It’s Bee Lining Time

Tags

bee lining, beekeeping, honey bee behavior

Source: Tom Seeley’s Following the Wild Bees

Here is a super cool beebox for bee hunting, made of two Altoids tins. Ingenious, and fun! The inventor, Frank Linton, also provided instructions for construction.

See Plans here: http://bit.ly/2igLUfx

Source: Tom Seeley’s Following the Wild Bees

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Surprising health benefits of Honey by Andaman Plantations and Development

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food, health benefits of honey, honey

The advantages of honey go beyond its unique taste. It’s really a wonderful natural source of carbohydrates which supply strength and energy to human bodies, honey is known for its efficacy in quickly boosting the performance, endurance and reduces muscle fatigue of athletes. Its natural sugars play a significant role in preventing fatigue while exercise. Human body absorbs the glucose in honey very quickly and supplies an immediate energy boost, while the fructose is absorbed more gradually providing sustained energy. It is widely known that honey has also been found to keep levels maintained of blood sugar compared to other types of sugar.

Read entire article here: Surprising health benefits of Honey — Andaman Plantations and Development Corporation Pvt. Ltd.

Landi Simone – Reading the Frames

Tags

beekeeping, comb management, fall management, management, spring management, winter management

I found this interesting. She says many things that I say to new beekeepers – listen to and watch your bees. They’ll tell you when they’re not happy! The frame pictures are excellent and well worth a look at from a healthy honey bee perspective.

It’s quite long at 44 minutes, but worth a watch!

Source: Landi Simone – Reading the Frames

Letters to a Beekeeper by Honey Hunter

Tags

beekeeping books, book review, pollinator gardening

Letters to a Beekeeper is a delightful book for anyone interested in beekeeping, bees, gardening or indeed letters.

The book follows the journey of two people over the course of a year and the sharing of their passions.  

Alys learns how to keep bees and Steve learns how to plant a pollinator-friendly garden.  Steve Benbow is the founder of the London Honey Company and Alys Fowler is the Guardian gardening writer.

Read the entire review at:  Letters to a Beekeeper — Honey Hunter

Ancient Olympians ate this honey cheesecake as a post-workout snack, and we have the recipe By Noël Duan & Elan Kiderman

Tags

cheesecake, honey, honey cheesecake, honey recipe, Olympic recipe, recipe

Some may say that cheesecake is food of the gods—those people include the ancient Greek Olympians, who feasted on a flour cake filled with cheese and honey after their pentathlon competitions. The ancient Greeks were already aware of the connections between physical aptitude and lifestyle choices—and the athletes engaged in a variety of restrictive diets believed to enhance their performances, such as xerophagia, a diet consisting of dry foods. Like the modern-day cheesecake, the ancient Greek version was an indulgence, something you pair with your wine at the end of a languid feast.

In 250 BC, the Greek poet Archestratus wrote a gastronomic travel guide called Life of Luxury that is only preserved in fragments. In one piece that has survived, he makes mention of the dessert: “Yet accept a cheese-cake made in Athens; or, failing that, if you can get one from somewhere else, go out and demand some Attic honey, since that will make your cheesecake superb.” But, alas, he did not include any recipes.

As with the classical sculptures we now find in museums, we can thank the Romans for preserving the Greek cheesecake into posterity. De Agri Cultura, Cato the Elder’s 160 BC farming manual, is not only the earliest example of surviving Latin prose, but a glorified food blog—it includes not one but several recipes for cheesecakes.

“Cato is a proud Roman, writing in Latin,” Cathy Kaufman, food history and author of Cooking in Ancient Civilizations, explained over email. “Nonetheless, there seems to be an overlap between Archestratus’s gastronomic descriptions and Cato’s recipes.” The only possible difference between an ancient Greek cheesecake and an ancient Roman cheesecake, classicist and food blogger Andrew Coletti added, is that the early Greeks didn’t use chicken eggs.

Cato’s cheesecake recipes include a sweet version called savillum and a savory cheesecake called libum, the latter being related to our modern-day word, libations. “They were often made as religious offerings,” Coletti explained. These were simple baked mixtures of baked cheese and flour that could be eaten with a spoon. Another more complex version from Cato, the placenta cake, involves layering cheese, honey, and dough together and flavored with bay leaves. According to Coletti, black poppyseeds were also used as cheesecake toppings. Think of them as ancient sprinkles.

This was Cato’s original recipe for placenta cake:

Read fully article and get recipe here:

Ancient Olympians ate this honey cheesecake as a post-workout snack, and we have the recipe By Noël Duan & Elan Kiderman

Deafening Silence by Misty Meadows Homestead

Tags

assessment, beekeeping, colony assessment, colony loss, deadouts, hive assessment, winter bee losses

So your bees died over winter. This blog post by Misty Meadows Homestead shows how we can grow as beekeepers using our deductive skills to learn and improve. Thanks for sharing your loss with us so that we too learn.

