March's Orders = April's Arrivals

March always brings with it a flurry of planning activity.  Just seeing the spinach begin to grow in the cold frame sparks garden fever.  The seed and chick orders are finalized and placed, and bee packages have been ordered.  As March is for planning, April will be for arrivals.  With Sidney's growing passion for cooking she took a special interest in the seed selection this year so that we could grow what is most tempting her culinary appetite.

Sadly, we lost our hive, so this week we harvested all of the remaining honey stores.  It left us with just over 2 gallons of fresh honey to use for the next year, which is a sweet reward for a sad outcome. Such is the circle of life, that teaches us unending appreciation for all of the hard work our busy bees do in helping our garden grow.

A Sweet January Thaw

Though I enjoy the cocooning in of winter time, I have to admit that the forty degree temperatures and sunshine today were welcome.  It felt somewhat like early spring, with that itching to walk the property, begin farm projects, and throw the windows open (at least for a short time), all of which we did.

We cleaned up the chicken coop, began curing 17 pounds of pork, and decided to more thoroughly inspect the hives.  We have one hive going gang busters and we fed it with a generous amount of fondant to sate it until the nectar flow.  Sadly, our other two hives were dead.  They were honey bound, we had a very late nectar flow last year and they were storing honey until quite late, with not enough time to get it to the appropriate location so that they would have enough space to winter over.

We had not collected honey in 2013 or 2014.  In 2013 we wanted to leave the honey stores to them for feeding through winter, and were thankful we had.  Despite the polar vortices's, they all survived because of the honey stores to their spring feeding.  We had hoped for a similar result this season, but that was not entirely the case, therefore we have had an unexpected January honey harvest this weekend which yielded 25 lbs of the lightest, most beautiful honey from the first hive, and the second and somewhat larger hive is straining now.  A lovely gift from our hard working pollinators.

The B word....

....or should I say a pair of B words.  The last few weeks on the homestead have been all about baby bunnies and bees.  Charles' blue ribbon winner Dot, had kits in the wee morning hours of March 8th.  This is our first experience with baby bunnies and it has been so much fun!  It is simply amazing how quickly they grow.  They have gone from little pink things to sweet bundles of fur, each developing their own little personalities.  We can't wait to see how they continue to develop.



We ordered two new colonies of bees the beginning of the month, and this weekend we picked up another hive from the beekeeper that we bought our hives from last year.  Of the two hives we went into the winter with, we lost one of them.  They were queen-less going into winter and already starting to thin out late last Fall.  The hive from the wild swarm that B captured last summer seems to be humming right along.  If all continues to go well we should be able to split that hive mid-spring, which will give us four hives total going into summer.  As a result of the lost hive, we had an unexpected honey harvest this weekend.  It is all draining now, but it looks to be more successful than the single boxes that we pulled off of the two hives last fall. To top it off, this honey has a completely different flavor...simply fantastic!

Though we were sad to lose the one hive, we know that it is a fact of life. It seems fitting that nature took something from us at the same time she gave us something in return, the two B's.

Liquid Sunlight

What better way to prepare for the Autumnal Equinox tomorrow, than to bottle little bits of liquid sunlight. 

So far 21 pounds (~ 10 liters), and we may get one more pound.  Not too bad for a first season and harvesting only a box and a half!

Harvesting Honey ~ Part One

The weekend was absolutely beautiful.  We were able to spend some time in the garden and preserving food.  Late last week, as we would go in and out of the garden, we were welcomed by a fragrant odor.  Honey!  Yes, depending on the wind direction, we could actually smell the hives!  Such a cool thing.  Then, upon one of our evening inspections of them we noticed that the hives were kicking out the drones, a sure sign of these busy bees' winter preparations.  We decided it was time to harvest the largest hive, and check the wild swarm to see if we could harvest the half starter box we put them in with in July.

So we started small.  First, B checked to see if there was any comb in the bottom box of the smaller hive.  There was comb in that box and a mixture of brood and capped honey in the box above, with a full box of honey to feed them for the winter, we were set to harvest the half sized box on top. 

We used liberal amounts of smoke, and overall, the bees were very calm during the whole process. 

When separating the two boxes there was some extra comb that pulled apart.  B has heard that using something like a piano wire to slide between the two boxes before removing will minimize this effect.  Something for us to try next time.

So we set the harvested boxes of honey aside so that the remaining bees in the boxes could find their way home.  The disruption sent many bees to the hive entrances to fan, so that those separated could return.

B then removed the chunks of cone that came apart and put them into a bowl.  This little bit of comb gave us about 1/2 a bottle of honey in addition to tons to snack on the rest of the evening with all the kids.

This is a shot of the half box.  We put the two boxes into a large Tupperware container overnight, weighted down, but with an escape route for the bees.  This morning, we moved that Tupperware to a shaded area of our porch and hopefully the remaining bees will vacate during the day today.

We have ordered what we need to complete extracting the honey from the comb, so that will be a task in the next week or so.  We estimate about 30 pounds of honey.  Not too bad from a first season, and with only 1 1/2 boxes harvested!  The third hive, we left alone.  We added a new queen to it about 6 weeks ago and there is now active brood.  They have one box full of honey but have not yet ventured into the second box.  We will leave them to regenerate their numbers and will hopefully start the spring with three hives, two of which will most likely need to be split!