10/10/2026
Hello! 👋
It has been almost 15 months since our last post, and we thought it was fitting on Thanksgiving weekend 🍂 to celebrate and give thanks to our wonderful community, friends, and family. 💕
On July 6, 2025, our property was in the unfortunate path of a fire that started across the street below us. The fire raged through our farm and had already reached our front deck when a loud bang and frantic knocking on our front door alerted me to get out "NOW!" Within two minutes, I was out the door, following a truck down the driveway right through the flames. 🔥
When I tried calling emergency services, the line said all circuits were busy, so I felt confident help was already on the way. By the time we got onto the road and past the fire, we looked back only to see our property entirely engulfed in a giant cloud of smoke and flames. It felt like an eternity before we heard the firetruck sirens, though it was actually under 10 minutes.
The experience was deeply traumatizing, and the rest of that day remains a complete blur. Our security cameras captured the entire event until the power cut off, allowing us to piece together a timeline later. It is still frightening 😲 to see just how fast that fire moved across our land.
The Kelowna airport was shut down, the Central Okanagan Emergency Operations Centre was activated, and the entire neighbourhood was immediately evacuated. At one point, we were told over 80 firefighters were actively working to contain the fire that was directly hitting our property.
The responding agencies included Kelowna Fire Rescue, Ellison Fire Department, Lake Country Fire Department, Joe Rich Fire Rescue, North Westside Fire Rescue, Wilson's Landing Fire Department, RCMP, BC Wildfire Service, helicopters, and air tankers. Many of the hard-working crew ❤ remained at our property for several days, ensuring all ground fires were extinguished. They were amazing, kind, polite, and respectful. Even with millions of distressed honey bees flying around, they all acted with great care and concern.
We are forever grateful 🙏 to all of the crews, neighbours, and community who offered support throughout this entire ordeal.
Luckily, because of their hard work, we could return to a smoldering property to assess the damage. We built our farm with fire resiliency in mind—using metal roofs, leaf guards, Hardie Plank siding, and keeping trees and shrubs away from the home. We had BC FireSmart assess our property in August 2023, so we were confident we had done what we could to make our farm fire-resilient. We had even created small gravel pads for all of our beehives in the fields and put additional metal roofs on top of the hives.
That diligence paid off. We did not lose a single structure or beehive in the fire. 🐝
Unfortunately, the front and side of our farm suffered the most damage. The front lavender beds and just over 4 acres of lovely forest were scorched—over 640 trees were lost, many of them well over 120 years old. 😢
With all of the fires that have tragically impacted so many properties this year, we feel incredibly fortunate to still be here. Taking our cue from our resilient bees, we got busy. We have spent the past 15 months rebuilding, replanting, and working hard to replace the gardens and areas impacted by the fire. It will take many more years—even decades—before our forest fully recovers. One day, we may share the fire photos and videos. For now, we are simply enjoying the new green shoots 🌱 emerging through our moonscape ashes. ✨
Happy Thanksgiving 🍂 from Bees Rock! 🐝
