Redistribution of Honey

Yesterday, I suited up and went out to harvest myself some honey.  We have four hives.  One is established, and had 2 extra honey supers, one is just kicking butt and has one extra super, one has just the right amount, and the new swarm doesn't even have a full set of frames.  So, having read (and absorbed) one whole beekeeping book so far, I had a plan.  The two extra supers would be removed from the established hive (called Drones Club), and I would give one of them to the newest hive.  I read about that, see, and my friend Damian confirmed it.  The other set of frames would be taken as rent payment.

I found that one of the extra supers wasn't quite full, so I took 5 frames for us, smoked and brushed most of the bees off, and put them on the porch.  The next super down was REALLY HEAVY, and very full of bees.  I set that on a wagon, smoked it a bunch, and wheeled it a distance from the hive, hoping the bees would evacuated back to the safety of their condo.

Then, I went to check on the other bees.  The thriving hive had barely started filling that extra super, so I left it, wondering if I should remove it so that it will be easier to keep their hive warm as temps cool.  And then I decided I should find the queen of the new hive, which is something I heard beekeepers do regularly.  After all that book learnin', I felt like a dope because I searched every frame without finding her.  As a matter of fact, I have yet to locate a queen in any of our hives.

After that, I had to start making dinner and being a responsible parent, so I left off beekeeping for the night.

This morning, I covered my kitchen in newspaper, because last year, I covered it in honey instead, and our feet made shlupping sounds when we walked for at least a month.  I heated a pot of water to keep my capping knife in and set up three big bowls for separating honey and wax.

Bowl of mostly wax, bowl of mostly honey, naked frames, etc.

Last year, it took me three days to process the honey - though there were more frames because a hive was invaded by yellow jackets and the bees disappeared.  I had honey in my hair, on my face, and covering anything I had touched.  It was on every knob, button, handle, the phone, the toilet...  This year, I managed to remove all of the honey, preserving the frames, in just a few hours.  And I stayed clean!  Most of this is just experience, having everything assembled ahead of time so I don't have to rifle through cupboards with a dripping honey frame in my hand.

One nifty tip I learned from that book is the bees will do a lot of the clean up for me.  I put the empty frames back into the hive and set my honey and wax covered dishes outside, and the bees raced over to gorge themselves.

Bees washing up my dishes

When I went back a couple of hours later, everything was clean!

This bowl was covered in honey just a bit earlier.

Once the wax and honey are removed from the frames, the next step is to separate them from each other.  Some people use cheesecloth, and they probably do a better job, but I used a fine sieve, and found it to be satisfactory.  I don't mind some fine wax particles in my honey.

While I was doing all of this, the bees could smell the honey through my screen door.  They came in droves, buzzing loudly, saying, "Hey you big, doughy human!  Give us back our honey!"  Feeling guilty, I shut the door so that I couldn't hear them.  It's not stealing anyway.  It's redistribution.

Meanwhile, I had the front door open, and the smarter bees found their way around the house and started coming in before I realized what was happening.  They seriously wanted their honey back.  It took some time just to carefully remove each bee and put them back outside, and I'm still finding them here and there.  They were completely peaceful, though.  No stings.

By the end of the day, I had over a gallon and a half of delicious raw honey. Not bad.

Side note: That Damian friend I referred to earlier has a beekeeping/honey business in Portland, OR that is quickly becoming famous.  Watch for him on Bizarre Foods.  The brand is Bee Local Honey, and he keeps hives throughout Portland.  Each neighborhood has its own flavor - a great concept.

Drones Club: Closed for Winter

Today, while walking around the garden, I noticed unusual activity at the entrance to one of our hives.  There appeared to be some kind of battle between larger bees and smaller bees, so I put on my bee suit to take a closer look without becoming an unwilling participant.

The ultimate battle of the sexes.

Luckily, I just finished reading "Honeybee; Lessons from an Accidental Beekeeper" and I soon realized what was going on.  The larger bees are drones and the smaller are worker bees, and this hive is expelling the poor drones to prepare for winter.  Tragically, the male bees, being nearly useless to the rest of the hive, are kicked out each year to die of cold and starvation.  The females slowly group together in a tight cluster, which they keep at 95 degrees Fahrenheit through the cold weather.

Looking at the ground in front of the hive entrance, I could see that this hive has been driving out their drones for a little while, as it was littered with little male bee corpses.

RIP little drones...

I opened the hive to see if there were any other clues to be found inside.  This hive is doing very well, with far more honey-laden frames than they need to make it through winter.

