29 Saturday Dec 2018
Posted in beekeeping, honey recipe, recipe
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I have never made French Toast with Honey Custard before and it was delicious! This recipe will feed 6 people or you could freeze any leftovers. I could eat this Honey Custard French Toast for any meal, not just breakfast.
Read fully recipe here: Honey Custard French Toast — In Dianes Kitchen
25 Tuesday Dec 2018
Tags
beekeeping, beekeeping books, beekeeping history, birthday, famous beekeepers, Langstroth, Lorenzo Langstroth's birthday, The Hive and the Honey Bee
A Toast to Langstroth
This year, beekeepers are celebrating the 208th year anniversary of “the Father of American Beekeeping.” Lorenzo Lorraine Langstroth was born Christmas Day, December 25, 1810 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. L. L. Langstroth developed the modern hive after exploring existing hives including the pre-cursor to the top bar hive. Francis Huber invented the Leaf Hive in 1789 in Switzerland. The leaf hive had movable solid frames that touched making the box like top bar hives. The leaf hive was examined like pages in a book.
(photo: In 2010 the Philadelphia Beekeepers Guild began a wonderful Christmas tradition. They gather each year at 106 South Front Street, Philadelphia; the birthplace of Lorenzo L. Langstroth on Christmas Day, which is also Langstroth’s birthday, for a Champagne / mead toast to Langstroth.) A Toast to Langstroth)
In the summer of 1851 Langstroth developed the hive that is still used today and the “bee space.” Langstroth patented the first movable frame hive on October 5, 1852. Henry Bourquin, a fellow beekeeper and Philadelphia cabinetmaker, made Langstroth’s first hives. Langstroth hives encourage rapid inspection without enraging the bees. Weak colonies can be strengthened. Strong colonies can increase space. Queens are quickly replaced. Diseases, pests and parasites can be quickly determined and remedied. Inspection by removable frames is now required in the United States. Langstroth also began using queen excluders to confine eggs to the lower boxes. Removable frames encouraged honey extraction without destroying the comb. Honey comb requires 7 to 14 pounds of honey for every pound of beeswax. Besides increased honey production, the beehive no longer had to be killed to remove the honey.
Langstroth published “The Hive and the Honey-Bee” in 1853 still in print today after 40 editions. Langstroth died October 6, 1895 while preaching a sermon on the love of God at the Wayne Avenue Presbyterian church in Dayton. L. L. Langstroth is buried at Woodland Cemetery, Dayton, Ohio. Langstroth’s epitaph reads —
INSCRIBED TO THE MEMORY OF REV. L.L. LANGSTROTH, “FATHER OF AMERICAN BEEKEEPING,” BY HIS AFFECTIONATE BENEFICIARIES WHO, IN THE REMEMBRANCE OF THE SERVICES RENDERED BY HIS PERSISTENT AND PAINSTAKING OBSERVATIONS AND EXPERIMENTS WITH THE HONEY BEE, HIS IMPROVEMENTS IN THE HIVE, AND THE LITERARY ABILITY SHOWN IN THE FIRST SCIENTIFIC AND POPULAR BOOK ON THE SUBJECT OF BEEKEEPING IN THE UNITED STATES, GRATEFULLY ERECT THIS MONUMENT.
24 Monday Dec 2018
Posted in beekeeping, management, varroa, varroa mites
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Once a year an opportunity comes along for the beekeeper to treat all of his or her hives for Varroa for less than ten dollars and about five minutes per hive. That’s ten bucks to treat all of your hives. But this opportunity only comes once a year and is only available for a short period of time. In South Carolina, that time is now, or soon, during the broodless period.
I’m reading more and more about hive losses or abscondings. It’s interesting that most posts relating these events place the blame on wax moths, yellow jackets, or robbing. I suggest these invaders are the second or even third string teams coming in after the true villain has struck a weakening or fatal blow. Did the bees abscond? Yes, most likely from the reports I read they did indeed. From reports, one week the bees are there, the next week gone. But I ask you, if your home was overridden with ticks, with the infestation getting worse each day, how long would you stay in your home?
Why now? Varroa levels increase in the fall and having no drone brood and minimal open worker brood means mite density in the brood area increases.
