Summer Honey - The Journey

-Posted by Isaac

It's harvest time. For the past two weeks I've been pulling the summer honey. It's gorgeous this year. Beautiful and light. On the right is this year's Summer:

We seem to have a fan of last year's honey.

 It's a decent crop. Not incredible, but it sure beats the misery of last summer, which was a mere 27 lb / hive average. We have at least doubled that and we've still got the coming goldenrod this fall.
Two or three bee yards and about a thousand pounds of extracted honey per day has been status quo of late. If we can keep this up until the end of August we'll keep the kids in clothes for another year.

The clover went crazy this year, as some of you have mentioned.

I think this may be the reason this year's summer honey is lighter. More clover, less thistle and soybean? I don't know... it tastes about the same. It's definitely been drier this summer. But still cool. One of these years it may actually hit 90 degrees-- then we'll really have a crop!

During last year's summer honey extraction I showed you some of the different forage that the bees seek out... from flower nectar turned into honey. Now we'll take a tour of the honey processing... from hive to table.
Here are some pictures taken over the last few days.

A bee yard: ten to twenty hives depending on the surrounding forage. We're up to 29 bee yards.
The upper boxes are the honey supers-

Just as it is with people, some are go-getters...

...and some are slouches.

Don't you wish they could all be Boomers?

So the honey-laden supers are taken off the hives and loaded on the truck. Some days are harder then others. I won't get into the specifics.
This load happened to come off the golf course:

They hate it when I drive across the greens.

But it's so fun!

The honey gets stacked in the drying room / hot room. This year, most of the honey has been coming in at 16.5 to 17.5% moisture. No drying required.

The stack can get pretty high when we get behind on the extracting.

Eventually the frames come out and are run through the uncapper. This takes the outside wax capping off the honey so that the extractor can "sling" it out of the honeycomb cells.

Petyn and Bridger- our honey models.

The liquid honey goes into a large settling tank...

And is drained into buckets or barrels at the end of the day:

Light, Pure, Raw... High Quality Honey!

 If we turn our heads just a second, Bridger takes an opportunity to sample.

The boy is uncontrollable.

The honey is weighed,

And put into storage.

Here it awaits bottling. Could be now, could be next year...

The wax capping I mentioned earlier takes another journey.
The honey-soaked wax drains for a day or two...

...then is taken out to the bees. 

Honey bee cappuccino.

I have resisted buying a cappings spinner because I like watching this.

They chew on this little treat for another day or two, "fluff it up," and the loose wax gets rendered, filtered and poured into bucket molds:

From this point it can take about any form.

One thing we've been doing lately is dipped candles.
The wax is remelted:

And the wicks are "dipped" over and over.

Jayne will explain this in depth on a future post.

Back to the honey...

Empty frames go back into the supers.

Some "wet" supers go directly back on the hives with the hope that the bees will fill them with fall honey.

Others are cleaned out by the lucky bees here at home.

 What a morning treat!
They make short work of it.

For store shelves and the markets, the honey is pumped into the bottling tanks, never heated above the natural temperature of a beehive (we never go above 100 degrees), and strained through a cloth filter. The fabric still lets the pollen grains through and under this low heat, the honey remains raw with the enzymes intact.

The summer honey takes other forms. 

It's the one we use for the granulated, spreadable honey. It is also bottled around chunks of comb and sold as chunk honey. 

And it can be steeped with herbs for a couple of weeks and turned into infused honey:

All material for future blog posts.

So unti next time...

Enjoy!

Maizy likes her summer honey with Lucky Cat bread.

CCD, Catching Swarms, Russian Bees, and White Boxes: More Beekeeping Questions Answered

1. -Posted by Isaac

   Our Candle Pouring Station

   I like to start these dark December days pouring candle wax and listening to the alternative station. Yesterday I heard an awesome song that stuck in my head the rest of the morning.  Some of the lyrics went like this:
   It's better to feel pain   --  than nothing at all...
   The opposite of love   --  is indifference...
   Do you know the one? Well you might. Much to my chagrin I came to find out that my little discovery, a song I planned to learn and try singing for Jayne or whoever, has already gone mainstream. I heard it again last night watching football with Dad. It was background music in a commercial selling baseball gloves or something. Funny how your perspective can change. Maybe I won't learn it now. Oh well, I still I got a day of nostalgia out of that song. 
   We'll try to keep our beekeeping practices from mainstreaming. Size and efficiency in modern beekeeping, as with all modern agriculture, has no doubt brought higher production. But higher production is only a silver lining. There are also big black clouds concerning food production. I'm sure many of our blog readers are well aware of this. Julie Scordato touched on this in her question:
   
   
   

   
   "Can you give us an update on colony collapse disorder? Is it still bad? Are changing practices helping? Should we still be worried? What have you seen locally regarding this?"

