What follows is a tale of the gloves I have known and, well, tolerated, I don’t love any of them.

it has a "life" of its own

I started out with the standard issue beekeeper gloves.  This is one that I found at the bottom of an older bee bag. They were thick.  No bee could sting me.  On the other hand, I couldn’t feel a thing, which made manipulating frames very hard.

good, but still has issues

Then I discovered these gloves.  They are goatskin, I think.  The glove is thin enough to allow me to work easily and still not get stung.  But you can see that they still don’t meld with my hands.  The down side is that they are thin and wear out.  I go though about 3 of these a year.  Happily they are not that expensive.  I get them though Buckoo Gloves.

useful when painting too

If I’m working with mating nucs my Buckoo gloves are still too thick.  Bare hands are the best, but sometimes the bees get a little jumpy, especially when a storm is brewing, and, as I said, I don’t like to be stung.   Then I turn to these nitrile gloves.  I just learned about them this year.  My first encounter was from another beekeeper in our queen-rearing group, but his were very thin and ripped.  I’m very financially conservative (ok call it cheap), and I like things to last a while.  Then one day at the paint section of a box store I discovered these very fashionable blue nitrile gloves: painter’s nitrile gloves.  They work really well, and you can reuse them for quite a while before they do finally rip. Plus they’re quite nice when you’re painting the new honey storage area too.  On the downside, here’s my computer’s dictionary’s definition of nitrile: an organic compound containing a cyanide group (just puts you at ease, doesn’t it?)

Every glove has its downside.  The mesh of all the beekeepers gloves drives me mad.  At least once a week a bee will suddenly realize that my skin is available to be stung though the mesh.  I keep telling myself it’s probably very good for my wrists: no arthritis there.  And my lovely painters nitrile gloves are short, so the bees get me in the same place.   This year I’m getting some gloves without mesh from Buckoo Gloves – they tell me they’re longer.  I just figure I will look totally chic in elbow-length gloves.  Who says beekeeping isn’t fashionable?

I would love to work without gloves all the time, but it’s not going to happen.  I’ll get stung.  My friend, Pat Ray (4^th generation beekeeper, all around good guy, and someone who will work bees in a short sleeve shirt) once said to me that people should just wear what makes them comfortable while working with bees because as long as you are comfortable you will handle the bees gently.   I couldn’t put it better.

Do you have gloves that work well for you?  Share – we can all use new knowledge.

Fondant

After a hard year of rains, we’ve been having a warm(ish) winter here in the Pacific Northwest.  It’s been downright “tropical”: highs to 45 degrees F on a regular basis.  I like this, but it’s not so good for the bees.  They don’t slow-down as much or go into prolonged cluster.  They eat a lot.  So when the weather got even warmer, 50 degrees F (break out the bathing suits!), we made some bee candy (fondant) and I went around the hives to distribute it to those who looked like they were already eating in the top box.

Background: 

I leave 50 to 70 pounds of honey on each hive going into winter.

Many of my hives had larger colonies of bees than normal for this time of year.

Many of the bees in those hives were already in the top box.

There is NO Forage in this area from October to February, and February is only Alder Pollen.

Why Candy?

I would never feed liquid feed in the winter here.  It is wet enough in this northwest corner of Washington.  The bees do not need added moisture in their hives.  Plus, you never know when it is going to snow.

Fondant

Fondant (aka bee candy)

For years that name put me off.  Fancy name, must be complicated.  It’s not difficult at all.  Fondant is “a thick paste made of sugar and water…(or) candy made of such a paste”, according to the dictionary that comes with my Mac.

Recipes for this appear in many bee magazines and on the web, but the easiest one I’ve found to follow is in my husband’s mother’s 1935 cookbook from England: the basic sugar candy recipe.

One part water, 4 parts sugar, boil until it forms hard “tails” when dropped into water. That’s about 200 degrees F, according to Ian (the husband) who made the bee candy this year.

Because I had bee feed left from the fall we started with that.  It’s a ¾ sugar, ¼ water mix with spearmint, lemongrass, and thyme oil.  Then Ian added more cane sugar.  (No photos of him cooking it, he kindly did this while I was working on the web at the library).

He did mention that it was a pain, until he realized he could just walk away and let it cook down while he made furniture (he does fabulous handcrafted furniture of historical designs that can be seen at Walking-Wild.com).  Now, Ian cooks brilliantly, if I walked away from a cooking pot it would burn.

Pouring out the Bee Candy

The candy is poured into cookie trays lined with wax paper.  Then set in my work area to cool.  I’ve realized I should have done something like cut it into squares before it completely cooled.  As that would have been some time in the middle of the night, I would not have done it any way.

Getting the Candy Out

Cracking The Bee Candy

Thus, to break the candy and get it out of the trays, I used a small hammer and a chisel.  A few smacks and the candy came out of the tray and then could be broken into nice chunks.

I put these into a sealable bucket, with each layer lined with wax paper.

A single piece of fondant

Putting the Candy In

Bees Meet Fondant

I only open the tops of the hives at this time of year.  So each lid was popped, the insulation (bead board) removed, and the burlap lifted to reveal the top bars.

The candy is simply placed on the top bars.  In some hives this is greeted with elation.  In others, I probably don’t have to do it, but now I’ll worry less.

Then burlap back down, insulation back in, top closed, and the hive’s “rain hat”: a piece of asphalt roofing lied back down.