Last year I watched a group of nine untreated hives go into winter and come out as three. Ten dollars total and maybe 45 minutes might very well have saved them if they had been managed differently.
For more information on how to perform an oxalic acid dribble, Rusty lays it all out here on HoneyBeeSuite: https://honeybeesuite.com/how-to-apply-an-oxalic-acid-dribble/
And here’s a “how to” YouTube video:
I’ll close this post with some words from Randy Oliver of Scientific Beekeeping:
“Three strategies I’ve found that always fail when battling varroa are:
1. Denial—“I haven’t seen any mites, so my mite levels must be low.”
2. Wishful thinking—“I haven’t seen very many mites, so I’m hoping and praying that my bees will be OK.”
3. Blind faith—“I used the latest snake oil mite cure, and it’s gotta work!”
Every time I’ve been “blindsided” by the mite, I was in actuality simply being blind.”
22 Saturday Dec 2018
Posted in beekeeping, honey recipe, recipe
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At The Honey Cottage we believe the benefits of raw honey should bee in every meal. There is no better way to boost your immune system then with soup and raw honey.
Oh man, I am a soup manic during the winter. I don’t know about you, but there is nothing better than having something warm in your belly on a cold day. This was actually a soup that I had made by accident! I was trying to figure out what to do with left overs one day and surprisingly came up with this tasty soup that my family loved. This is one of my favorite recipes because it is a very easy to make and is a very hearty meal. Plus, I like not having to extra things just to make one recipe; these are ingredients that are normally in our house.
Ingredients:
2 bundles- Organic Fine or Round Udon noodles
3 cups Chicken broth
1 cup of sliced pork
1 shreddedcarrot
¾ cup of peas
¾ cup of corn
1 can of water chestnuts
1 Tablespoon of raw honey
Salt and Pepper to taste
Read directions for cooking and full recipe at: Honey Pork Soup — The Honey Cottage
21 Friday Dec 2018
Posted in beekeeping, beekeeping seasons, seasons, winter solstice
In the Northern Hemisphere today is the longest and darkest of the year. In the Southern Hemisphere it is high summer.
Winter Solstice – A Day for Beekeeper Celebration. Tomorrow we enter the season of growth!
Late dawn. Early sunset. Short day. Long night. In the Northern Hemisphere, the Winter Solstice marks the longest night and shortest day of the year. (On the same date the Southern Hemisphere has its longest day and shortest night.) But tomorrow the days will begin lengthening.
Winter Solstice means something different to beekeepers. It’s typically associated with the beginning of winter for humans. But for the bees it’s the beginning of spring. For beekeepers in the Northern Hemisphere today marks the beginning of growth. ~sassafrasbeefarm
The annual cycle for a honey bee colony is much easier to understand when you look at bees from the standpoint of their over-riding goal: survival of the species.
Throughout the year, honey bees respond to external cues provided by nature – they don’t keep a wall calendar inside their hive – and once you understand how honey bees reproduce, their two-season life cycle begins to make sense.
A year for a honey bee colony can be divided into two halves. One half is characterized by expansion, and the other by contraction. The half that is characterized by expansion begins soon after the winter solstice. Some research seems to indicate that honey bees respond directly to changes in the amount of daylight, while other research says that they don’t. But regardless of how it works, we know that brood rearing increases soon after the winter solstice, and decreases soon after the summer solstice.
Shortly after the winter solstice, many things happen inside the colony to increase brood production. For example, the workers begin to raise the temperature of the brood nest. These warmer temperatures stimulate the queen to lay eggs—just a few at first, but more and more as time goes on. Of course, keeping the colony warmer requires more honey stores just when those stores begin to be depleted. So the colony has to manage a very delicate balance of population-to-stores.
Why the expansion? Why now? The answer is simple: reproduction. The colony is preparing to capitalize on the window of opportunity to reproduce that will come in the early spring. How does a colony reproduce? By casting a swarm.
Read the full article here: Honey Bees and the Winter Solstice — Host a Honey Bee Hive
20 Thursday Dec 2018
Posted in beekeeping, beekeeping management, management
Picture from Coweta Sustainable Beekeeping article.
