GardenFork – Eclectic DIY

Tag: honey

  • Honey Harvest Made Easier

    Honey Harvest Made Easier

    Its honey harvest time again. I’ve talked about the uncapping roller before, video here, but you combine this tool with putting 9 frames in a 10 frame honey super and you’ve made your life much easier.

    Honey harvest

    Most beekeepers use a hot knife, or uncapping knife to cut the beeswax caps off the tops of the honeycomb cells. Uncapping means opening up the cells so you can get the honey out, usually using an extractor.

    Honey harvest

    But with this roller tool, (buy it here) you don’t need to use a knife to cut off the caps. The photos look kind of messy, but this works pretty good. With a hot knife, you run the risk of gouging into the honeycomb. This means more work for the bees, rebuilding the comb before they can fill it with honey again.

    The uncapping roller punches holes in the caps. Its not a perfect process, but you get much less wax in your honey when extracting. So you don’t have to filter nearly as much wax when bottling the honey. Honey harvest

    The second new thing I’ve done is put 9 frames in a 10 frame honey super. This means one less frame than the box is designed for. But what this does is create a bit more space between each frame. The bees draw out the honeycomb a bit farther, which makes uncapping easier. And it means less propolis between frames, its much easier to pull these frames out of the super.

    I use brackets that set the frames at the right spacing. This has been a really nice thing.

    more beekeeping videos insert

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  • Clear Cloudy Honey – Beekeeping 101 – GF Video

    Clear Cloudy Honey – Beekeeping 101 – GF Video

    Clear Cloudy Honey with our how to video. Crystallized Honey can be easily decrystallized, watch Eric show you how. Why causes cloudy honey? The most common reason is temperature. The honey has been stored somewhere and the honey temperature eventually lowers enough to crystalize. The moisture content of the honey also causes cloudy honey.

    How to Clear Cloudy Honey, some info:

    clear-cloudy-honey-200pxIs it safe to eat cloudy honey? Yes, honey keeps for years. You can stir crystallized honey into your tea and it will dissolve just fine. Its hard to measure cloudy honey for baking, so its best to warm it first.

    Can I use a slow cooker as a cloudy honey fix? Yes, its a great solution

    There is some foam that floated to the top of the warmed honey. That’s ok, just skim it off, its beeswax probably.

    The types of flowers that the honeybees collect from also can cause cloudy honey. If there are lot of rape seed flowers nearby, part of the mustard family, the honey produced gets cloudy quickly.

    In my experience, we have had honey get cloudy when we have harvested honey from dead hives, and the frames may have a mix of capped and uncapped honey in them. The uncapped honey has a higher water content, and I believe this contributes to the cloudy honey.

    If you have frames of capped and uncapped honey, I would leave them in the hive. If its a dead hive, I’d suggest cutting out the capped comb for comb honey. Or just extract the whole frame, keeping in mind this mixed capping honey should be consumed sooner than the capped frame honey.

    This beekeeping video is part of our beekeeping 101 video series, you can check out all of the how to keep bees videos here.

    Eric suggests 2 beekeeping for beginners books,


    Buy On IndieBound Here
    Click Here to buy on Amazon


    Click Here to Buy On Indiebound
    Click Here To Buy On Amazon

  • The Future Always Wins : GF Radio

    The Future Always Wins : GF Radio

    Eric tells about driving the 2013 Ford F150 Limited in downtown Manhattan, as well as using the truck up at the CT house. A big thank you to our Mike and Scott and Mary Beth at Ford for making that happen!

    ford-f150-truck

    Rick brings up the illegal importation of honey, read more here: http://www.foodsafetynews.com/2013/02/honeygate-sting-leads-to-charges-for-illegal-chinese-honey-importation

    Eric talks about the celebration of the neato factor, the cool stuff people are doing, like Tyler and his severe weather data company, Allison House.

    Speaking of the maker world, Rick  tells us about WikiHouse, a project to use CNC machines to make housing, very neat. Its a house that is assembled all from plywood cut on a CNC machine.

