creston Valley


bee heaven,” says Amanda. “There is sweet clover, regular clover, alfalfa and snowberry, which helps the honey to not crystalize.”


That beautiful forage pays


off, says Jeff. “In a decent year in the


Lower Mainland, we might see 40 to 60 pounds from a hive. Here in Creston, Swan Valley was getting 125 to 150 pounds and we don’t have the challenges of the pesticides sprayed on a lot of the crops in the Lower Mainland.” They have to go to the


farmer’s market together. “One of us serves


customers and the other one talks,” says Jeff. “Everyone wants to meet us.”


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