I have raised 5 frame nucleus hives since 2016 from Spring splits and allowed them to grow out to double boxes (ten frames). Last year, and this coming, I’ll graft queens and be using the Coweta mindset and method (below) to make increase or to sustainably maintain a hive after the sale of a nucleus hive or queen. I always retain 5 frames with at least one frame of young larvae and notch the cells to raise a new queen as detailed in the following article.
Source: Coweta Sustainable Beekeeping Method by Steven Page
Click here to download a pdf file of this article.
Most beekeepers are not sustainable; they purchase nucs or packages each spring to replace winter losses. This is expensive and prevents the creation of local, sustainable honey bee genetics. The true cost of a package or nuc can escalate when some die during the winter before producing any honey. If only half of these young colonies survive until next spring the cost per a nuc or package doubles.
A beekeeper with only a few hives may experience the disheartening loss of all their colonies. No honey will be harvested for a year and they must start over purchasing nucs or packages if they can find them.
The current or traditional methods that the beekeeping books teach do not account for the difficulties we experience. A book may teach Varroa mite control but not how to thrive in spite of Varroa. Most are teaching beekeeping from a time before the combined effects of:
· Varroa Mites
· Numerous diseases
· Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD)
· Small hive beetle
· Short lived queens
· High pesticide use
There has to be a better way.
If you have bees you can make more bees or more accurately, colonies can be used to make more colonies. All beekeepers have the resources in their colonies to become sustainable.
In the south, winter losses average one-third. During the summer make enough splits to begin winter with one and a half times the number of colonies required for honey production in the spring. If six colonies are required for spring honey production, begin winter with ten. For example, begin the winter with six production hives and four nucs. After losing two production hives and two nucs during the winter, a 40 percent loss, the two remaining nucs are used to replace the dead colonies restoring production hives to six. There is no need to buy colonies because of winter losses. In May, splits can be started to replace the nucs bringing the total number of colonies up to ten again.
Overwinter Nucs
“Almost every emergency of management can be met by putting something into or taking something out of a nucleus, while nuclei themselves seldom present emergencies.” E. B. Wedmore, A Manual of Beekeeping
Continued…
To read the complete article visit: Coweta Sustainable Beekeeping Method
18 Tuesday Dec 2018
Posted in beekeeping, equipment, woodenware
15 Saturday Dec 2018
Posted in beekeeping, honey recipe, recipe
Tags
These easy Honey-Pecan Green Beans are a welcome addition to any meal…
Honey-Pecan Green Beans
1 lb. fresh green beans, trimmed
½ c. toasted pecans
1 T. butter
2 T. honey
Salt & pepperIn large sauté pan, bring green beans and ½ c. water to boil. Lower heat and simmer until beans are tender-crisp. Drain. To sauté pan, add butter, pecans and drained green beans; cook over medium heat for a few minutes more, adding honey and seasoning and cook until green beans are tender. Serve hot.
Enjoy!
Linda~
Read full article here: Honey-Pecan Green Beans — Fabulous Fare Sisters
13 Thursday Dec 2018
Posted in beekeeping, beekeeping equipment
An interesting article on the history and evolution of beehive covers. ~ sassafrasbeefarm
I have found it interesting to look at the types of different beehive covers or tops that have been used over the years. I began my search with the first beehive that was patented in the United States but had a problem because the patent office burned in 1836 and many of the early written patents were destroyed. My records show that there were 1,131 beehives patented up to 2009. Some of these hives were the same hive with improvements to keep the patent in effect. The very first beehive patented was developed by J. Sweet, April 11, 1810, in Bethlehem, MA, but that record was destroyed in the fire. I found patent X 5,872 was granted to Ebenezer Beard in 1830 and most of the written part was recovered from the fire and had a flat attached cover. Sixty eight patented beehives later, in 1853, Lorenzo L. Langstroth was granted a patent for a hive. Reverend Langstroth had actually developed five different models of beehives and most of his hives had flat tops. However his fifth hive was a glass hive within a hive and the outer top could be tipped forward. So it might be classified as a telescoping cover because it covered an inside hive. During the 23 years in between the Ebenezer Beard hive and the Lorenzo L. Langstroth hive there were 44 flat topped hives that had covers that were hinged, attached or simply rested on the beehive. There were four beehives that had covers sloping in one direction and two telescoping covers. Eleven hives had unusual shaped covers with projections and seven hives had pitched or gable tops. When you stop and think about it, it isn’t really that unusual, as the trend in the early times was to convert a piece of furniture into a beehive and have drawers or a side panel that could be opened. The lumber in the 1850s was available in wider widths so you could get a single piece that would cover the entire hive. However you would encounter the problem of warping or cupping, allowing the top to have gaps between the bottom side of the cover and the super below. The gaps could be viewed as being good or bad. The gap would provide upper ventilation and an upper entrance to the hive. However, if you wanted to move the hive there was just another place for the bees to escape from the hive. Thus to eliminate the warping, the boards could be cut in narrower strips, the grain reversed and cross pieces used to hold the boards together. This style of cover is very much like the today’s migratory cover. A problem arose, what do you do with a flat top once it is removed? You can’t just lay it on the ground in the same orientation as it would smash bees. Your best choice would be to prop it up against something else. Once a bee is smashed, the alarm pheromone is released and the other bees are now on alert. If you reverse the top and lay it on the ground, you can’t use it to stack equipment on it because it may violate bee space and squash bees.
