Innovation and Dedication A Profile of Rod-Jo Moody Apiaries

By Liz Huxter

As the name implies, both Rodney and Jo are both active participants in this long-standing, local Vancouver Island queen breeding, package and honey business. Ro-Jo Moody Apiaries is a family business, with all five of their sons involved at various times. Rodney has kept bees since age 13, starting in the Kootenays, then moving to Highland Road in the Victoria area, and finally to Robson Lane in Cowichan Bay. This is his 56th year working with bees!

What I think is unique about Rodney and Jo's operation is the breeding work they have done over the years to develop bees that could handle very inclement winter conditions, yet at the same time producing queens in one of Canada's best climates for early queen production. Also of interest is that Rodney has developed numerous tools and techniques to solve various problems as they arose in their breeding and honey operation.

An example of his dedication for breeding winter hardy bees is that for ten years he tested stock by wintering yards of bees on top of Vancouver Island mountains where there was good fireweed and salal flows. He used isolating mating yards, extensive trials, and kept detailed records to produce good wintering ability and bees that can make long flights. Rodney and Charlie Warren of Babe's Honey, another famous Vancouver Island queen breeder, tested many geographical races of bees over the years including Caucasian (grey and yellow), Italian and Carniolan. In the end, they preferred Carniolans. Rod-Jo Apiaries has worked with Babe's Honey farm over the years, exchanging breeder stock and information during the beekeeping season.

Rodney's innovative thinking helped him develop a way to bank queens over winter in queen cages. He used two deep frame boxes that were divided in half, all queen right. Then on the top of the bottom box he placed a queen excluder with 11 queens on top of each of the bottom two nucs. Then the top deep with two nucs was placed over the top of the queens over the excluder. The queens were in New Zealand queen cages. A divided hive top feeder with lid finished off the stack. He explains that a shallow frame bank does not provide enough young bees, nor the right positioning to keep the bees warm. He also wintered queens in nuc condos.

Another innovation is the way he stimulates early season drone production and care. Bee colonies are placed in a Kootenay Hive Case, which are oversized boxes that fit around standard sized boxes, by a few inches. (In the Kootenays, where the winters can be long and snowy, the space between these outer shells and the hive boxes were filled with hay or straw.) Then an electrical line heater, like ones used to heat soil in gardens and greenhouses, was installed under the hives. Eight hives were setup this way. The heater kept the inside temperature uniform, which lets the clusters stay consistently open, allowing the bees to look after the drones and drone brood. Rodney says, "they plugged into the past and into the future" with this technique.

For queen production, Rodney uses mating nucs with no stationary bottoms because they afford easy loading. These nuc boxes also have the flexibility of being stacked after all the queens are caught. Often, they are put on top of regular hives to let the brood hatch and be filled with honey ready for next year's queen rearing season. The miniature top feeder helps to insulate the nuc from extremes of cold and hot weather that can be harder for such a small sized unit to moderate. He made all his queen cups with a mold made of liquid fiberglass and can make 187 cups at a time!

Some people say BC stands for Bear Country. The Moodys made life difficult for the bears. They built "bee condominiums" — heavy wood lids with ten hives on top, then another lid on top, then steel strapping circling the condo. This unit was too heavy for predators such as bears to dump over and it was too tight for them to dislodge hives. These condos are used mainly in mountain sites. Rodney developed several other ways to combat the damage from predators, such as a wood and nail gadget called a "porcupine action board" that drives bears, raccoons and skunks from the bee hives without inflicting injury.

Not only did Jo and Rodney Moody enjoy creating innovative tools and techniques, they were always willing to share them with others. They have written articles for the CHC, Alberta Sceptic and the BeesCene, as well as giving talks at field days, conventions and hosting for the Apimondia tours. Rodney's articles were sometimes contentious. He doesn't mind "trying to shake up the beekeepers a little bit and wake them up."

Rodney and Jo, who are often at the annual BCHPA meetings, are a real information resource that ought to be tapped!