Some thoughts about chemical free and organic beekeeping.

I am a small-time beekeeper and I think my brief experience in beekeeping chemical free may help you.

In the spring of 2011 I started my first hive.  I want my bees chemical free and managed as organically as feasibly possible.  I ordered one colony and put the bees in my home-made Warre hive.  The package of bees arrived early April and by mid-summer I was regretting that I could not easily inspect the colony for any pests or diseases because of my choice of hives.  So I changed my philosophy.  Instead of allowing the bees to do whatever bees do without any "supervision" (I use this term lightly), I decided it would be OK to allow bees to do whatever it is that they do but that I would need to be able to monitor their progress and be prepared to intervene when necessary. 

A Warre hive is a poor choice for top bar hives in Kansas.  Especially when you consider our hot summer weather.  I removed the contents of the quilt, and inserted an object between the top cover and the quilt to help create air circulation.  Those poor girls were so hot, even in a site that is naturally shaded all afternoon.  My adjustment seemed to provide little relief.  A better choice would be the Kenyan style top bar.  At least with the Kenyan style you have more room to work and the top bars are more easily removed for inspection.

Bees are an expensive hobby and I felt that the investment I made in the bees required some insurance plan, and that plan had to be me.  So I ordered Langstroth equipment and did my first cutaway in late summer 2011 when I transferred my only colony from the Warre to the Langstroth.  It was hot!  

I still keep my bees chemical free and haven't noticed any Varroa, yet.   However, I do have a beetle infestation so a friend of mine and I installed traps laden with mineral oil and apple cider vinegar about 6 weeks ago.  I'm not sorry I did that and I still consider my bees chemical free, because the oil won't be transferred to the brood, comb or honey.

I do feed sugar water as needed, and this is the first year I have ever fed during the fall.  You see, last winter (2012, 2013) I entered the winter with four hives (my original package from 2011, two new packages from 2012, and a colony I purchased).  The two packages I purchased in 2012 were housed in single deeps.  Now that was a stupid mistake, there wasn't enough room for food stores and I lost both colonies, one to starvation and the other just left, they flat disappeared (they left a full super in the process, but the brood area was cleaned out).  In the future I will feed in the fall as much as is necessary or take less honey.  But not all colonies perform equally well and some will need help just to make it.

But still, no fall feeding the first two winters, only candy and Spring feeding.  And still no chemicals or supplements.  My first segue into treatments were the beetle traps last month.  I think beekeeping can be managed chemical free, a person just needs to pay careful attention to the bees and the bee management calendar for this region.  

Experiment and have fun!  I performed my first split this last summer and expect to do the same this coming season.  I hope to double my apiary with a combination of splits and new packages in the spring.

The long and short of it is.  Over the last three years I purchased three packages and two complete colonies.  I lost two of the packages last winter, but I gained a colony from a split this last spring so I am entering this winter with four colonies.  One of them is a little weak, they just re-queened about 3 or 4 weeks ago and today my wife and I confirmed the presence of the new queen.  Exciting stuff!  I am pretty sure I will need to pay very careful attention to them this winter because of their low stores.

Sold Out!

The demand was high but the supply was limited.  I posted a simple ad for "Raw Local Honey" on Craigslist and the honey is all gone now.  I gave a bunch away as gifts, so I didn't have much to sell.  But most of it was gone that first weekend.

I was stunned by how many buyers said they purchased the honey to help them control their seasonal allergies.  One purchaser paid full price for 12lbs (1 gallon).  

If the weather cooperates and the bees make it through winter we ought to quadruple our supply next fall.  Also, I intend to post to our local bee group that my extractor is available for custom extraction if they have a need.  Extractors aren't common and they are expensive.  I would like to help others out, but I don't want to go through the effort to set up and tear down for extraction more than once a year.

A little more on the honey harvest.

OK! My friend and I pulled the honey September 14th using the bump and brush method.  We put the supers in large plastic trash bags and stored them in my house.  Saturday the 21st we harvested the honey.  From two colonies we collected 40 and 50 lbs each and from a third we stole about 20 lbs.

I started beekeeping in the Spring of 2011.  There was no honey to be had in 2011 and I bottled 40 lbs of smart weed honey from the fall of 2012 (I had no idea what I was doing until I was done).  Smart weed honey is only good for medicine (cinnamon and honey), if you are into that sort of thing.  It goes down about as well as your grandmother's medicine too!  I am going to re-constitute my left over smart weed honey and give it back to the bees for their fall feeding.