continued… Read the full article with lots more pictures here: The Evolution of Beehive Covers — BEEKeeping: Your First Three Years
10 Monday Dec 2018
Posted in beekeeping history, birthday, birthdays
Happy Birthday Emily Dickinson – Born Dec. 10, 1830
Like trains of cars on tracks of plush
I hear the level bee:
A jar across the flowers goes,
Their velvet masonry
Withstands until the sweet assault
Their chivalry consumes,
While he, victorious, tilts away
To vanquish other blooms.
His feet are shod with gauze,
His helmet is of gold;
His breast, a single onyx
With chrysoprase, inlaid.
His labor is a chant,
His idleness a tune;
Oh, for a bee’s experience
Of clovers and of noon!
…
A team of archaeologists is rediscovering just how extensive Emily Dickinson’s garden was. Historical evidence shows Emily Dickinson’s Garden contained an abundance of blooming flowers. Archaeologists recently uncovered portions of a pathway leading to nineteenth-century flower and vegetable beds.Emily Dickinson – was an American poet born in Amherst, Massachusetts. (December 10, 1830 – May 15, 1886) ~ during her lifetime she “was known more widely as a gardener, perhaps, than as a poet”. Emily Dickinson’s niece, Martha Dickinson Bianchi, remembered “carpets of lily-of-the-valley and pansies, platoons of sweetpeas, hyacinths, enough in May to give all the bees of summer dyspepsia. There were ribbons of peony hedges and drifts of daffodils in season, marigolds to distraction—a butterfly utopia” Archaeology – Remnants of Emily Dickinson’s Gardens Sought
AMHERST, MASSACHUSETTS—Emily Dickinson is known today as one of the greatest poets of the nineteenth century, but in her lifetime she may have been more renowned for her gardening. At her family estate, she helped to tend an orchard, a greenhouse, and an expanse of flower and vegetable gardens. The size of these gardens was dramatically decreased in the decades after Dickinson died in 1886, but now a team of archaeologists is searching for their remnants. Last summer, they uncovered portions of a pathway leading to nineteenth-century flower and vegetable beds. “If we can follow out the historic path to its end, then theoretically we would find the location of past gardens,” Kerry Lynch of Archaeological Services at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, told the New York Times. If they do locate these gardens, the archaeologists hope to find seeds or other botanical evidence dating back to when Dickinson was alive.
Source:
Archaeology – Remnants of Emily Dickinson’s Gardens Sought
http://www.archaeology.org/news/4458-160513-massachusetts-dickinson-gardens
Emily Dickinson
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emily_Dickinson
09 Sunday Dec 2018
Posted in beekeeping history, birthday, birthdays, famous beekeepers
Tags
A.I. Root, beekeeping authors, beekeeping books, beekeeping history, biography, famous beekeepers
Amos Ives Root – Born December 9, 1839 (1839–1923)
Biography of A. I. Root
Written by E. R. Root
A. I. Root was born in a log house, December 9, 1830, about two miles north of the present manufacturing plant of The A. I. Root Co. He was a frail child, and his parents had little hopes of raising him to manhood, although some of the neighbors said his devoted mother would not let him die. As he grew older his taste for gardening and mechanics became apparent. Among his early hobbies were windmills, clocks, poultry, electricity, and chemistry —anything and everything in the mechanical line that would interest a boy who intensely loved machinery. Later on we find him experimenting in electricity and chemistry; and at 18 he is out on a lecturing-tour with a fully equipped apparatus of his own construction.