    Eric gives a shout out to Steve at Born To Farm, and his podcast, Growing Your Own Grub

    Rick suggests looking outside the US for neat podcasts, you can get his podcast suggestions by following Rick on twitter and his hashtag: #podcastsworthhearing

    Spray Foam Insulation comes up at the end

    The Cement Truck always wins.

  • Winter Bee Inspection & Dead Bees – Beekeeping 101 Video

    Winter Bee Inspection & Dead Bees – Beekeeping 101 Video

    Another of our Beekeeping 101 videos on how to do a winter bee inspection. Links to more beekeeping videos at end of the post. This time we open up the beehives in late March to show us feeding bees in winter. Keeping bees in areas with snow and winter, you will want to add sugar cakes, aka fondant, in the winter, and then add protein patties in late winter – early spring to get the honeybees going early.

    You can open a beehive if its above 40F to do a quick winter bee inspection, if its in the 30sF, you can open it real quick to put some sugar on the top of the hive. Do not take the hive apart for a full inspection. We are just taking off the outer and inner cover, and looking in from the top of the hive real quick. The faster you do this the better, I think.

    winter beek check list watchHoneybees may not always crawl up to the top and show themselves, they may still be clustered in a lower super, so just leave them that way. If you come across a dead hive, as we did, my suggestion is to leave the hive be, tape up the entrances, and clean out the hive when it warms up. You tape the entrances closed to keep the wax moths from moving in as spring approaches.

    Dead Bees near sugar cake
    Dead Bees near sugar cake

    Why did my bees die? Its not always obvious. Condensation is a big winter killer, but since we switched to the insulated inner covers we built, click for the insulated inner cover post, we have not had a condensation problem in the beehives in winter. Every year we have had a beehive die in winter, it is hard to get them all through winter. So when a hive dies, don’t blame yourself if you have done the following:

    • Followed a plan for varroa mite control
    • Fed bees in fall with sugar syrup
    • Left enough honey in the hive for winter
    • Added sugar cakes or fondant
    • Used an insulated inner cover
    • Tilted the hives forward in fall

    Read more of our beekeeping posts here and watch beekeeping videos here. Thx!

    beekeeping-sugarcake-vid-thumb

    Questions, comments? please let us know below:

  • Melissa Bee Farm Honey Tasting GF Radio

    Melissa Bee Farm Honey Tasting GF Radio

    Producer Sarah and Eric do a honey tasting in Brooklyn of Rick’s Melissa Bee Farm Honey . and a thank you to Christina of Feline Design for designing Rick’s honey label.

    you can get the Vitamix Sarah has here:

  • Drone Laying Worker in a Queenless Hive

    Drone Laying Worker in a Queenless Hive

    When we check our honeybee hives, we first just stand there and observe them. We could tell there was something wrong with one of the hives.

    note the large drone cells scattered about

    It was quiet, the hive next to it was buzzing with activity.

    We opened it up to hear this odd low frequency hum in the hive, not something you usually hear. One look at a brood frame told us we had a bad problem on our hands.

    The queen was dead.

    And to make matters worse, one or more workers had started laying eggs in the cells, and since workers are infertile, all the eggs are drones.

    Queenless hive, signs of the drone laying worker here

     

    So how can a worker bee lay eggs? If  a hive is queenless, her pheromone is absent, and a few of the workers can then begin lay eggs. It doesn’t happen everytime a hive loses  queen, and this is the first time it has happened to us.

    You can’t just put  new queen in one of these hives, as the laying workers will kill the new queen. You have two choices, either combine the queenless hive with a healthy hive nearby, or get rid of the laying workers.

    One of our Facebook fans explained how she did this:

    Rhonda wrote: “Not good. I had this happen last year. I took the hive that had some young bees and some older bees in it and moved at about 2000′ away from the original location, dumped all the bees out onto the ground-every one of them, then took the hive body back to the original location. The younger, drone layers had not been out of the hive yet, so they could not find their way back home. I then transferred a queen cell from another hive into that hive and before long everything was good again. I know, it as a bit chancy, but the other options weren’t much better.”

    Healthy frame of brood, note the curled up larvae.