I bottled 60lbs of the 2013 harvest on Sunday the 22nd.  This is my first real honey after three seasons of effort!  Of course we had serious drought during throughout my first two seasons.  Depending on the climate I hope to collect even more next year.  In addition to the three acres of wildflower that I planted last winter (which so far has been a dud - I'll give it one more season) I planted 3 acres of yellow blossom clover two weeks ago.  I hope to have a lot more of that golden good stuff next year!

The honey has been bottled!

We had a long rewarding weekend straining and bottling honey.   Ramona spent two very long days preparing the house for the process.  Mom came up from Oklahoma to help (it was very fun to have her on hand), we evicted the cats and went to work.  A day later, to allow the air bubbles to rise to the surface, we bottled almost 60 lbs of honey.  This stuff tastes great!  I'm sure it tastes even sweeter due to the fact that it was prepared by my own bees.  It takes a little less than an hour and a half to process 18 medium depth frames (roughly two supers or 50 lbs), but it takes about 48 hours of labor to prepare and clean up.

I sent 4 frames of honey back to the bees because it contained the very, very nasty smart weed honey.  You can smell the smart weed on the capped frames.  Next year we hope to have an even larger load of honey to process if the clover field produces as intended, we'll see.  First thing's first though, we need to make sure our four existing colonies make it through winter.

The Honey Harvest is Upon Us!

My beekeeping friend and I collected the honey from our beehives last Saturday.   It took quite a while to do the job because we bumped and brushed bees.  Next time we'll probably use bee escapes. The honey supers are on my dining room table right now in large plastic bags for their protection.   We scheduled the extraction for this saturday.  Last night Ramona and I weighed the honey and estimate the harvest to be about 120lbs from three hives.  Two of the colonies produced 50lbs each.  Not bad for a crazy Kansas summer!   The other 4 colonies have been in build up mode all summer due to their late start this summer (we did collect 20lbs from one of them).

Our focus now will be to help each of the 6 colonies start the spring build up in 2014 with a strong nucleus.

The clover has been planted!

It took a while.  I correct myself, it took a very long time to prepare the field.  I spent most of Saturday and Sunday on the tractor for the final preparations.  It is only a three acre field, but the ground was hard and the old tractor is small.  The following picture was taken after the final harrowing just prior to planting.

I purchased 50lbs of sweet yellow blossom clover and the inoculant (bacteria that promote root growth and nitrogen production) and rented a three point rotary broadcaster.  Everything was all planned.  I already had the seed so I picked up the broadcaster at 8am (opening time) and I expected to be finished in about an hour and a half barring any disasters.  The plan was to beat the heat and finish mowing the rest of the place after the final harrowing (to give the seed a little cover).  Well as soon as I tried to connect the broadcaster to the tractor I realized that the PTO shaft provided by the rental company was too long for my PTO with the overrun clutch (ORC) attached.  So, after deciding it was better to just remove the ORC than run back into town to get a shorter shaft, I went to work.  The ORC has two grease fittings exactly opposite each other that, when removed, reveal a hole through which a roll pin is used to securely fasten the clutch to the tractor's PTO.  I removed one fitting without a hitch (7/16's wrench worked as advertised).  The second one wasn't so easy, so after applying release agent and thoroughly rounding the corners of the fitting, I finally decided to just grab it with the "JAWS OF ETERNAL GRIP OF DEATH" (this last bit only works if you say it very loud with reverb), which is a trusty vise grip.  The fitting can cheaply and easily be replaced.

After removing the ORC and attaching the broadcaster to the tractor I calculated my seed rate, estimated the tractor speed and set the broadcaster.  One and a half acres later the hopper was empty.  I didn't want to have an acre and a half of weeds and I didn't think I could overseed it, so I drove back to town to purchase another 50lbs of seed and the inoculant.  Well, by the time I was finished with planting I had just enough time to return the broadcaster to the rental company (noon deadline for a 1/2 day rental).

I expected to be completely finished by noon but had only just managed to broadcast the seed.  Now I had to do the final harrowing to put a little cover onto my seeds.  Next year the clover will bloom, assuming it gets established this fall with the right temperatures and precipitation.  Yellow blossom clover can yield from 60 to 200 pounds of honey per acre.  If we only yield the low number of 60 pounds I will recover more than I have invested in this field including most of my labor.

Bees fanning and ants...

