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.