   Colony collapse disorder (CCD) has not been in the headlines as much as it was in 2007 and 2008 but it's still a problem and research into the multitude of various causes has yet to come up with a definitive answer. Some bigger migratory beekeepers claim that keeping their bees away from row crop agriculture (corn, soybeans...) has helped colony health. On our small operation, we do lose bees (15% last winter) we've not seen anything like the CCD symptoms. Mites continue to be our nemesis. And I think this holds for other local beekeepers (those whom I have confidence in, anyway.) There are a few large beekeepers in northern Ohio and I haven't heard much in the way of CCD complaints from them either.
   
   Andrew Scordato writes:
   

   
   

   "There were lots of swarms this year that Isaac was able to collect. With beekeeping full time, do you have a goal number of hives you want, or is the sky the limit?"
   
   

   One of our "swarm catcher" boxes we use in the Spring

2. I think about this all the time, Andrew. The market for local honey at present seems endless, so we continue to grow with hives and equipment. I'm building enough woodenware to reach a goal of 300 hives this year. We'll decide from there. There's a point where your practices are compromised as well as time with family and other obligations. Right now, I tend to babysit the hives more then I probably need to. We can definitely increase from our present 230. How many more... who knows?

   Little Molly Scordato writes:  "Will you ever consider hybridizing with Russian honeybees for hardiness to weather and parasites? Aren't the russian bees notorious for sussing out and destroying certain hive parasites that the Italian bees tend to tolerate at their own peril?"
   
   I bought 30 Russian queens a couple years ago and noticed a few things good and bad:
   
   -The bees don't accept the queen as readily.
   -They don't seem to make as much honey.
   -They seem to weather the winter better, but not at a significantly higher survival rate then the Italians.
   -They don't eat as much honey in the winter, but seem to build up very slow in the spring.
   
   I need to try a new batch this year. For me, the jury is still out on the Russians, but thanks for the reminder.

4. Our bees are a healthy mix of Italians, Carniolan, and Russians. See the little queen cage in the center?  The bees will eat the candy plug, releasing their royal highness.

   
   Marci writes, 
   

   "Why are most bee boxes white?"

   I've wondered this myself. Maybe white reflects light best in the Summer, thus keeping a hive cool. I suspect it has more to do with the cheap and plentiful supply of white paint.

5. Honeyrun Farm Boxes - a little bit of white, purple, green, gray, and whatever color of exterior paint we find on sale at the hardware store.

   Leah asks,
   

   "How many times can you harvest honey from one hive in a year? I know you have Spring, Summer and Fall honey. But maybe you keep some hives for Spring harvest, some for Fall etc."

   This all depends on weather and location. Of our 21 bee yard locations, only six are close enough to groves of Black Locust trees that we can harvest Spring honey and confidently call it Black Locust honey. If it's a year like 2010 where God smiles down on bees, you can pull honey from a single hive in all three seasons. There was just an abundance of nectar and sunshine. A rainy, cold year like 2011 means you're lucky to have any honey at all. For the most part, you can depend on almost all hives producing a Summer crop with the Spring and Fall honey being kind of hit or miss and having a lot to do with the abundance of nectar producing plants in the vicinity of the yard.
   
   

   Spring, Summer, and Fall Honey

7. Katie asked a question that really got me thinking:
   

   "What about beekeeping is most rewarding?"
   
   

   Happiest after a big honey harvest

   The short answer is pulling honey-- seeing my labor come to fruition, and knowing I don't have to go looking for a "real job" to put food on the table. The deeper answer is my general fascination with bees and their place and our own place in the world. Sounds cliche, huh? If you end up keeping bees you'll notice that you're more in tune with what's going on outside, what's growing, what's blooming, the temperature, the sun, the rain, the wind etc... You'll notice what the farmers are doing, where certain crops are, where tree lines, fence rows, woods, streams and set-aside areas are... what's being sprayed and planted, what's being plowed under, what's being built...

   In general, you become more aware. I like this.

   She also asks,
   "What advice would you offer someone interested in getting started?"