I was mowing the jungle yesterday and took some time to observe the bees (exterior of the hives only this time). I was about 30ft away from them and noticed, for the first time ever, that I could hear them fanning the hives. You could hear the buzzing sound and, I may be imagining things, but I thought I could hear the noise of the air passing through. This is my third year as a beekeeper and this was a neat experience.  They are trying to expel the moist air and ripen the honey.

About three weeks ago I pulled my three colonies away from the overhanging branches of the hedge apples and put them on a weed barrier that I covered with cedar mulch. I don't know if cedar mulch or moving them away from the trees made a difference, but I haven't seen any sign of ants in the hives after this year. The last two years I had to buy ant baits and install them around the hives. Mowing around the colonies is a lot simpler too! I do have a black walnut on the property so the next time I have a need I'll try Sharon Rowan's solution to ants, which is to crush a few  black walnut leaves and put them on top of the inner-cover below the top cover.

The Queens Need Some Room

This weekend any time I spent working on bees was spent making room in the brood chamber for the queen to expand her nest.  I decided it was time to reevaluate my decision making paradigm and listen to the voices of experience.  Last winter two of the three colonies I had only had a single deep brood chamber and nothing else.  They both perished over winter in spite of my feeding efforts.  Vinduska, a local honey producer, recently stated to our yahoo group that single brood box colonies don't do very well during Kansas winters.  I believe that what he is saying is that the colony is not big enough at the start of winter and it doesn't have enough stores put away to last the winter.

Therefore, I decided that the two small colonies that I have, one of which was from a split and the other had a failing queen, really needed an extra brood box to give the queen room and allow the workers to put more stores away.  This means that I won't get any honey from them this year.  My attitude has to be that they are an investment and I should get a return next year if I take good care of them.   I will probably make this a part of my method of procedure for the smaller half of splits and nucleus colonies.

Also, I purchased a colony from a friend just recently.  He had become discouraged and wanted out.  The colony I purchased also had no room in the brood chamber for the queen.  This colony was housed in two medium depth boxes, and what space was not full of larvae or capped brood was full of honey (and I mean a lot of honey).  To give the queen room to expand the colony I added a full depth brood box on top of the small boxes.  I also removed any queen cells just in case.  They weren't in use but I don't want to take any chances.  To this colony I also added a queen excluder and a honey super.  They are very numerous and I just might get some surplus.  We'll see.

Below are before and after pictures of the colony I purchased.  I had already installed the super and as an after thought decided they really need room in the brood chamber.

Tom and Nuc before I added new deep brood boxes.

New hive before I removed the old boxes and added the new deep brood box.

After my work is done.

The bees have a new home.

I got tired of fighting the weeds and overhanging branches during my inspections and decided to do something about it.  We installed a 10'x6' weed barrier mat, covered it with cedar mulch, and moved the colonies onto the mat.   In the process we brought the colonies away from the hedge apple trees and out of the weeds.  This will allow me to mow both sides of the hives without disturbing the colonies too much.  I am pretty sure they'll appreciate the consideration.  I will also be able to trim the trees a little without dropping branches onto the hives.

Once we installed the barrier and mulch where we wanted it I moved the colonies a couple of feet each week or so until they were in position.  Below are some pictures of the process.  By only moving them a couple of feet at a time the field bees don't remain confused for very long about where their colony went.   They quickly re-orient to their new home-site.

From left to right the hives are named "McFadden", "Tom", and "Nuc".  Tom is the original hive I installed in the spring of 2011 and they have a new queen this spring.  McFadden is a hive I purchased from a good friend last fall and Nuc is a split I made this spring from the McFadden colony.  Some of my previous posts talk more about the bees travails this last winter and spring.

An excellent article in the Wichita Eagle about beekeeping

The link is to an excellent article published in the Wichita Eagle on July 6th.  I know the Vinduska's and they are excellent folks.

http://www.kansas.com/2013/07/06/2878084/saving-honeybees-one-hive-at-a.html

It's Been Way Too Long Since the Last Post!

...And much has happened since then.  My son, of whom I am very proud, is now making final plans for his upcoming college education - he starts in August.  It has been fun to see him mature into the man he is now and I look forward to seeing God continue His good work in him.

Ok.  Here is the long and short of the last five (or so) weeks for Airy Ripe Rakes.

I went into winter with four hives and emerged on the back side with only two (the hive loss stories are in previous posts).  These colonies were my original hive that I started beekeeping with in 2011 and the McFadden colony I purchased late last year.

