A Taste of Honey

The bees have been having a good year.  A combination of learning from our mistakes, good weather, a better site for the apiary in the garden and especially working with a mentor has improved our beekeeping and Summer Sweet Apiary in New Farm is looking good.



Swarm in a spruce tree near the apiary



We had one hive winter over and we added a package to the other hive.  They were off a running.  On June 7th the green hive that had wintered over SWARMED! 

We tried to catch the swarm but they hugged a thick tree and by the time we got a spare box together and were ready to coax them they had departed for parts unknown. Fortunately the fertile Queen stayed with the original hive and they continued to work.

Jon and Bob helping with the hive inspections



 When we were in the hives for inspection and cleaning with our mentor on July 1st we noticed that one of the supers was full of honey.  Time to harvest! 

We soon extracted 2 gallons of dark, wonderful honey.   It is deep in color and flavor - not like the  light colored amber clover honey commonly found. Folks who have tasted it say it has various flavors of " molasses, vanilla, clethora (summer sweet), basil, mint, and earthy essences". 

It is excellent in tea, granola and yogurt and Liz has already used it in a couple of recipes.  We gave the neighbors a pint (we are keeping up good bee relations...a good idea when you have 70,000+ stingers flying around the hood).

Winds may blow over the icy sea
I'll take with me the warmth of thee
A taste of honey
A taste much sweeter than wine

as sung by The Beatles, Tony Bennet and more.



Ready to extract the stuff



First we add a "fume board" to drive the bees down out of the super



Jon adds a entrance reducer to prevent late summer "robbing"



We got the super full of honey off the hive by using a fume board to drive the bees down and then we used a  leaf blower to separate the bees from the frames.  The super went into a bag and then quickly into the house before the bees could rally.


The frames were loaded



The frames get spun in the extractor



Our honey extractor worked like a charm.  Afterwards I cleaned it in the outdoor shower.

Now I am looking around at yard sales for a couple of pots for processing my wax. 



Remove cappings, spin, filter - repeat





Whole lot of dripping goin' on - the capping yield some great honey





Yeah Baby!

 

We cleaned the frames after extracting and put the super back on.  Perhaps we will get a fall flow and harvest but first the bees need to have plenty of food for the winter.  It's only August but it is already time to think about winter feeding.

Keep up the good work girls...

Da Bees

Honey Bee on a Nasturtium flower

This is our second year with Honey Bees. We have 2 hives at New Farm. Last year we had a rough winter and we lost both hives. We re-established them this year. One hive comes from a “package” of 3000 bees and a fertilized queen from Georgia that we poured into an empty hive body. The other hive we established with a “nuc” or a nuclear hive of 5 frames from a beekeeper here in Connecticut. A nuc has a queen, brood, workers and food. We transferred the nuc frames to our hive and add more frames. We gave them a kick start feeding of 2:1 sugar water and some essential oils. Each hive should have about 10,000 bees when mature. We will see which hive does better. We learned a lot last year…mostly from our mistakes and hopefully that will pay off this year.

Above - One of our hives

Left - A frame in a hive body

The bees arrived in early May and now they have drawn out about a dozen frames of the 20 frames in the two hive bodies that make up each hive. We hope they will draw out and fill all 20 frames with brood, honey and pollen before the fall nectar flow. We would then put on a queen excluder and “supers”. The workers would add honey to the supers but the queen could add no eggs to these frames. The supers would be where we would get our honey.

Inspecting a frame for brood

There is no doubt that we have seen a difference in the way our crops produce since we have had the bees…more cucumbers, squash, tomatillos…more everything. Better pollination means more flowers produce fruit. Right now there are a lot of plants in blossom in and around New Farm, and between the Honey Bees, the various Bumble Bees and other pollinators the garden is buzzing.
A Honey Bee and a Bumble Bee jockey for position on a squash blossom

We’ll keep you posted on their progress and especially if we get a chance to extract some honey for us.
The smoker is used to calm the bees when working the hives in our apiary.