This hive is in the perennial garden, with a big raspberry patch on one side, lemon balm in front, a large bed full of sea holly, and a huge cottage garden beyond those, including borage, lavender, and calendula.  Ironically, this hive is named "Drones' Club."

While I was suited up, I thought I'd check the hives in the veggie garden, though I had just been out there and everything looked normal.  The entrances of those three hives appeared normal, but on closer inspection, I could see that they were also beginning to push out some drones.

You can see a worker bee beating on a drone right at the top of the entrance.

I guess this means it's time to think about harvesting honey, feeding some bee supplements, and keeping an eye on things while they hunker down for the winter months.  And it also means the end of summer for me.  School starts in two days, and I should probably focus on getting my own house in order.  Time to have the chimney cleaned and make sure the generator is working.

Now, if only my tomatoes would ripen.

Autumn Homestead Update

Fall tends to be one of the busier times here on the little farm.  I am usually scrambling to prepare for art exhibits, starting to create some smaller items for holiday sales, and dealing with the harvest, all while my husband and daughter are getting back to their school/work schedules and all of the extracurricular activities that come with it.

By now, our tomatoes are dwindling, and I've been removing the spent plants from the greenhouse, making room for a fall crop of greens.  We planted winter broccoli and cauliflower, plus salad greens.  We've never done a fall planting before, mainly because it has always been so much work just getting the harvest finished, let alone dealing with replanting.  I thought planting in the greenhouse would mean the veggies were protected from predators (all of the greens in the raised beds have now been munched away by deer) but I have been fighting a whole gang of caterpillars instead. 

The deer have been very audacious, coming into the fenced garden surrounding our house, eating our raspberries and grapes.  The other morning, I was wholly entertained watching Mike chasing a deer around out there in his underwear and t-shirt, barefoot, waving a plastic yellow softball bat.  These are the memories we will cherish forever.

We have a lot of grapes (though less each time the deer break in), and I have no idea what I'll do with them.  I'd love to make wine, but I'm not up to buying equipment and taking that on this year.  We could vitamix them, but what about seeds?

Our first hive was invaded by yellow jackets.  Within about a week, the yellow jackets drove out the honey bees and ate almost all of the honey.  The hive never did produce much honey, so I don't think it was healthy to begin with, but we were very upset by the loss.  We are just hoping the other two hives are safe - they look ok.  I've been trying to salvage beeswax from the dead hive, but it's full of brood, and a bit papery.

Now and then, I find time to make lotions.  I infused almond oil with lavender for my most recent recipe.  I didn't use any essential oils, so the lotion is subtle and simple.  I'll give you a little rundown:

First, I melted beeswax and the lavender-infused almond oil, while letting some borax powder dissolve in water:

Then I mixed them together while both were hot.  I put the mixture in a blender I use only for lotions.

Once it was nicely whipped, I poured the mixture into jars and let it cool:

The hardest part about making lotion is planning ahead.  The infusion takes a few weeks, and then it's just a matter of having the materials on hand and the right tools.  The rest is very simple.  It has a nice, mild lavender smell, and the beeswax/almond oil texture feels luxurious on my hands.

My printer has broken down, so I need to get a new one.  Then I can print some labels and get my new products ready for the holidays.  Even if I can't sell them, they will make great gifts.  I helped
Anouk and her friend make melt & pour glycerine soap the other day.  We added our honey and some sage oil.  I used one to wash my face this morning, and it is the best facial soap I've ever used.  Anouk is going to make her own products and call them "Little Tendrils."

Bee Swarm

Earlier this summer, Anouk ran in the house announcing that the bees were swarming.  Sure enough, when I checked the back yard, the air was filled with buzzing bees.  It's impossible to describe this experience, and when I tried to catch it on film, it simply looked like the sound and image was poor quality.  As we watched, the buzzing swarm slowly condensed into a thick cloud of bees, and they eventually began to cling to a post in our raspberry patch, covering it in a thick blanket of bees (referred to as a "beard.")

We brought out an empty super, then we moved the swarm into the box. We had only read about this process before, and it was surreal how docile the bees were.  We were literally scooping handfuls of bees, like they were liquid.  Mike cut the stalk they had gathered on and shook that into the box, then we put a feeder full of sugar water in the top box, put the lid on, and left them to settle in.  Bees are expensive, so we were thankful that we had an empty super on hand, because we now have a third hive, and it appears to be building comb very quickly.