So, late in the spring I split the McFadden hive by creating a nucleus hive but misread the signs of imminent swarming.  I expected and wanted natural queen creation from swarm cells.  Apparently the swarm cells were from past use - I now know how to detect this - and I ended up with a nuc and no queen.

The "Tom" hive - which was my very first colony - had an aging queen who wasn't laying very well at all.  So I removed her expecting the colony would naturally create a new queen from recently laid eggs.  This did not happen.

And somehow - for reasons unknown to me - after the split and after removing the queen from Tom, the McFadden hive lost their queen.  So, during my hive inspections three weeks ago, I didn't find any eggs or larvae in any of the three hives (McFadden, Tom, and the nuc).  By the way "nuc" is short for nucleus and is pronounced "nuke".  So I had to scramble and ordered three queens.  On Friday the 31st of May, my brother-in-law and I installed new queen boxes into the three hives.  These are tiny little boxes that house the queen and a few attendant worker bees.  They can be easily slipped in between two frames to allow the existing colony to get used to the new queen scent.  The following day, the 1st of June, my lovely assistant and I released the queens using the hand release method.  My assumption was that the hives had been queenless for up to two weeks and there wasn't any lingering old queen scent to cause the workers to rebel against the new queens.  The overnight stay in their queen boxes allowed their scent to permeate the colony and allow the workers time to get used to the new queen scent.

Everything was a success!  As of Saturday the 14th we have 14 day old brood, which will begin hatching on the 21st.  I actually checked to see if the queens were laying 3-4 days after their introduction to make sure everything was OK.  But seeing all of the new capped brood cells on several frames in each hive yesterday made my heart sing!

The "Tom" and "McFadden" colonies in late April 2013

I was happy to find that the queen in the "Tom" colony was still laying. But I think I need to do something a little more aggressive to rebuild this colony.  This video is very short.  I just wanted a quick peek to see what was going on.

http://youtu.be/CTM6xC8BAvg


I'm sorry to say that this next video is a long one by my standards.  I don't like long videos because it is easy to lose interest.  I usually edit a lot out of the raw video and try to keep things interesting, but there is so much interest within the video that it remained fairly long.  Thanks to my lovely assistant (and wife), Ramona, for her help with the camera and the extra hands.

The purpose of the video is to show how I put wild comb in the bottom box of the McFadden hive into frames.  I am very glad I checked it out today because I found 2 swarm cells (cells in which the nurse bees are creating new queens).  I want the bees to clean up the mess I made of their comb before I stress them out again with swarm preparations, so I eliminated the swarm cells.  You will also note that their is a large amount of drone brood, this is also a sign of an imminent swarm.  You have to have a lot of drones to mate with a new queen.

This is such a strong colony that I want to split it and make two out of the one.  For this, I will need a swarm cell (queen cell) and lots of brood.  From the looks of things, that will be the easy.  I will have to pay very careful attention to this colony for the next few weeks, at least until I split the colony.  If they create more than one swarm cell I will use an extra one to re-queen "Tom".

By the way, this is the McFadden colony.  It is a feral colony that built its nest in a vacant hive on my friend Pat McFadden's farm.  Unfortunately, Pat was too ill to take care of the colony and they built 4 frames worth of wild comb to fill in the middle section of the box (there are 3 frames on each side).  If you need to monitor the colony for disease, swarming, or various other reasons, it is very convenient, if not necessary, to work with frames.  That is why I abandoned top bar hives during my first year of bee keeping.

The McFadden colony appears to be so strong and the queen lays such a great pattern that I want to purposefully make it a breeder colony to replenish my own apiary and help others too.

http://youtu.be/QuMeJz7Frvs

The pond is full! And the bees are cold!

I think it's great that the pond is full.  But I am tired of the cold April weather.   April in Kansas is the time for bees to be foraging and gaining numerical strength for the upcoming honey flow.  The cold weather could be retarding sources of early nectar and pollen, which are important for the spring build up.

My neighbor to the south of the farm said we received 2 1/4 inches of rain last night.  I knew it would take just one gully washer to fill it.  By the way, I finished painting the boxes.

Wow! The bees are having a hard time of it!

