It’s Time to Plan for Spring by sassafrasbeefarm

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beekeeping seasons, goals in beekeeping, preparing for spring, seasonal management, 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 2021
– 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 2021 – 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 planning during these cold days 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.

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Honey Custard French Toast by In Dianes Kitchen

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french toast, honey, recipe

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.

Ingredients

• 6 eggs
• 1/2 cup honey
• 1 cup milk
• 1-1/2 tsp cinnamon
• 1/8 tsp salt
• 1 loaf French bread, sliced into 12 pieces 3/4” thick

Read fully recipe here:  Honey Custard French Toast — In Dianes Kitchen

Garlic and Honey Roasted Squash by Honey Hunter

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butternut squash, fall recipe, honey, honey recipe, recipe, squash

I love autumn, the season when the leaves turn red and the farmer’s market close to me is abundant in winter squashes.

Butternut squash is available to buy for most of the year (in supermarkets), however some of the more unusual varieties of squash only appear at this time of the year. It is worth looking out for them in farmer’s markets and of course they taste fabulous roasted with honey (as are honey roasted carrots).

Honey roasted squash is a simple and easy to make side dish and below is a quick recipe.

The cooking is mostly hands-off, and the prep is easy!

For a list of ingredients and instructions visit: Garlic and Honey Roasted Squash — Honey Hunter

Honey Cookies by The Honey Cottage

Tags

cookies, honey, honey recipe, recipe

Have you noticed; when you make a switch to something your taste buds just won’t let you go back?

I used to love store bought cookies and when other people made cookies. Until, I tried this recipe. Now no matter what I try to eat, it just tastes way too sweet for me. I really love this recipe because you can add little things to make it taste different. I also like that I can freeze them so if I am not in the mood to make them, I have some ready! However, they never last long enough in our house. I really have a bad habit of eating them for breakfast too!

Ingredients

1 cup of honey

1 cup peanut butter

½ cup softened butter

1 egg

¾ cup chocolate chips

1 ¼ cup of white wheat flour

1 tsp. baking powder

Full recipe here: Honey Cookies — The Honey Cottage

Once a Year Opportunity to Save on Varroa Treatment by sassafrasbeefarm

Tags

beekeeping, management, varroa mites

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 very soon, during the period of the least brood, using the oxalic acid dribble method.

I’m reading more and more about hive losses or what appears to be late season absconding. It’s interesting that most posts relating these events place the blame on yellow jackets, or robbing pressure. I suggest these are the second-string teams coming in after the true villain has struck a weakening or fatal blow. From reports, one week the bees are there, the next week gone. The jury is out on how this sudden change in colony status happens. We do know that in a colony overrun with varroa the bees start to lose the ability to find their way back to their hive and frequently drift into neighboring hives. I also have a hunch that perhaps they simply grow tired of the pest infestation and abscond. Either way, the bees are gone leaving an empty hive that soon gets robbed out.

Varroa levels increase in the fall and with a smaller colony bee population, the mite:bee ratio in the hive increases. While we know that the true culprit are the viruses, there is also a negative, synergistic relationship with the presence of high mite levels and the viruses. This increase may be what tips the scales and causes the bees to suddenly disappear.

Why treat now? Simply, with minimal capped brood this time of year the mites are the most vulnerable to oxalic acid. The mites have nowhere to hide. A single treatment now will have a high rate of effectiveness if done during this time of minimal brood. And, of course, oxalic acid is the least expensive recognized mite treatment available.

We have some nice days coming up later this week. Consider doing an oxalic acid dribble treatment on your colonies.

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 some information on mixing oxalic acid from BetterBee: How to Use the Oxalic Acid Dribble Method

And finally, 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.”

Raw Honey FAQ

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beekeeping, raw honey

I know this but after an evening answering questions at a local famer’s market I decided I needed as refresher on Raw Honey myself – just in case I was omitting some points. I found the following on a blog called Honey Traveler.

Raw honey is honey that is unheated and minimally processed. It is pure honey where nothing has been added or removed. To be raw, honey should not be heated above temperatures one would normal find in a hive (approximately 95 degrees F). Additionally it should not be ultra-finely filtered to the point of removing pollen and organic materials that are an intrinsic constituent of honey.

Unheated, “raw” honey contains all the vital ingredients that give it its healthful properties and wonderful aroma. Most commercial honey you see in supermarkets is not raw honey. This mass produced honey is often heated to temperatures far above the normal temperatures of the bee hive. Heating past the maximum hive temperature of 95 degrees Fahrenheit changes honey’s essential composition and degrades its quality. It partially destroys honey’s beneficial enzymes and ‘boils off’ volatile compounds that account for the unique, delicate floral aroma of the honey. This is done to make it easier to extract from the honey comb, to filter it, to package it, to ‘pasteurize’ it to kill benign yeast and prevent fermentation and to delay crystallization.