    The laying workers are nurse bees who have yet to leave the hive, so they have don’t know any outdoor landmarks or orientation to return to the hive. The older bees, who are foragers, know the location of the hive, so when dumped out of the hive, they will fly back to its location.

    This hive was pretty weak, so I’m thinking right now i’ll combine it with the stronger hive next to it, and perhaps split the strong hive in  week or two, with a new queen in the split. * we did the beehive combine, click here to see how to combine beehives

    Have you dealt with a drone laying worker? Let us know below

  • Tornado Safe Rooms, Tornadoes, & Storm Chasers GF Radio

    Tornado Safe Rooms, Tornadoes, & Storm Chasers GF Radio

    Tyler joins us to talk about building tornado safe room or tornado shelter, his sister built a tornado safe room in the floor of her garage, and safe rooms were discussed at ChaserCon. Safe rooms can be pre-fab or built on site out of concrete or steel or a combination of rebar, cement, and cinderblocks. Storm Chasing comes next, is storm chasing really like how it looks on the cable shows? Tyler talks about what its like to chase storms and the science behind what causes tornadoes, how to tornadoes form?

    Car repair comes next, Tyler is having some car repair issues with his Jeep, we talk about what a crankshaft is, a harmonic balancer, and flywheel do.

    We talk about beekeeping and Tyler’s beginning beekeeping experiences, Eric and Tyler agree that using medium supers, not the large deeps, are the best way to keep bees. Siting your bees is an issue, as you have to keep in mind how you are going to get to your honeybees in winter and summer, you can’t always just drive your truck right up to them, think about where they are going to live.

    If you want to listen to our Beekeeping for Beginners Questions & Answers shows, click here.

    Car and Truck safety on the highway rounds out the show, a viewer mail asks out loud what will driving be like in 20 years?

    photo by cohdra

  • Beekeeping for Beginners FAQ Part 2 : GF Radio

    Beekeeping for Beginners FAQ Part 2 : GF Radio

    Matt joins Eric to answer Beekeeping for Beginners questions on this show. What equipment to buy, how to buy honeybees, where to put beehives in your yard, what kind of beekeeping suit to buy all answered here.

    what kind of beekeeping suit and beekeeping veil is good?

    what kind of frames should i use in the beehive, are plastic frames better than wood frames?

    wax foundation versus plastic foundation should i use plastic or wax foundation on the frames of the beehive? eric talks about the benefits of wax foundation and plastic foundation and frames

    Eric suggests 2  beekeeping for beginners books,


    Buy On IndieBound Here
    Click Here to buy on Amazon


    Click Here to Buy On Indiebound
    Click Here To Buy On Amazon

    Beekeeping for Dummies and the Backyard Beekeeper

    do you paint the outside of the beehive? yes, we use latex paint.

    should i buy 8 frame supers or 10 frame supers? matt and eric talk about the benefits of 8 frame boxes and 10 frame boxes

    what kind of beekeeping tools should i buy? eric suggests bringing duct tape, scissors, entrance reducer, smoker, woodchips, matches, 2 or 3 hive tools, a frame grabbing tool, needle nose pliers and more.

    what kind of hive stand should my beehive rest on? cinder block, wood, metal stands are talked about, eric suggests having a work table next to your hives.

    we talk about benefits of top bar hives vs. langstroth hives, and the drawbacks of top bar hives and langstroth beehives.

    should you buy a bee package or a honeybee nuc? eric talks about the advantages of honeybee packages , the pros and cons of bee packages, and the benefits of being a nuc or nucleus hive to start a beehive.

    eric advocates buying local honeybees and queens, either packages or nucs, the closer you can buy your bees the better.

    www.whiteoakapiary.com in Brewster, NY and www.warmcolorsapiary.com in Greenfield, MA is where eric buys queens and honeybees.

    should you feed honeybees in winter and how do i feed my bees over the winter? eric talks about how to feed bees in winter. you can watch our Beekeeping for Beginners video series here, and several videos are about feeding bees in winter.