I ordered two packages of bees for this spring and expected them to arrive Saturday morning the 20th. This isn't going to happen now. My shipment, along with hundreds of other colonies, died en route due to a snow storm in Wyoming this week. This is terrible! Our local suppliers still have my deposit and they are trying desperately to fulfill the orders. I really don't know how many colonies were affected but it could number in the thousands. Our local distributor picks up about 150 or so for local beekeepers in South Central Kansas. And he is just one of many distributors that pick up bees in Nebraska after the trek from California.

In the meantime I found two sources for direct delivery through UPS but I am not sure I want to pay the premium. But time is running out and I will need to make a decision soon. This just reinforces my need to have a completely sustainable apiary and produce my own colony increases. I just need to bite the bullet, study up, and learn how.

Time for a short update

It seems like it has been a while since my last update.  This will be a short one because things are pretty much ready for the new bees and it isn't warm enough to deal with a special project I have planned for the McFadden colony.

That project is to split the McFadden colony making two colonies out of one.  We'll learn more about splitting hives in the not too distant future.  Before I can split the colony I will need to move the 4 wild frames of comb (comb built without frames in the middle of the box) into frames.  This needs to happen so that I can work the hive with relative ease when it comes time to split the colony.

In the meantime I built this handy little 5-frame nuc box.   Because of its size the nuc box heats and cools much more efficiently than a standard hive and is therefore a better match for a very small colony.  We'll move the colony out when they get too big for the nuc. 

I painted the nuc and three medium honey supers on Sunday afternoon.

By the way, the new bees arrive on Saturday the 20th!

The Trees are In!

Last Friday I took the day off to work on the farm.  I planted three Montmorency cherry trees and 10 Vitex.  The Ryker family loves these cherries.  The cherry harvest happens just before my birthday and my family loves to come up to pick and pit.  Mom taught Ramona and me how to make cherry jam one year.  Best stuff I have ever tasted on my toast.  Our hope, of course, is to produce enough to share and sell.

The drought has been very tough on the region's flora and fauna these past two years and it overcame our only existing Montmorency tree last year.  That really is too bad!  We'll have a small wait until the new trees mature a little.

By the way, I know they usually look ugly and rusty but don't discount the effectiveness of these little antique cherry stoners.  I picked one up for cheap and cleaned it up with steel wool.  It works great as long as you don't mind the meats getting a little mangled.  But if you're making jam, it really doesn't matter, right?!

 
Vitex are also called Texas Lilac.  This link will take you to a site that provides some basic information about the plant.  They're supposed to bloom all summer long.  That is a good thing.

http://aggie-horticulture.tamu.edu/cemap/vitex/

Spring is here! It's time to do some planting.

Spring is here.  And it's time to plant some fruit trees.  Two years ago I drowned the saplings.  Last year the drought got them.  Maybe "third time's the charm."  If only we lived on the farm, taking care of the place would be a lot easier.

I checked the nursery for Mont Morency cherries and Elberta peaches.  They have both.  We love picking and making jam out of Mont Morencies.  Homemade jam from fresh sour cherries is absolutely amazing.  We have a single Elberta that survived both the drownings and the drought, so I think I'll plant another.  I also made arrangements to purchase 10 Vitex.  I have heard that Vitex is also called Texas Lilac.  Anyway, since Saturday is set construction day, planting day will be tomorrow and I'm taking the day off to git-r-done.

I should really plant some blackberries too!  I'll check with the nursery.

The Little Mean Bees Have Been Renamed

They will no longer be called the "Bees who sting first and ask questions later", they shall now be called the "McFadden Bees".  <insert dramatic fanfare here>

I like them.  The hive is loaded with bees, they must have started their build up early.  I believe that these bees were feral bees that Pat McFadden and a friend of his collected from a structure one day.  I don't know when this happened but his son-in-law, Peter, witnessed the collection and told me that even on that day they weren't a happy lot.  As you can see in the video, I stirred them up quite a bit, but they weren't nearly as aggressive as they were last fall when I first tried to move them.  I finally broke down and purchased a hive net.  Ramona and I moved them Friday night the 29th of March.  They seem to be settling in very well.

What I like about them is their numerical strength this early in the season.  All of this without my interference.  If I can, I will split the hive and make two colonies out of the one.  I'll let the bees produce a new queen for the new colony from their own stock.  I am trying to make plans to witness hive splitting with the Vinduska's and with McCreight.  I met McCreight on the 31st at an Easter Pageant and he seems to have his beekeeping act together.  I could learn a lot from either of these men.

Check out the video  http://youtu.be/uq2FfJcfkuI

My Bees Starved to Death!

