AWARD WINNING HONEY

Great news! I put a bottle of my summer honey and one of my homebrew beers into the North Haven Fair and they both won 1st place in their categories. Also Jack entered the same honey in the Durham fair, which has many more entries and we won 3rd place. 

I even won 8 dollars from the North Haven fair! Next year I am entering all the fairs with my dark fall honey and whatever we get in the spring. Also next year the North Haven fair is going to have a light and dark beer category. So I have to get thinking and brewing so I can win both categories next year. 

That small white topped bottle is ours. Among other lesser honeys our's rises to the top.

Fall Honey Harvest

There has been a lot going on at the apiary as the season comes to a close. Here is a quick list of things I want to check in about:
-DIY mite wash jar
-Mite count
-Mite away strips
-Fall honey harvest

         
 Between blog posts I find myself learning so much about Bees. A few weeks ago I went to a CT beekeepers informative meeting over at Massaro's Community Farm in Woodbridge. There I learned a lot about mites and different ways to keep their levels down. The biggest take away for me was

Melt a screen in between

Then you melt the lids together

My completed mite wash jar

learning about 'the count.' This is your number of mites per 100 bees. The technique for getting this number is pretty simple. You have 2 options, the sugar method or the bee wash method. Each requires the use of a jar shaker that one must make in their basement with a soldering iron. Check out this link to another bee blog site where the guy really explains all the steps. His technique is a little better then mine, but check out my pics, I think it came out pretty good.
            You use this jar and some alcohol to get your number. I took a half cup of bees (which is approximately 300) and toss them in one jar and put on the lid. Then you put a few ounces of alcohol in the other jar, screw them together and shake. This unfortunately kills the bees but it also kills all the mites. (I think about like you have to give blood sometimes to check on your health)
            You filter the liquid through the screen and look at the liquid with no bees and count the mites. A count of more then 6 mites per 300 and the experts say you should treat. Anything less and IPM (Integrated pest management) techniques will be fine. This includes, regular sugar treatments (I am in the process of making a tool to make this easier - another post to follow), screened bottom boards, maybe drone brood frames, etc.
             So with my new handy dandy mite wash jar I went about getting my count. The three North Haven hives I tested gave me these numbers: 9, 11, and 14. For you non mathematicians out there, that is more 6. To say I was concerned is an understatement. I was almost panicked.
             After much thought and evaluation of my original Beekeeping tenants I decided that treating with as minor a treatment as possible would be best. I have heard from many beekeepers that the 'organic' or rather non treatment route is kind of a fool's errand and would not being much for the health of my hives. Also, looking back at my implementation of a proper IPM program, I realize my practices are more like PPB (piss poor beekeeping) rather then IPM. I don't have screened boards under 3/5 of my hives and I haven't done a sugar shake all year. So why let my hives die from Varroa destructor just because I want to be high and mighty about treatments?
               I decided to go with mite away strips, which do not penetrate the wax and are OK to use if there is honey in the hive. They are the least invasive but still do something to knock down the mite numbers so my hives can be strong for the winter.

               I put strips in all 5 hives, and when I went to the woodbridge hives I stumbled across an awesome problem. Both hives were LOADED with honey. There were 5 mediums all completely full of dark golden rod honey. So, I got a hold of the CT beekeeping club equipment and we went to town harvesting our fall catch. I left enough so all 5 hives have a full medium box of honey for the winter.
             We went about extracting the honey from the three full boxes, it was quite an adventure. Jack, Ryan, and I went out in the field with the wheel barrow and our fume board. It started to rain. We used a propane torch to warm up the fume board to maximize the fumage inside the hive. The mild smell of almond filled the apiary. The bees hate it, but I think it is kind of pleasent.

Bees don't like this thing.

              The fumes didn't do a great job, but I think it was because all of the bees were home because it was overcast and not too nice out. So the hive was kind of overcrowded. After we took the boxes off I took them down the path a bit and used the bee brush to knock off any stragglers. Amazingly no stings, even with the weather and all that brushing. :)

         We threw the honey in the back of the truck and we went for a ride. I took a little break in the middle of the day to hang out with my 2 favorite ladies, and then we got back together to extract the honey. 

     

          We used the same equipment again, rented stuff from the bee club. It worked great. The only problem was that we had TOO MUCH. The buckets we have won't allow us to filter the amount of honey we have. So I went to the local brew shop Luck and Levity ,downtown New Haven and got another food safe bucket to store the honey before we bottle it.                                                        The honey looks and tastes delicious, I am so proud of what my little ladies have accomplsihed in a season. I have lots of plans for the winter and the spring. (I haven't yet met a beekeeper without a plan) I am thinking that I will continue to involve more people in my apiary. Ryan wants to start a hive and Jack's buddy Matt wants to still be involved. My idea of having a kind of bee colony commune might actually be a real thing some day. 

               Enjoy a couple of quick videos of the honey flow on the day of extracting:

Trip to VT

Beautiful VT country side

Just an animal skin on the front porch

The places I have gone, and the people I have met while keeping bees has been the best part of this hobby. An awesome example of this was a trip that I took with my beekeeping partner Jack and our friend Ryan this past spring. 