    Eric uses a hand immersion blender to mix this sugar feed solution, and adds this homemade essential oil recipe for bees to the sugar

    The essential oil mixture is great for spraying the bees to combat nosema and bee diarrhea.

    winterizing beehives is discussed, here is eric’s beehive insulated inner cover video, Eric feeds sugar cakes to the bees in winter, not fondant or sugar syrup. Should you close or open a screened bottom board? Matt and Eric discuss

    Mudsongs.org is a favorite beekeeping blog of eric’s. Phillip documents his beekeeping in Newfoundland Canada.

    where to site your hives in your yard, where should you put the hives, what is the best location for beehives? eric has learned that full sun is best, he talks more about it during this radio episode.

    should I take a beekeeping class? eric says yes.

    and join your local beekeeping group. search on the web for your state’s beekeeping association, and that site should list local beekeeping groups.

    Megan of BrooklynHomesteader.com offers online beekeeping classes, and in-person classes as well.

  • Re Queening both our hives this spring

    Re Queening both our hives this spring

    After reading a glowing article in Bee Culture about Jennifer Berry and her excellent queen rearing program, we have decided to replace the queens in both our hives with queens from Jennifer Berry.

    Why requeen? What is most important to me is the bees display what is called hygenic behavior. This means they keep the hive clean, and because of this hygenic behavior, the varroa mite population is lower.

    Many beekeepers requeen every year or every two years. Queens don’t last much longer on their own. The BeeAnonymous blog lists a few reasons:

    * Older queens are more prone to swarming
    * Replacing a failing queen
    * Better stock traits like pest and disease resistances
    * And in my case, improving bad attitudes

    Our hive at the Maple Knoll Farm did amazing for its first year, giving us a few frames of honey to harvest. We opted to leave the majority of the honey in the hive, and also fed both our hives a lot of sugar syrup to get them through the hard winter we have up here in NW CT. Our bees are not aggressive, but we do want a to improve the stock of our bees, as we don’t want to have to use miticides to combat the varroa mite and tracheal mites.

    Feeding bees sugar syrup in the fall to prepare them for winter
    Feeding bees sugar syrup in the fall to prepare them for winter

    The hive that is in our yard, which is in a shed to protect it from bears, did not do nearly as well last year as our hive at Maple Knoll Farm. I checked on them last month and I think I heard them in the hive. This hive will benefit from a new queen.

    The hive in our shed, wrapped with a insulating blanket and a polystyrene outer cover
    The hive in our shed, wrapped with a insulating blanket and a polystyrene outer cover

    Our hive at Maple Knoll may not need a new queen. The hive was great last year, and we saw them doing cleansing flights in 38 F degree weather. And whenever we went to check on them, the hive was alive with energy, tons of bees coming and going.

    So I am thinking that we may split this hive. A split is where you take some of the bees from a healthy hive, some frames of brood, eggs, and pollen, and place them in a new hive with a new queen. A split allows you to populate a new hive without buying a package of bees, and it allows you to choose where your queen comes from. I’ve been reading up on how to divide or split a hive and I think we can do it.

    Maple Knoll bees on cleansing flights
    Maple Knoll bees on cleansing flights

    I do believe the queen in the Maple Knoll hive has been replaced by the bees. This may be a natural thing, or it may have been due to us being clumsy when working the hive. We weren’t always good at pulling out the first frame, making room to pull the other frames up and out. We may have killed the queen, as we did find what we think were opened queen cells on a few frames in the middle of the summer. Finding this queen will be a challenge, since she was not raised by humans, she is not marked on her body for easy identification.

    Finding the queen in thousands of bees can be hard
    Finding the queen in thousands of bees can be hard

    To requeen a hive:

    • Find and remove the existing queen.

    • Wait a day if you can.

    • Put in the new queen ( in her queen cage) in the hive between 2 frames, make sure the sugar plug is pointing up so no dead attendants can plug up her exit, poke a small hole in the sugar plug to get the bees to eat through it.

    • Leave the hive alone for a week.

    Our new queens arrive in May, we’ll make a GardenFork Show when we do the re-queening. Jennifer Berry’s Queens are only available through Brushy Mountain Bee Farm.

    Beekeepers: what can you add to this post? Please comment below.