Micro-filtering also degrades the healthful properties of honey by removing beneficial pollen residue. Much commercial honey is micro-filtered, often using a diatomaceous earth (DE) process to eliminate even micron-sized particles. Why go to these lengths when a relatively coarse strain would result in a clear, visually beautiful product and not remove healthful pollen? The reason is to slow down the naturally occurring crystallization of honey. Tiny particles act as ‘seeds’ for the crystallization process, by removing them with micro-filtering, crystallization is delayed.

But crystallization is not a problem to be solved. Almost all honeys crystallize after time. It is actually a good sign the honey is raw. To re-liquify, simply heat the honey jar in warm water (104 F, 40 C) until it returns to the liquid state, stir occasionally to transfer heat, and replace the hot water if needed. Note some honeys will not crystallize easily because of low glucose levels and in these cases, this is not a sign of heating or micro-filtering (ex. honeydews, black locust-acacia, tupelo, sourwood, sunflower, sage).

A good trick to ensure you are getting raw, unprocessed honey is to purchase it in the comb.

Health Benefits of Honey Negatively Affected by Heating

Many of the healthful organic compounds and substances in honey are destroyed or inhibited by heat.

Antibacterial, Antimicrobial Properties from Enzymes in Raw Honey:
The main enzymes in honey are invertase (saccharase) diastase (amylase) which break down sugars and help digestion. The enzyme glucose oxidase produces the antibacterial, antimicrobial hydrogen peroxide, a well-known disinfectant.

Antioxidant Properties in Raw Honey:
Dependent upon enzymes and a wide range of compounds in honey, antioxidants are substances that can retard or inhibit oxidation and/or neutralize the effects of damaging “free radicals”. Increasing the body’s antioxidant content may help protect against cellular damage and the development of chronic diseases.

From the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry 2002, Vol. 50, No. 21, pp.5870-5877:
“…Antioxidant analysis of the different honey fractions suggested that the water-soluble fraction contained most of the antioxidant components, including protein; gluconic acid; ascorbic acid; hydroxymethylfuraldehyde; and the combined activities of the enzymes glucose oxidase, catalase and peroxidase. Of these components, a significant correlation could be established only between protein content and oxygen radical absorbance capacity ORAC activity (R(2) = 0.674, p = 0.024). These results suggest that the antioxidant capacity of honey is a product of the combined activity of a wide range of compounds including phenolics, peptides, organic acids, enzymes, Maillard reaction products, and possibly other minor components…”

Other antioxidants include polyphenols, flanonoids and phenolic acid in Raw Honey. Polyphenols in foods are thought to play important roles in human health such as cancer preventative, and anti-inflammatory, radical scavenging and antioxidative activities. The most important classes of antioxidant polyphenols are the flavonoids and phenolic acids. It is these substances in honey, wine, fruits and vegetables that are most responsible for the antioxidant characteristics, and thus the healthy image of these foods.

Darker honeys like Buckwheat honey are stronger antioxidants compared to lighter honeys.

Source: http://www.honeytraveler.com/types-of-honey/raw-honey/

Tucked in, What Now?

Tags

beekeeping, honey bees, management, seasons

The cold weather is here, You’ve done what you can to tuck them in for the coming season. So, what are you going to do with all your time now?

1) Continue to lift the back of your hives to check for weight. Now is why you learned this method of assessing stores.

2) Perform maintainance on honey supers pulled off hives – painting or otherwise.

3) Assemble new equipment for next year – boxes, frames, stands, etc.

4) Order packages, nucs, or queens.

5) Plan for changes you’re going to impliment next season.

6) Call, visit, or write farmers or landowners where you’d like to place hives for out yards next spring.

7) Attend local and state beekeeper meetings.

8) Scout trees for placement and prepare swarms traps. Construct swarm capture bucket.

9) Build a nuc now to keep in your car or truck for community swarm captures next spring. Register with on-line swarm call lists.

10) Order or ask Santa for a copy of that beekeeping book you’ve been wanting to read. Read some every day.

Honey Cucumber and Tomato Salad by Momoe’s Cupboard

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cucumber salad, honey, honey recipe, salad, tomato salad

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

Coming Soon, Spring Splits!