   Prepare yourself for broadening horizons, great high peaks of joy and mystery and reward. Brace yourself for deep valleys of death, depression and worry.

   And join a bee club.  Scioto Valley Beekeepers, our local club, is offering a beekeeping class this coming April, if you feel so inclined.  

More Questions - Beekeeping

-Posted by Isaac

Well, I had said my next post was going to be about the wax rendering process, but this, Jayne's genius idea of making some blog posts by answering questions, takes precedent. No, I'm serious... it really is genius.   It gives some future ideas for posts, plus it lets us have a little dialog with you guys. Please don't hesitate to ask more or comment. Though I'm not, I love feeling like an "expert."

So here are three questions we had concerning bees:
Stacey Shehin asks,

"Is it OK to leave 3 supers on top of the bottom two brood boxes over the winter (i.e., 5 supers total)? Is that too many to have on a hive over the winter?"

Hives should weigh over 60 lbs going into winter

It's perfectly fine to leave on as many supers as you want over the winter. That's just more food for the bees. Typically I take everything off, leaving just the two brood boxes if I feel that there is enough honey in there to support the bees through the cold months. If they're light in September (below 40 lbs), I'll feed sugar syrup and protein patties. If they're light in October, I'll leave supers on as you're doing. It's healthier to let the bees eat their own honey rather then syrup. Plenty of honey left on in the Fall, usually results in a strong colony in April and a super Spring honey crop in June.

Kim Benson had kind of a tough question:

"This is our first season with a bee hive. We looked at them 10 days ago and noticed several dead brood with a tiny hole in the cap. What could cause this? We saw a few mites and a few hive beetles, which we are taking care of. Any thoughts would be appreciated." 

It's hard to really make a definitive call on this without seeing the hive. If your population is good and over 90% of the brood looks healthy I'd say you're ok. Truthfully, my first thought was that you've got an American Foulbrood problem, but with this, you would have noticed a putrid smell. The tiny holes in dead, sunken brood cells are a symptom of this. Mites and hive beetles are in most all hives, and it's a numbers game with these guys as to your level of concern.

American foulbrood

Mites- The real scurge of beekeeping

It's tough your first year because you haven't seen a whole lot of cases of this or that... you're still gaining experience (as am I!). At any rate, in December it's too late to do much or to worry much. Take a look on a warm day in February and see what you've got. Dead or alive, you've learned something... start from there. Hope springs eternal in beekeeping.

Ericka Hill asked an interesting question:

Have you discovered whether individual bees have personalities? That is, can you have a relationship with them or are they sort of....anonymous?

I laughed upon first reading this question, but the more I thought about it, the more it intrigued me. It's really a great question, Ericka, and there are many levels to it. In short, yes, I have noticed that individual bees have personalities. I notice it any time I've got one old prickly worker bee buzzing loud and hitting my veil for an extended time. You'll be working a hive and she's at it. Ten minutes later, two hives down the line, the same old girl is still at it, and everybody else is just going about their business quietly buzzing in and out. I'd say this really is a personality. And if I grow tired of the nuisance, our relationship is pretty short-lived.

A bee's "personality" varies with age and genetics. A young nurse bee, less then two weeks old is going to be very docile, almost sweet. As she ages and becomes an older forager, she grows wise to the ways of the world and becomes a bit meaner, more protective.

A "young'un"

Keep in mind that the personalities of all these bees stem from a single mother - the queen. If a certain hive has an angry old bitty for a queen, all the daughters are going to be somewhat angry and bittyish. Thus making this hive aggressive and not fun to work with. It's amazing how requeening can improve a hive's demeanor.

Mean or sweet, it's a joy to work in the hives. I'll keep your question in mind the next time I'm in the bees. I'll try to actually observe some other personality traits aside from the few individual bees heckling me. 

More questions answered: Creamed Honey and Honey Sticks

-Posted by Jayne

Our give-a-way last week has provided a lot of great ideas for blog posts.  We've decided to answer a few questions here and there, rather than writing a book in one long blog post.  Here are a few more of the "easy" ones that I can answer.  I'm going to leave the more technical beekeeping questions for Isaac.

Ianna writes, "I've tried and loved all sorts of liquid honey, but only just recently just tried (aka devoured) some opaque, buttery honey. It wasn't crystallised, it was just buttery smooooth! How is that made? What's the difference (outside the obvious :) between that opaque buttery honey and liquid honey?"