When you love someone, you are never really prepared to lose them. When my beekeeping, gardener Grandfather passed, he had end-stage renal failure and we had 5 years to prepare – it wasn’t enough. Last winter, when my 14-year old cat passed, she had been telling us for weeks that her time was coming to an end – it wasn’t enough.

No matter how prepared we ‘think’ we are, when it happens, we realize we didn’t have enough time to prepare ourselves.

Wednesday we had a little bit of warm weather – about 55º and decided it was a good time to inspect our 4 hives.  We stood in the bee yard, observing the colonies for quite some time.

continued via link below:

Read the entire blog post at: Homestead Buzz – Deafening Silence — Misty Meadows Homestead & more!

Fruit Salad With Honey N Cream Dressing by akshayakumbham

Tags

cream, fruit recipe, honey, honey recipe, nuts, recipe

I love everything in this recipe. Fruit, cream, honey, roasted nuts. What’s not to like?

Tropical and seasonal fruits, dry fruits are used. Dressing is done with fresh cream and honey. Here I present fresh and juicy fruit salad with honey n cream dressing to relish during festive days or anytime. Njoy Cooking, Serving n Savoring!

Continued…

Read full recipe with pictures here: Fruit Salad With Honey N Cream Dressing — akshayakumbham

Getting Started in Beekeeping by sassafrasbeefarm

Tags

beekeeping, education, mentoring

Accepting What Is

As the local beekeeping association Secretary I received lots of email and often it involved a request from non members wanting to get into beekeeping. They’d done their homework which, mostly, has consisted of surfing Facebook and Youtube. They’d also asked lots of people how to best get started in beekeeping. After polling the answers they’d start to see two particular suggestions rising to the top: 1) Join your local association and 2) get a mentor. From there they deduced that they can most likely accomplish both by sending an email to the local association asking for a mentor to help them get started.

I had a very nice, polite email I send back moving them in the right direction to accomplish both getting them in contact with experienced beekeepers and a course of action to increase their likelihood of success.

As beekeepers here know, it takes numbers to be successful. If you don’t believe me make a split with insufficient nurse bees or capped brood. Timing is essential as well, start a task at the proper time and all goes easily. Success with a swarm in early April is a piece of cake; success with a swarm in August is difficult. And so it is with folks not yet knowledgeable of the mechanics of beekeeping. They want bees and a mentor not knowing the amount of effort it will take nor the proper timing in order to increase the chance of success that first year.

You too will get inquiries from friends and people you come in contact with once they know you are a beekeeper. Be prepared to help them get off to a realistic start if you want them to be successful. And that’s what it’s really about isn’t it? One hundred new beekeepers joining the association is great but not so impressive if half fail their first season because they had unrealistic expectations.

Let’s look at the “getting a mentor” concern. The old school model of getting a mentor went something like this: The mentee sought out a mentor and agreed to spend the first year helping the mentor in the mentor’s bee yard. The mentee would show up at an agreed on day and time and look over the shoulder of the mentor as he went through his hives, talking as he did so. Watch, listen, learn. Move boxes as needed and help the mentor as the tasks necessitated. This would go on for a season and the next Spring the mentor would make a split and give it to the mentee to take care of at the mentor’s yard. The mentee would work his new hive and the mentor would look over his shoulder to make sure he didn’t make any mistakes and was able to correctly comment on what he was seeing and the correct action to take. At the end of that season the mentee took his hive home and became a beekeeper.

Somewhere along the way we have deviated from this model. Now we take new comers into the hobby, put them through a 20 hour course and expect them to survive. It’s like making an early March split – risky. Nowadays the mentee wants the mentor to make visits to the mentee’s yard for instruction. And inasmuch as the clubs and associations have promoted getting the newcomers’ bees perhaps that seems reasonable to take some responsibility for assisting with issues that will naturally come up.

If we are going to move to a new model then perhaps we need to clarify and revise some terms. As it now stands we’re mixing and matching old school and new school. The new beekeeper wants a mentor, bees, and instruction. That’s reasonable. The problem is one of numbers though (remember that early Spring Splits analogy?). Most clubs can’t provide a 1:1 mentor for 100 new beekeepers every year nor should anyone expect mentors to volunteer to run around town visiting mentees weekly. So we must marry the expectations of the new beekeeper and the club acting as mentor. Each side gives and gets a bit and both walk away with more.