We left the feeder on when we needed to leave town in June, and when we came home, they had built crazy comb to fill every inch of open space between the feeder and frames.  Here is a photo of a smaller crazy comb formation (from a different hive:)

Crazy comb is when the bees build free form Dr. Seuss-style structures to fill empty spaces in the hive.  We have learned to remove it so that the frames don't get welded together, making it impossible to tend the bees.  After removing that larger comb, I spent about an hour pressing the honey out, then melting the wax.  I decided to try using the microwave on thaw setting, and it worked perfectly.  Remaining honey sank to the bottom of the bowl, impurities were in the center, and the pure wax floated and hardened on top.  From just a bunch of excess comb, I have 12 ounces of honey and a big chunk of wax for use in soap and lotion-making! 

Crazy Comb

When I checked our new hive yesterday, I found that they had been hard at work building some Dr. Seuss-style architecture on the top of their frames.  (We have a top-feeder in the honey super right now, so there is room for them to construct a fantastic wax sculpture.)

I tried to find information online about what to do about this, if anything, but I only found a couple of references to "crazy comb" that did not include more information.  So, I once again harassed my friend Damian, who advised me to remove it.  Today Mike and I both suited up and I fired up the smoker (which goes out every time, so we use liquid smoke for back-up) and we carefully peeled the structure off.  This hive has been much more productive than our first one, and they already have comb built out to most of the outer frames.  We were excited to find that the part we scraped off has some honey in it, so we had our first tiny taste of honey produced by our own hives.

Next, we checked the established hive that we started last spring.  We have had a honey super on it for a year, but they aren't building comb in that at all.  Still, they have the hive body completely full of honey, and they appear to be healthy.  Hopefully, now that spring has sprung, they will spend the summer building on those frames and filling them with delicious honey.

A friend has been teaching me to make soap, and I plan to spend this year making more of it, plus lotions, balms, and candles, using our wax, herbs, and beneficial plants.  I'm actually considering reducing my mosaic production and turning part of the studio into space for making and storing products from our homestead.  We hope to invest in two more hive bodies by the end of summer so that we can either capture a swarm or purchase more bees next year.

Anouk had a friend sleep over last night, so I showed the girls the wax we took from the hive.  They were both fascinated, and happy to taste some honey straight from the source.  Keeping bees has been a rewarding challenge so far, and it ties together all that we are doing here on our little homestead.

Birds and Bees

Bee Mistress

Last weekend, we drove down to GloryBee Foods in Eugene, OR to pick up our box o' bees.  When we arrived, a demonstration was just about to begin, and I am very glad we managed to participate.  The thing is, we have been interested in keeping bees for years, but Mike has been more motivated.  He took the Master Beekeeper classes, read the books, and watches the videos.  I felt that I had enough responsibility, and couldn't take on one more thing.  But then, we came across a 2nd-hand suit and hat in a size small.  And Mike couldn't squeeze into it.  Now I am the Bee Mistress, and I was very happy to see, in person, how to introduce the bees to their new home.

At home, I removed a little box containing the queen, but was alarmed to see that she was just rolling around in there.  She appeared to be barely alive.  We removed the cork from one end and Mike stuck a gummy bear in the hole, and I placed the queen box in the hive.  Then I put the rest of the bees, in their opened box, into the empty top story of the hive and replaced the lid. 

Then I went inside and called my friend Damian, who keeps bees.  (Look up Taborhood Honey to see how he has been putting hives all around his Portland neighborhood, spreading the bee love.)  He reassured me that the hive would be ok, but that I needed to replace the queen asap.  Since it was Saturday evening, I had to wait until Monday morning to call GloryBee.

GloryBee was great about immediately sending a new queen, no questions asked.  Damian explained that I needed to locate the original queen (if she survived) and assassinate her before introducing the new queen.  So, on Wednesday morning, I put on my gear and opened the hive.  I used my smoker, though it seemed only to irritate the bees.  It is a very unique experience to deliberately disturb a swarm of 13,000 (or so) bees who are otherwise minding their own business.  I removed one frame after another and searched for the tiny blue dot that would indicate the queen.  The bees were not thrilled with this.  I used a soft brush to push them around in more clustered areas.  I turned over dead bees laying in the bottom of the box. But I never found the blue dot.  I felt pretty sure she had died, or that they had eaten the gummy bear, stormed her box, and killed her for being a poor excuse for a queen.

When the new queen was delivered later that day, I just tacked her box between two frames and left it.  I haven't checked back (though I've called and emailed Damian to make sure I'm doing everything right.)

I was impressed by the comb that is already growing on the frames.  When I'm tending the hive, I move slowly, gently, and I feel supremely calm and focused.  I expect to be stung, but it hasn't happened yet.  Despite the original plan for me to serve only as moral support on this beekeeping enterprise, I am comfortable with my lead role.  I feel a strong attachment for, and gratitude toward the hive, and I'm looking forward to a life with bees.