Good question!  I believe what you are refering to is "Creamed Honey."  There is also a product called "Honey Butter" which is butter mixed with honey, but it sounds more like you had Creamed Honey.  This product is very similar to our "Naturally Granulated Honey," but very different in one regard.  Creamed honey is made by using a "seed" which is really just another creamed honey that has a specific type of smooth granulation.  All honey will granulate, but depending on the type of honey (what nectar it is from), it has different sizes of granules.  Here you see some lighter early Summer honey with a pretty fine granulation:

 And here you see some late Summer honey that has not quite granulated completely.  It is still a bit more runny and smooth.  We have sold both as "Naturally Granulated Honey," since we don't do anything to it... just let the honey sit and get more creamy and solid.  BUT.. if we were to make creamed honey, we would start with about a pound of the "seed" honey, and add it to about 12 lbs. of liquid honey, and mix it in our Kitchenaid Mixer for about 5 minutes.  Then, you put it in your jars and store it at a temp of about 56 degrees for a week or so.  Wah-la!  Creamed honey!  If you wanted to try this yourself, you can google "How to make creamed honey" and come up with similar recipes.

Come to think of it... that would make a wonderful Christmas present!  Buy a large jug of honey, a pound of creamed honey, and you can make your friends and family a wonderful "homemade" gift!

And one more question for today.  
Jen asks, "Is it easy to make honey sticks?"

It would be fun to tell you we use a little dropper to get the honey in the stick... but I don't think it would be very believeable!

Actually, yes it is!  For us, at least....
We don't actually put the honey into the little stick ourselves.  This requires a machine that costs about $18,000 dollars (or so we've heard).  We have found a company that allows us to send them our honey, and they put it in the little sticks for us (for a fee, of course).  We know other beekeepers who just buy the sticks from the company and re-sell them, but we are really proud to have our own honey in the sticks, so we actually feel it is worth it to send our honey to them so we can have our own Honeyrun Farm honey sticks.  So aside from lifting a 60 lb. bucket onto the counter at the post office, the task is really pretty easy.  Who am I kidding, I always make our post master Ron lift the bucket for me.  Thanks Ron.  

If you'd like to come see us this weekend, we are selling at the Worthington Winter Market on Saturday from 10-1, and at the North Market Holiday Show from 8-5 on Saturday and from 12-5 on Sunday.  Have a wonderful weekend!

We Need Closet Space!

-Posted by Isaac

Dan Grant was at one time the biggest beekeeper in the state. 2000 hives, pollinating everything from the Ohio River to Lake Erie, winters in Georgia, summers in Wisconsin some years, honey production by the semi load. He lives in Circleville and has since settled down to an easy couple hundred hives. He must feel like he has a lot of time on his hands because he likes to come out and talk.

Dan talks a lot.

As he talks, I've learned to keep working at whatever I'm doing and keep an ear out for Dan's precious nuggets of wisdom. Sometimes it's hard to sift through all the B.S.  Sometimes that's all there is.

This time he caught me out working on the latest project:

 And something he said rang true: "If you have some land and you happen to keep bees, you might as well put down four posts on the corners and build a roof over the whole damn thing. Even then, you'll have to buy land and add on."
Beekeeping requires equipment (sometimes called junk) and lots of space to put it. I've got the big barn jammed full of honey supers, the honey house full of honey. The extracting equipment, bottling supplies, packing materials, wax, oils, tanks, melters, trucks and trailers have to find a place somewhere.
This winter involves building on. This addition to the big barn got done this week, and a big annex to the honey house is coming soon.

 As always, we find a way to do it cheap. These are windows and doors from Grandmother Barnes' house that burned down ten years ago. The metal came from some big barn doors that got ripped off in a wind storm three years ago. All but $50 of lumber was salvaged from old barn wood.
Thing is, I'm already regretting not putting in a big overhead door. I guess I'm too cheap.
Now we can buy bulk and get that elusive reduced rate with our bottling supplies.

What child labor laws?

 The week stayed sunny and slowly warmed. By Friday the temp had hit 50 degrees and the bees rejoiced with a few hours of flight.
Mason welcomed these bees by throwing acorns at them.

By Saturday it had hit a balmy 54 degrees and we were able to sneak in our second unexpected November market. The pre-Thanksgiving crowd didn't disappoint.  I saw many North Market regulars who I won't see again for the next five months. I'll miss you! You guys can still stock up inside at the Greener Grocer.

I think my next post will be about the wax rendering process and what we do with it. From comb to cappings wax to candles.

Or to chewing gum... whatever suits your taste.