We next find Mr. Root learning the jeweler’s trade, and it was not long before he decided to go into business for himself. He accordingly went to an old gentleman who loaned money, and asked him if he would let him have a certain amount of money for a limited time. This friend agreed to lend him the amount, but he urgently advised him to wait a little and earn the money by working for wages. This practical piece of advice, coming as it did at the very beginning of his career, was indeed a God-send, and. unlike most boys, he decided to accept it. Imbued with a love for his work, and having indomitable push, he soon earned enough to make a start in business, without borrowing a dollar. The business prospered till A. I. Root & Co. were the largest manufacturers of real coin-silver jewelry in the country. From $200 to $300 worth of coin was made weekly into rings and chains, and the firm employed something like 15 or 20 men and women.
It was about this time, or in 1865, that a swarm of bees passed over his shop; but as this incident is given so fully in the introduction I omit it here. Not long after he became an A B C scholar himself in bees, he began to write for the American Bee Journal under the nom de plume of “Novice.” In these papers he recounted a few of his successes and many of his failures with bees. His frank confession of his mistakes, his style of writing, so simple, clear, and clean-cut, brought him into prominence at once. So many inquiries came in that he was finally induced to start a journal, entitled Gleanings in Bee Culture of this, now his business grew to such a size that the manufacturing plant alone covered five acres, and employed from 100 to 200 men —all this and more is told in the Introduction by the writer.
As an inventor Mr. Root has occupied quite a unique field. He was the first to introduce the one pound-section honey-box, of which something like 50,000,000 are now made annually. He made the first practical ail-metal honey-extractor. This he very modestly styled the “Novice,” a machine of which thousands have been made and are still made. Among his other inventions may be named the Simplicity hive, the Novice honey-knife, several reversible frames, and the metal-cornered frame. The last named was the only invention he ever patented, and this he subsequently gave to the world long before the patent expired.
In the line of horticultural tools he invented a number of useful little devices which he freely gave to the public. But the two inventions which he considers of the most value is one for storing up heat, like storing electricity in a storage battery, and another for disposing of sewage in rural districts. The first named is a system of storing up the heat from exhaust steam in Mother Earth in such a way that greenhouses and dwelling-houses can be heated, even after the engine has stopped at night, and for several days after. The other invention relates to a method of disposing of the sewage from indoor water-closets so that “Mother Earth,” as he calls it, will take it automatically and convert it into plant life, without the least danger to health or life, and that, too, for a period of years without attention from any one.
Some of the secrets of his success in business may be briefly summed, up by saying that it was always his constant aim to send goods by return train, and to answer letters by return mail, although, of course, as the business continued to grow this became less and less practicable. He believed most emphatically in mixing business and religion—in conducting business on Christian principles; or to adopt a modern phrase, doing business “as Jesus would do it.” As might be expected, such a policy drew an immense clientage, for people far and wide believed in him. But how few, comparatively, in this busy world, go beyond the practice that honesty is the best policy! While A. 1. Root believed in this good rule he did not think it went far enough, and, accordingly, tried to adopt and live the Golden Rule.
The severe strain of long hours of work, together with constantly failing health, compelled Mr. Root to throw some of the responsibilities of the increasing business on his sons and sons-in-law. This was between 1886 and 1890. At no definite time could it be said that there was a formal transfer of the management of the supply business and the management of the bee department of Gleanings to his children; but as time went on they gradually assumed the control, leaving him free to engage in gardening and other rural pursuits, and for the last ten years he has given almost no attention to bees, devoting nearly all his time to travel and to lighter rural Industries. He has written much on horticultural and agricultural subjects; indeed, it is probable that he has done more writing on these subjects than he ever did on bees.
Note: He did not invent a section box for holding honey, but only a box just the right size to put 8 into a Langstroth frame.