We do that by returning to the old school model whereby the mentee gets his/her education by visiting the mentor, but no longer at the mentor’s beeyard nor by a single mentor. The new model has the mentee visiting many mentors at events like 1) monthly meetings, 2) local educational events, 3) dinner before meetings, 4) online discussion groups 5) State Conferences, 6) connecting through fellowship with bee buddies, community outreach, etc. The list goes on… The mentee that wants to learn this art, like historically, has the resources offered and available and they go to learn – as before. The club or association organizes monthly meetings, presentations, events, newsletters, club library, allows for face to face fellowship time monthly, and online discussion groups. All things considered, the new beekeeper has more opportunity nowadays to gather knowledge than they used to with the old school model AND they get their bees their first year.

If you’ve suffered through my ruminations this far, I commend your endurance. I gave two similar presentations at this year’s state conference. I encourage the new beekeeper to take advantage of what is. There are multiple opportunities available to new beekeepers – more than enough to succeed. I also push the concept of bee buddies and fellowship for those that need a 1:1 relationship. Occasionally I hear someone complain about not having a 1:1 mentor for more personal, individual instruction as they had hoped. That’s unfortunate because they are cheating themselves out of the good of what is while wasting time wishing for the unlikelihood of what they envisioned. The fact of the matter is they have a room full of mentors at every meeting, at every gathering, at every conference. My mom used to say, “Go do the very best you can with what you’re offered. You do everything You can and You’ll succeed.” Mom was smart at marrying “what is” with success.

Beekeeping will change you for the worse by Honey Bee Suite

Tags

beekeeping, humor

A bit of humor here from Rusty. Well, I think she’s being humorous. Let’s hope so!

Many of my web visitors are soon-to-be beekeepers preparing for their first delivery of honey bees. They have read, attended classes, and talked to other beekeepers. Some write to me with a few last-minute questions. But what they envision and what I foresee are completely different.

I was reminded of this beekeeping reality while watching a beginner video on YouTube. While sappy music played in the background, a lilting voice explained that once you become a beekeeper you will embrace nature for the first time! You will become attuned to weather and blooms! You will blossom as a person!

Wow. I imagine a barefoot flower child romping through a verdant meadow, a ring of daisies in her hair and a bouquet of dandelions clutched in her fist. Beekeeping is your entry into a world of peace and love and grass stains. Kumbaya in a box.

Read the full article here: Beekeeping will change you for the worse — Honey Bee Suite

Restocking Honeybees by Beehive Yourself

Tags

beekeeping history, honey bee diseases, Isle of Wight disease, Mr. Woodley

Mr Woodley and Restocking

Let’s first look at Mr Woodley’s experiences, he writes in 1917:-

“I, as a scourged member of the craft, am not chastened by being wiped out [by the “Isle of Wight” Disease], or nearly so, twice…I set about repairing the damage at the outset with some success; in fact, by using formalin and Lysol in equal proportions spread on strips of thin board and pushed in at the entrances twice weekly of many of my hives, the first spring of the outbreak of “Isle of Wight” disease I preserved every stock so treated, and I quite thought I had got a remedy, and had a good take of honey from these hives, but the following winter and spring I lost most of them.  Then I bought new swarms, both English and Dutch.  Both strains were hived in disinfected hives, boiled frames, new foundations.  Again using most of the advertised remedies, I had a fair take of honey.”¹

Read the fully article here: Restocking Honeybees — Beehive Yourself

Big Bear’s Beekeeping Advice For New Beekeepers by Big Bear

Tags

beekeeping, beekeeping advice, beginning beekeeping, education

Don’t listen to me. That’s my advice, right there. I don’t advise new beekeepers. There’s no point in my adding to the confusion and overwhelm of someone just beginning beekeeping. I teach beekeeping classes, do presentations and offer hands-on apprenticeship opportunities for people interested in apiculture. Could be beginners, could be long timers. Who knows.…

via Big Bear’s Beekeeping Advice For New Beekeepers — Bee Smart beekeeping project

I didn’t know what I didn’t know by Altamont Farms

Tags

beekeeping, biology, education, learning curve, management

An excellent assessment of the beekeeping learning curve with some good advice.

In 2016 I developed an urge to add bees to our thriving urban farm here in Emerald Hills. The gardens were producing year round, our chickens were productive, and I was exploring a lot of interesting technology for monitoring and irrigation. I needed a new project, honey bees.

I bought a hive from a guy on Craigslist who discovered one of his children was allergic to bee stings and decided to sell off his hives. Easy, everything was already functioning. I put the hive in my garden in what I would later learn is a bad location (afternoon sun only and positioned in a manner that wind would blow into the opening) and didn’t really know what I was looking at when I inspected the hive.

Lesson learned: I didn’t know what I didn’t know. 

(continued at link below)

Read the entire article here: My two year beekeeping journey — Altamont Farms