A friend of Jack's family owns a farm in northern Vermont on which his son has started a wooden ware company, and now a rather large apiary. Their farm is about one square mile, and it is impressive. When you first pull in, it feels a bit like you are entering another world. A long ascending hill cutting through a dense forest. When you approach the farm, it is clear that this is a working farm. There were quite a few head of cattle fenced in, and what was rather striking was the large flat stretch of land with wind socks everywhere. Right in the middle of the farm there is an airport.

Lots of cattle

The owner of the farm is named Bob, he works as a big wig executive at a large financial institution in Manhattan. I guess he got tried of driving up to his retreat in VT from the city, so he bought himself a small plane and built an airport. Pretty cool if you ask me.

When we arrived we passed two large plane-hanger sized buildings, and we approached the house at the very top of the hill. Bob's son (affectionately called Guido) came cruising over in a pick up truck to give us the tour. Bob and Guido first showed us a hanger full of lumber. Since Bob purchased the farm they have been harvesting wood from all over their property and milling into usable pieces of lumber. The plan, as I understand it, is to eventually build a post and beam home with all the hard wood lumber they have in there. We are talking two feet by two feet beams that are probably 50 feet long. It was extraordinary.

Bob and Jack in the workshop

We then went to the next hanger where the wood shop is located. In this shop there must have been over $100,000 worth of wood working equipment. Along with the equipment there were parts of beehives everywhere. Pallets of unassembled boxes and frames. All of which are made with pine trees that were fell, and cut into lumber right there on the property. I felt a little bit like I was in heaven. I could have stayed there for days making boxes and experimenting with some ideas I have about feeders and landing boards.

Our tour continued with a quad ride around the property and a short hike to a scenic view. It was a beautiful cool spring afternoon. There is nothing like drinking a beer with a view like this.Yes, that is a bucket of beer with us.

Surveying the land

Oh yea! There was a donkey too

The whole trip felt kind of surreal. After our quad trip we grilled up some burgers made from meat butchered from their cows. A burger flipped with a small hatchet might have been the best tasting burger I have ever

"Guido" making the greatest burgers

had.

We left late in the afternoon with a trunk full of unassembled boxes and a promise for a return trip to help them out when they get bees. 

Later in the spring, Billy, the son of Bob who is running this operation purchased over a hundred nucleus hives from a beekeeper in Florida. He flew down there and drove a truck full of bees back to CT. Jack is going to return to the farm this weekend to help him do full inspections on all of the hives he installed. Which I think is around 80! When this family does something, they go big. I wish I could join them, however my wife is due any day now and leaving for any period of time would be a sketchy choice.

Uncle Dave SWINKIN! Also the collie patrol.

Another awesome part of the trip was a stop at Jack's uncle Dave's house in upstate New York. It was only about 30 minutes from the farm in VT, so we headed over there to spend the night. He was a great host, we ate dinner and sacked out until our drive home the next day. Dave is always an entertaining character, and you can count on him for having a great story to tell. We stayed up talking about bees and the renovations Dave wants to make on the house.

One thing to add about the stop at Dave's chateau was Ryan's ridiculous level of snoring. I posted a video because it was so extreme. If we had bees with us they would have swarmed to avoid his snoring.I don't know how his wife Lisa deals. I slept on the couch.

We had a fun productive trip and met some crazy survival guys up there in Vermont who I chose to keep out of the blog for fear of them finding out I posted their pictures or names on an official place like the internet. They were pretty serious, they had lots of camouflage clothing and chewing tobacco. Also the boxes we got were great for the nuc hives we bought from Gilman this spring. Things have really come together for the apiary.

Anyone looking at this blog and are interesting in purchasing any of this fine Vermont grown wooden ware, please message me and I can easily get you in contact with these guys.

Honey Harvest!

Some of the Honey Bear army

It has been a while since I have posted. I have so many things to share. I haven't been blogging because I have been so busy with work, and a pregnant wife. With all the stresses of the regular world I have continued to keep my apiary going the best that I can. I want to get some pictures out there about the harvest that I just finished bottling this evening.


A quick recap: over the winter I lost two of the three hives I had in the fall. It was a sad spring for me. One had too few bees and froze, the other didn't have enough food and starved. However the one hive that did survive was really strong. I split that hive by purchasing a mated queen from California and put her in charge of a few frames from that awesome survivor hive.

Sad frame of starved bees :(

I also purchased 3 more nucleus hives from Gilman. All of which are doing really well and are located at a farm that is close to my house. Which has been awesome and super fun. I will have to make a separate
post about all of the adventures I have had this spring already.Also, I had a crazy adventure at a farm in Vermont that I need to share with my bee blog.

A picture of a bee coming for a landing on one of the Gilman Nucs

The awesome thing at hand however is the harvest from that  survivor hive. I got a little over 5 gallons of honey. We rented an extractor and the accompanying equipment from our beekeeping club which was totally awesome. Actually, the club received a grant from the federal government to support local beekeeping to purchase this equipment and rent it out at a discounted rate. So all the equipment was only 25 BUCKS! What a deal.

The extractor

Cutting off the wax cappings with a hot knife

Anyway, we followed the procedure by cutting off the wax cappings and putting the frames in the extractor. We bought a few honey buckets to store the liquid gold, and we went to town. What we ended up with was a really light in color, rather dense honey, that tastes FANTASTIC. I know other beekeepers say this, but my honey is the best tasting honey in the world. I hope you enjoy some of the pictures and I promise more posts to come.

Liquid Gold

Maybe my next post will be an update on the baby that will be here any day now.