This is an update to my previous post dated March 27.
 
My bees starved to death.  They had about 20 lbs of honey left in the hive and a division board feeder that was full of sugar water.  The queen started laying to build up for the spring, but the cluster of bees was relatively small and unwilling to move away from the brood nest to access the honey stores during a cold snap because they needed to keep the brood nest warm.  This caused the bees to starve to death.  What a shame!  The easiest indicator of starvation is that a large portion of bees were found dead deep in the cells head first, but not near the honey, they were near the brood nest.

On a warm day prior to the cold snap I should have moved the end frames (they had most of the honey) to positions immediately on either side of the small brood nest (there were only two frames with brood).  That way the bees would have had honey adjacent to the brood nest for use during the cold snap.

OK so it happened again! I lost another one!

March 26, 2013

I lost another hive.  This time it was Harry.  I don't understand what happened.  There were thousands of dead bees in the hive.  There was a little brood (workers and drones), some honey and some pollen.  I didn't see any sign of foulbrood, hive beetles, or Varoa.  I noticed that they did drink some of the sugar water I gave them in the division board feeder.  But I also found some new queen cells, though none opened.  Does this mean the old queen perished or left?  I doubt she left because of the quantity of bees still in the hive.  A quantity equal to what I would expect to carry over the winter into the new spring.  So she might have died.  But how, and why?!?  This situation really curtails my hopes for this year's honey season.

However there are a couple of opportunities here;
         1)  I have a new box full of fully drawn comb with honey to give one or more new hives a nice start.  This might help us harvest more honey this year with the new colonies because they won't need to draw out all new comb and they will have some stores to start out with.  There just won't be any production from the established hive that didn't make it through winter.
         2)  I have a learning opportunity with the South Central Honey Producers of Kansas meeting this coming Saturday afternoon.  There will be a lot of veteran beekeepers attending from whom I might learn something about this situation.

My first bee installation!

April 2011

I just published my first package bee installation.  I did this little project in April of 2011 and used an inferior camera to record the project.  The bees were about 2 weeks late and I think this was due to some inclement weather in California, which delayed their spring build up.  I constructed my own Warre hive during the winter and cleared out a small place next to our tenant's hive (tenant's at that time - they have since moved back into town).

Ramona was out of town and Carlton was not at home either.  So, unfortunately, I did the deed on my own.  But it was still an amazing experience on a beautiful spring day.  After I dumped the bees, I had thousands of them buzzing in the air around me and the hive.  They weren't the least bit aggressive and I got to witness some of them perform their jobs.

It didn't take long for them to recognize the entrance to the hive and that this would be their new home.  The queen's presence in the frames told them this.  So, in due course, I witnessed bees scenting at the entrance to inform the lolly-gaggers that this was where they were supposed to live.  Also, later in this series you will see a young bee remove a dead bee from the landing board.  The young lady that removed the dead bee from the landing board had to wrest her charge from "Ed" who was trying to pull the dead bee into the hive.  Oh well, I hope "Ed" learned how to do her job correctly.

Part 1 - Bee Delivery, Set up the sugar water, Install the queen, and Dump the bees.
http://youtu.be/Rmg5wtPFDhw

Part 2 - I added two boxes to the hive and covered the hive with the quilt and the top.
http://youtu.be/MzXMcTV_WoY

Part 3 - I opened up the package the bees were delivered in to make it easier for the remaining bees to access the hive.
http://youtu.be/LuZWCFLblHo

Part 4 - Some post installation observations.
http://youtu.be/UsGbYwsJXaI

Time to clean up the left-overs!

It's true, if possible, whenever possible, the bees will clean up the sticky mess!  There are thousands of them trying to clean up after the honey extraction and they sound like thousands of tiny fans running at the same time.

I'm tired of not being able to see the embedded videos on my iPad.  I am sure I am not the only experiencing this issue.   Here are some links to the youtube videos instead.

http://youtu.be/IAp4U9fw0Ag

http://youtu.be/nx-0sXuKixQ

Now I'm Fired Up!

There is nothing like a harvest to re-ignite a fire in the belly.  I built five brood boxes and seven medium depth honey supers the other day.  I plan to paint them but Ramona hasn't decided on a color.  It is time to assemble some more bottom boards and I think I will make some migratory lids with some lumber I have laying around.  I purchased some clover, alfalfa, and inoculant for the two acres of pasture that are adjacent to the four acres of wildflower that I sowed earlier this spring.  I intend to sow the seed around the end of March.

