Person Record
Metadata
Name |
Rae, Russell |
Born |
1918? |
Birthplace |
Harkaway, Grey County, Ontario |
Places of residence |
Harkaway district, Grey County, Ontario, until 1948 Holland Centre, in Holland Township, Grey County (1948+) |
Nationality |
Canadian |
Notes |
Russell Rae had an apiary at Holland Centre, Grey County. Russell Rae started keeping bees in 1938 at the age of 20, with four swarms of bees. In 1939, he had 30 packages of bees arrive, and he got stung up so badly putting them out that he spent a week in bed recovering. He set up his extracting equipment in his mother's back kitchen, and built a shed on his parent's farm the next spring for his equipment. He was married in 1944 to Olga Semple, and in 1948, they bought a house in Holland Centre. In 1950, he started building a honey house, and finished it in 1952. The footprints of his two oldest children and their dog are still in the cement in front of the honey house. The most hives he had at one time was 1,300. He kept bees as far away as Paris, Ontario, Brantford, and along the Grand River. For seven years, he had bees in Perth through to Carleton Place, 300 miles away. It made for a few very long days driving that far, staying over, working the bees, and driving back home. The majority of his years of beekeeping were done locally. Hunting up areas that were good locations for yards and moving the hives in, and hoping for a good crop of honey. He kept bees until 2011, when at the age of 93, he gave his last two hives to one of his sons. He still goes to help his sons with whatever he can. Some of the problems encountered included skunks getting into the hives, bears tearing up the hives, and in recent years, the mites. He had a yard of 69 hives and a wooden shed consumed by a grass fire in the Perth area. It was a great loss in equipment and future production. He says he would do it again, but would question the benefits of having the bees so far away as when they were in Perth." (Information from his daughter Sharon (Rae) Tilken, in 2011). A write-up about Russel Rae in a Holland Township book said that he had started in 1938 at Harkaway, with thirty hives of bees. He had been born and raised in the Harkaway area. In 1948, he and his wife Olga purchased the house formerly owned by Mr. and Mrs. James Dixon at Holland Centre. "Here he incresed the number of colonies of bees to four hundred, and built an extracting plant in 1952. In 1957, during extracting season, he made trips three times a week to Perth County, taking over fifteen beeyards and driving a distance of 250 miles and returning to Holland Centre to extract the honey." It is also mentioned that he bought a bee business in Brantford in 1962 and used an airplane for nine years, and had 1,300 colonies of bees. Two of his sons joined him in the business in 1972 (Lyall and Glenn). |
Occupation |
Bee Keeper / Apiarist / Apiary / Bees / Honey Producer |
Publications |
THE PATHS THAT LED TO HOLLAND: A HISTORY OF HOLLAND TOWNSHIP 1850-1982, p. __ "Rae Family and Honey Bees" |
Role |
Business person |
Spouse |
Olga Semple, m. 1944 |
Children |
-Sharon Rae (m. G. Tilken) -Two sons who joined him in the business (Lyall Rae and Glenn Rae) -Bruce Rae -Debbie Rae |