For the last twenty-five years he has been writing a series of lay sermons, touching particularly on the subject of mixing business and religion, work and wages, and, in general, the great problem of capital and labor. As an employer of labor he had here a large field for observation, and well has he made use of it. Perhaps no series of articles he ever wrote has elicited a more sympathetic response from his friends all over this wide world than these same talks; and through these he has been the means of bringing many a one into the fold of Christ.
It has been a rather difficult matter to get a picture that was in any way satisfactory to the members of his family. Finally the writer, one day, with a Kodak, took a “time view” of him in his favorite place of resort, the greenhouse, among his “posies,” where he spends hours of his happiest moments. This view shows him just as he appears around home in his everyday work clothes. Ill health, or a sort of malaria that has been hanging about him for years, has forced him. during winter, to wear a fur cap and to keep his overcoat constantly on, indoors and outdoors, with the collar turned up.
Mr. Root, ever since his conversion, in 1875 has been a most active working Christian. No matter what the condition of his health, he is a regular attendant at church and prayer-meeting. He takes great interest in all lines of missionary work, and especially in the subject of temperance. He annually gives considerable sums of money to support the cause of missions, and to the Ohio Antisaloon League; and now that the heavier responsibilities of the business have been lifted from his shoulders he is giving more and more of his time and attention to sociological problems.—E. R. Root.Source:
The ABC of Bee Culture, page 438, 1903
More at: The Online Books Page – A.I. Root
08 Saturday Dec 2018
Posted in beekeeping, honey recipe, recipe
There are very few sweets as satisfying as a piece of baklava with a steaming cup of coffee. Many groups claim Baklava as their own. It is widely believed that it is of Assyrian origin. Around approximately the 8th century B.C., Assyrians baked thin layers of dough with nuts, poured honey over it, and enjoyed this sumptuous treat. The history of Baklava changed with the history of the land. The Near and Middle East saw many civilizations come and go. Baklava and the recipe had spread to the Near East, Armenia, and Turkey. With the advent of the Grecian Empire, it spread westward to Greece. (Source)
That is why Baklava has many varieties, the traditional baklava is made with walnuts and in the southern with pecan and in the western with almonds. The Turks are known to famously make it with pistachios. I prefer pistachios and almonds in my Baklava.Today I’m sharing with you all, the easiest and yummiest homemade baklava recipe. The basic ingredients for baklava are nuts, phyllo pastry and syrup or honey. I bought the phyllo pastry from the supermarket. You can find it in the frozen foods aisle. I’ve used a mixture of almonds and pistachios for nuts and made a beautiful rose flavored honey syrup. This is one of those recipes that you cannot fail with and even if you try hard to do, the outcome no matter what is going to be absolutely delicious.
Get the recipe here: Turkish Honey Baklava — Precious Little Toes
07 Friday Dec 2018
Posted in beekeeping, famous beekeepers
This Sunday will be Amos Root’s birthday. What an interesting man. He was the Elon Musk of his day. ~sasafrasbeefarm
In Remembrance of Amos Root –
Source: One Beekeeper, Two Wright Brothers
One Beekeeper, Two Wright Brothers
Posted on September 14, 2016
Leave it to a beekeeper to make aviation history. An Ohio entrepreneur/beekeeper named Amos Root was, according to reports, the only person to actually witness the Wright brothers’ airplane flights in 1904 and 1905. And not just witness them, but write about them in a publication he founded called “Gleanings in Bee Culture.”
Root makes an appearance in David McCullough’s “The Wright Brothers” and also in an article on PBS’s Nova site. As the Nova site says, “almost as astonishing as the fact that a pair of bicycle shop owners invented the airplane” is that the first “accurate reporting on their earliest flights appeared” not in The New York Times or Scientific American, but in “an obscure journal for beekeepers.”
Root, a beekeeping hobbyist from his early twenties on, started a company in Medina, Ohio, that made beehives and beekeeping equipment. One of his best inventions was (improving ed.) removable frames so that a beekeeper could harvest honey without destroying the hive.
Root also started a candle-making company called Root Candles that is still in existence today. According to an article in The Cleveland Plain Dealer, the company, which sits next to Amos Root’s old homestead in Medina, makes 20 million home décor candles every year. The company’s president is a great-great grandson of Amos.