Clovers and alfalfa are legumes, which means they are able to get nitrogen from the air for their own use, unlike other non-legume plants.  But they are only able to use nitrogen from the air if Rhizobium bacteria are present in nodules of their roots.  To ensure that the Rhizobium bacteria is present you need to provide those bacteria initially; therefore the need for inoculant.

We are expecting two new colonies in early April and I still need to move the McFadden hive to the farm.  The McFadden hive is full of very mean bees and my amateurish attempts to move them have, so far, been thwarted.  I stapled hardware cloth over the various holes in the hive and every time I think I have the colony buttoned up they find another escape route.  So, last weekend I ordered a moving net to cover the whole enchilada.  Once I get them moved I can tidy up the hive and make it weather proof.  If they are on my own place, I can work the hive at my leisure.

By the way, have I mentioned yet how much I appreciate my new shop.  This was a winter long project, working many weekends and nights, and it is almost finished.  I was very comfortable assembling the new hive boxes with a work bench and tools at hand.

The Taste Test

March 16, 2013

Well.  Jim and Sharon tasted the honey yesterday morning.  They agreed that it had a little twang to it but couldn't place the source.  They were OK with my honey removal and extraction process, so there isn't any concern about it having too much water.  Too much water content will allow the honey to spoil, otherwise, honey has a shelf life of forever.  The bees cap the honey when the water content is perfect and all of the cells were capped.  Also, I didn't provide them any fall sugar water so we know this honey wasn't created from refined sugar.

Oh well.  I don't think there is much more to be said about this issue.  I ate more last night when I finally made it home and decided that it was just...different.

OK, The Honey Taste Test Date is Set!

March 13, 2013

I contacted Jim and Sharon and they are ready to taste the honey.  No one has complained, but I am still concerned.  These veteran honey producers are willing to test it and I can't wait for their nod of approval.  I think the honey has a smokey overtone that is a little bitter when it first hits the mouth.  After the palate gets the full taste the smokiness disappears and the nice honey flavor comes through.  I think I know why this is happening, but I'm not going to explain it until I get Jim and Sharon's assessment on Friday.  See you Friday.

What kind of honey is this?

March 12, 2013

Ok.  I don't know what this is.  It's sweet like honey.  I like it in my coffee and on my toast, but there is something different about it.  My sweet wife, my son, and my brother in law all say it is just fine and tastes like normal honey.  I'm not so sure.  I am so "not so sure" that I am going to take some to a decades long commercial honey producer for a taste test on Friday.  On my way to work I drive by the cafe where Jim and Sharon eat breakfast every morning.  I really can't wait to get their opinion.

We Have Honey in the House!

March 8, 2013

We harvested a little over 41 lbs of honey from 73 lbs gross weight (supers, wax and honey).  We are very happy with the harvest.  But what a sticky mess!  I was up to my elbows in honey.  Anyway, what follows is a pictorial history of the process.

Jars and lids are clean and ready to go.

The cats are in prison.

Extractor, supers, scraper, and tray are ready.

De-capping with the knife.

Loading the centrifuge.

The harvest (some jars were already given away).

Recognizing that Ramona and I put in 5 full days between us to scour the house, prepare the processing area and process the honey, I decided that I really only want to extract once a year (if possible).   However, I have a plan to collect as much clover honey as possible this summer and if we end up with as much fall honey as we did in 2012 we'll have two extraction cycles.  I am particularly fond of clover honey.

Overwinter Stuff

March 8th, 2013

Over winter things slow down at Airyriperakes.  In early January I made some bee candy and put it on top of the frames in my two remaining hives.  I also mowed 4 acres (roughly) and broadcast my seed mix.  I hope I timed it right.  We were expecting moisture on the very Saturday I put down the seed, which is why I was at the farm before dawn.  That particular front never materialized but we've received some nice rain and snow since then.  I am really looking forward to the bloom, which will be very visible from the road and from the farm house on the east side of the pond.  Needless to say we won't be haying that meadow again.  In the picture below the wildflower field is beyond the old barn and grain bin.

Ramona and I decided that we will extract our honey tomorrow.  I'll take vacation today and get everything ready for the extraction.  I'll also make a batch of sugar water and start spring feeding today.  Ramona spent the last two days deep cleaning the kitchen.  Now that is a labor of love (for honey).