Tags

beekeeping, making increase, nucleus hives, splits, spring splits, sustainable beekeeping

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

Coweta Sustainable Beekeeping

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

Pollen Substitute

I live on a sand hill. No joke, a sand hill with minimal nutrition for plants. It’s mostly pine and scrub oaks. Some hardwoods have found a way to survive and provide some forage for the bees. Drought resistant wildflowers come up along the roadways and power lines. The chain of nutrients from soil to plant to bloom doesn’t improve along the journey.

Although it can be said I live in the pollen belt, the pollen here is of poor quality. I have resigned myself to providing supplemental food for the bees during the times of pollen and  nectar dearth. They won’t take it if nature provides something better.

I had a professor in college once that said protein was the currency standard in food and nutrition. More and more we are learning that with our honey bees it plays a vital role in their immune systems as well. A well fed bee is a healthier bee.

Gifts for Beekeepers

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beekeeping, beekeeping equipment, equipment, gifts for beekeepers

http://carolinahoneybees.com/gifts-for-beekeepers/

Overwintering Nuclei Colonies by Larry Connor

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beekeeping, beekeeping equipment, Larry Connor, nucleus hives, overwintering

Some northern beekeepers have success overwintering nuclei-sized colonies. This may be based on a particular stock or genetic trait, and should be tested carefully. More beekeepers are able to overwinter a single, deep hive body by packing the hive out with honey or sugar syrup in the Fall. In addition to food reserves, make sure such colonies are protected from the harsh winds of Winter.

Read the complete article here: Overwintering Nuclei Colonies — BEEKeeping: Your First Three Years

Grilled Dijon Honey Fingerling Potatoes by June Cleaver 21st Century Style

Tags

Dijon, grilling, honey, honey recipe, potatoes, recipe

These are a great crispy and flavorful potato recipe that keeps you from slaving over a stove or oven to make.  It may be fall where I live, but the weather is more like summer, so I have been trying to avoid using my oven as much as possible.  These are made on the grill so they would also make for a great side dish to any cookout meal.

Read entire recipe here: Grilled Dijon Fingerling Potatoes — June Cleaver 21st Century Style

Honey Egg Nog

Tags

beekeeping, egg nog, honey, honey recipe, recipe

My friends know I love Egg Nog. I look forward to seeing it being offered in the stores each year. Enjoy this recipe by epicurious.com on making homemade Honey Egg Nog.

Eggnog is a wonderful rich festive drink, something of a dessert in a cup and much more indulgent than mulled wine. It doesn’t have to be made with spirits, so you can make a non-alcoholic batch for the kids and the designated drivers. But it’s better with the rum and brandy! I recommend using one of the heather honeys as they work well with spice. 

INGREDIENTS

• • 1 cup honey
  • 1 cup warm water
  • 1 cup light rum
  • 1 cup brandy
  • 12 free range egg yolks
  • 1 1/2 cups milk
  • 1 1/2 cups cream
  • Garnish: grated allspice, ginger or nutmeg

Note: 1 cup is 240ml

PREPARATION

In the bowl of an electric mixer, dissolve the honey in the water. Stir in the light rum and brandy thoroughly. Beat the mixture, gradually beating in the egg yolks, the milk, and the cream. Beat the eggnog until it is foamy and serve it in individual glasses with a dusting of grated allspice, nutmeg or ginger.

As the recipe contains raw egg it is unadvisable for those whose immune system is less strong. We don’t recommend giving it to small children, the elderly, pregnant women and those with a low immune system.

Recipe reproduced from Epicurious: Here

Current Beekeeping Activities by sassafrasbefarm

Tags

beekeeping, beekeeping chores, chores, equipment, fall management

Feeding the bees pollen substitute

This time of year can be as busy for the beekeeper as the spring nectar flow period. But now it’s all about preparation. My experience, since beginning this beekeeping journey, is that there is never enough time during the nectar flow. In fact, time becomes precious even before the nectar flow with the need to rotate hive bodies or employ other swarm reducing measures, placement of swarm traps, movement of hives to out yards, making splits, and lots of last minute surprises.

So, here are few pictures of what I occupy myself with during this so called off season:

Order queen pen and my favorite markers to write on the hives.

Making sugar cakes for the tops of the hives.

Adding extra wax to plastic frames.

Collecting and bagging pine straw for my smoker.

 

Building boxes, bottom boards, and tops.

Adding some color to the entrance reducers.

Painting entrances to the queen mating nucs

This is Advantech – a new material that resists weathering.

Painting everything. Three coats!

Joy! I found three 50 pound sacks of sugar I had forgotten!