Read full article here: Source: One Beekeeper, Two Wright Brothers
05 Wednesday Dec 2018
Posted in beekeeping, comb honey, honey recipe, recipe
Last night was our annual Bee Association’s Holiday Potluck dinner. I continued last year’s effort of a bee themed platter. This year I replaced the grapes with strawberries to provide more bee pollinated items on the platter. If you consider the cheese as dependent on bees for the cow’s forage then it was almost a home run.
Pictured above: Honey Goat Cheese with raspberry preserves, blackberries, strawberries, blueberries, cream cheese, comb honey.
03 Monday Dec 2018
Posted in beekeeping, beekeeping seasons
Red Maple – Harbinger of Spring
Sooner or later, if one stays in beekeeping, it becomes apparent that success is directly related to being proactive in one’s management of the bees rather than reactive. After all, this is exactly what the bees are doing. The bees never wait until the last minute to put up stores for winter. Nor do the bees wait until the day before the spring nectar flow to gather a full house of foraging bees to harvest nature’s bounty. Rather, the bees work months ahead to make sure they have everything needed to succeed. You too should follow their lead in preparing now for spring beekeeping if you want to have the best chance of success.
For short term goals I would direct you to the beekeeper’s calendar for your area which will guide you as to the tasks at hand for the immediate future. This article will discuss longer term goals.
Let’s consider some likely beekeeping for colonies here in the Midlands which you can work on during the coming months:
– Establish your goals for 2019
– Inventory your current assets
– Assess your needs (equipment mostly but may include outyards,personnel,etc.
– What knowledge will you need to be successful?
– Lay out your time management plan.
Assessment:
What can you do now to ensure your spring will be the best spring ever? Let’s start with considering your goals. Often, I have heard questions asked at monthly meetings that get the response, “Well, it depends.” Answering the question usually goes into what the beekeeper’s goals are. Are they making bees or honey? Do they want to grow their apiary or just manage a few hives for pollination? Are they hoping to produce enough honey to sell or do they want to make queens or nucleus hives for sale? What our management practices are depends directly on our goals. If you are planning a trip to California for almond pollination, you’ll start feeding pollen substitute in early January, but if you do that with colonies you are leaving here in the Midlands you may end up with your bees in trees before it’s warm enough to manage splits. So, before we begin, take some time to decide now what your beekeeping goals will be for 2019 – everything else hinges on this decision.
This time of year, with the reduction in time spent managing your colonies, is ideal to inventory your assets. Get out and inspect your supers, scrape frames, and make sure you have enough equipment to handle your spring goals. Write down your current inventory on paper or start a planning notebook. Later, as you begin to see the plan come into place, you be able to compare your list of current assets against your list of needed assets to accomplish your goal.
Planning:
After you inventory your assets, write down your shopping list of equipment for ordering later. In addition to woodenware you may need lumber for hive stands, or other less obvious equipment like a new tire for your trailer. Making a list now will help you stay within budget. What’s important now is to develop the plan and determine what is needed. Wait until the plan firms up before ordering equipment as plans may change based on current assets, or other unexpected events which can come up during this planning stage.
Also included in the planning stage is thoroughly thinking through your plan. If it involves establishing out yards, have you located and secured permission for land use? If not then you may want to use any of several methods including the ‘stop and knock’ method, Google maps, or an ad in the local or state Market Bulletin.
Education may also be needed in the planning stage. If your goal is making increase you may want to order books or attend a local course on making splits and nucleus hives. Queen rearing may become something that you’ll have to consider. And if you are not ready for queen rearing, then making plans for purchasing queens to place in those splits if you hope to have them ready in time for spring sales. Purchasing queens would then become an item on your budget which may cause some changes to the original plans. Be flexible.
The idea here is considering all the implications of your plan. Hammer out the timeline now so that you can adjust early in the process. Once spring comes, you’ll be busy managing your bees, so time spent during these cold days planning is time well spent.
Implementation:
Once you’ve completed the assessment and planning portion of your spring preparations it’s time for implementation. Time to finally start the project. By now you have purchased the needed equipment, read up on aspects of your goals, and laid out a timeline for your tasks which includes consideration of the bees’ and nature’s timeline. Let’s get started!
Over winter, it’s time for equipment maintenance and to build boxes, frames, and other woodenware if needed. Also, you may need to visit potential out yards to determine suitability. If you are planning on renting colonies for pollination a pollination contract with dates and other particulars needs to be written and established with the farmer. Will you need more bees or queens? If so, make sure you get your orders in on time to reserve your bees. Also, make it a point to attend as many educational bee meetings as possible. You never known when someone will offer up that nugget of knowledge you’ve needed to hear that will save you a mistake in the future. The final part of implementation will be the actual harvest of the product, the sales of the honey or bees, or the pollination of the crops. Or perhaps the establishment of an out yard which will serve you in the future. As you work through implementation enjoy the process. It’s great fun to see a project come together step by step.
In closing, now is the time to make those plans for success next spring. Start daydreaming now, develop a viable plan, and implement your plan to ensure success next year no matter what your goals may be.
02 Sunday Dec 2018
Posted in beekeeping, honey recipe, recipe
Tags
Just a refreshing anytime salad that is quick and easy to make. The secret to it is rice vinegar. The cucumbers I used was end of the season large and full of seeds. I seeded them and peeled them. You can slice them the way you want. Add tomatoes cut in wedges and thinly sliced sweet onion. I like to make the dressing and put my sliced onions in first and let them marinate for an hour. Add cucumbers, tomatoes and parsley when ready to serve.
Full recipe here: Honey Cucumber and Tomato Salad — Momoe’s Cupboard
01 Saturday Dec 2018
Posted in beekeeping, beekeeping calendar
As always, All beekeeping is local. Here’s my beekeeping calendar for the South Carolina Midlands for the month of December:
Hive checks this month are tied directly to outside temperatures. Do not disturb the brood chamber or break propolis seals around boxes unless absolutely necessary. On a warm day in the 60’s you may remove the inner cover briefly and view down between the frames. Try to not be too disruptive in order to allow them to get their house (brood box) in order for winter. Use of a stethoscope or an ear against the side of the hive will often tell you all is well inside.
1) Clean, paint, repair equipment, assemble new equipment, build more hive stands, make some of those time saver gadgets, and replace any bad equipment.
2) If you use a telescoping cover, lift the cover and note for wetness or mold indicating excess moisture within the hive. As needed, ventilate hives with a 1/8th inch crack at the front of the inner cover to prevent condensation and mold. Also, tilting the entire hive forward slightly with a shim placed under the hive, in the back, will allow condensation to run forward and down the front of the inside of the hive preventing it from dripping on the bees’ cluster.
3) December is an excellent month for selling honey.
4) Continue to assess stores, feed using a candy board or fondant as necessary. Continue to lift the back of your hives to check for weight. Now is why you learned this method of assessing stores.
5) Order packages, nucleus hives, or queens for delivery mid to late March or as early as possible for your area.
6) Review and evaluate how well your bee colonies performed this year and if necessary make decisions on how to improve your operation particularly regarding disease management and pest control such as Varroa mites, small hive beetles, and wax moths. Document your findings in your beekeeping journal.
7) Plan now for changes you’re going to impliment next season.
8) Call, visit, or write farmers or landowners where you’d like to place hives for out yards next spring.
9) Renew you membership in your local Beekeepers Association. Attend local meetings. Register for state Spring beekeeper’s conference.
10) Scout trees for placement and prepare swarms traps. Construct a swarm capture bucket.
11) Build a nucleus hive now to keep in your car or truck for community swarm captures next spring.
12) Order or ask Santa for a copy of that beekeeping book you’ve been wanting to read. Read some every day.
14) If, for some reason you have not yet treated for Varroa, this time of year presents the Midlands with as close to a broodless period as we get. A cheap, economical, quick and easy, method of Varroa treatment during this broodless period is the oxalic acid dribble. Read about how it’s performed here: Once a Year Opportunity to Save on Varroa Treatment
15) Celebrate Lorenzo Langstroth’s birthday on December 25.
The above are general guidelines for the average bee colony in the Midlands of South Carolina. We all have hives that may be outperforming the average. We also have colonies that underperform the average. Use your judgement in making changes suggested here. Beekeeping is an art as well as a science. Only you know the many, many particulars associated with your physical hives as well as the general health and population of your colonies.