Happy Bee

One day latter the snows arrived.  Two days later we could no longer drive to the farm beeyard : a 3/4 mile walk though 2 feet of snow.

I’ll still worry, but I’ll worry less.

Before The Snow Storm!

We've All Seen It

We have all seen the USDA certification symbol on some honeys.  But what does it really mean?  It can mean a lot, or it can mean nothing at all.  Confusing?  Yes.  And that’s the best term for honey labeled “organic”.

According to an email correspondence I had with the USDA Agricultural Marketing Service “, honey can be certified organic using the organic livestock standards… However, NOSB {National Organic Standards Board} recommendations are not part of the regulations until/unless the National Organic Program adopts through rulemaking process.”

In more normal words: Your honey can be certified organic by the US government, although they have no regulations to define organic honey.  You got to love the federal government.

WHO CERTIFIES IT ORGANIC?

UNITED STATES HONEY:

The federal government does not inspect for organic honey. In the US there are certifying agencies that will certify honey as organic.  They seem to use the NOSB recommendations.  But as I mentioned before the USDA has never accepted the recommendations.

IMPORTED HONEY:

If the honey is harvested outside of the US it is considered Organic if it meets that country’s organic standards as well as the US standards.  Remember, there are NO U.S. STANDARDS, so compliance on that point is quite easy.  In some countries Organic standards are rough: the UK, the European Union, Canada, Singapore…they all have tough standards.  In other places, “organic” honey is not so “organic”.

WHAT MAKES IT ORGANIC IN THE US?

The independent certifying agencies in the US do pretty much follow the NOSB’s recommendations.  It’s not easy to make the grade, and it’s not cheap for large producers.

Small producers who make less than $5000 worth of organic honey in a year have it easier.  They can just put on the USDA Organic Label.  Someone might come round to check your records, but who knows when.  After all, there are no government regulations.

For all other organic honey producers the check list offered by most agencies is extensive.  And everything must be documented.  Just a few items covered are:

1) Forage: What the bees eat and drink

2) Where they live and what they live in and on.

3) What the beekeeper feeds them

4) How the beekeeper treats them for parasites

5) How the beekeeper processes the honey they produce

6) How the beekeeper labels that honey

7) How the beekeeper keeps records

FORAGE: What and Where The Bees Eat

Is It Organic?

Honeybees fly an average of 2 miles from their hives in their search for nectar and pollen.  A hive would have to be in the center of a minimally 16 square miles of organic plants.  Wild plants sound good but there could be an issue there if the hives are near any land where herbicides are used, which includes much of the Dept of Natural Resources lands.  The list of prohibited places goes on to include such places as non-organic farms, golf courses, residential neighborhoods, and industrial areas.  Places where water may contain chemicals is off-limits.  In a bow to our present form of agriculture, genetically modified crops are a no-go zone, one to which an even greater buffer zone is added.   Basically if the bees can reach any area that has chemicals, synthetic fertilizers, herbicides, pesticides, or sludge, they cannot produce organic honey.  This requirement alone will make the production of organic honey impossible for most beekeepers (If you live in a place like this: 16 square miles of no chemicals, please share where that is.)

HOW THE BEES LIVE

Let’s say you have the perfect place to put your hives.  Now you have to give them an organic environment in which to live.  The hive boxes are pretty simple: wood.  But the foundation is a bit more of a challenge.  Beeswax foundation must be organic.  That’s really, really hard to find.  You can make your own, but it has to be from your organic hives, which you can’t have until you get that organic foundation – Catch 22.

Strangely, to me, plastic foundation can be used, as long as it’s coated with organic wax.  Organic wax is difficult to find.   Smaller apiaries that meet all the other organic recommendations could start with foundationless hives, and use that wax.  We are talking about a lot of time here.

TREATMENTS FOR PARASITES

Chemicals are out; no real surprise there.  So it’s screened bottom boards, physical traps, and other integrated pest management techniques.  Some of the milder miticide treatments are considered OK: The thyme based ApiLifeVar and ApiGard as well as Formic Acid.  The recommendations I’ve seen are considering including Oxalic Acid in the mix.  None of the ingredients in these are organic, but they are natural (not synthesized chemicals).

TOO MANY RECOMMENDATIONS TO MENTION

There are far more recommendations, they can be found In a PDF at:

www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/FR-2011-11-08/pdf/2011-28800.pdf

The recommendations range from the type and temperature of equipment used during extraction (stainless steel and cold knives) to how the honey is labeled as well as how, when, and what records must be kept and where the bees come from – and how long they have lived in organically certified hives.

Before any agency will certify the apiary has to have a record of being organic for one year.  My hat’s off to any beekeeper who actually does the work to meet all the recommendations.  Sadly, after all that work, they’ll still be competing with “organic” honey from countries that have lesser organic standards and from companies that will simply put a USDA Organic label on their honey without going though a certifying agency (remember, that’s not a government agency because the US government does not have any Organic Honey Standards).

WHAT IF YOU JUST PUT ON THE LABEL?

It’s a $10,000 fine. 

BROOKFIELD FARM BEES?

Some Hives At the Farm

Nope, we’re not organic and could never be.  My down-river bee yards are in agricultural areas; you can bet pesticides are in used in some of those fields.  My mountain bee yards are all within 2 miles of Washington Dept of Natural Resource lands, where herbicides are routinely used to knock down Alders and Maple Trees that grow in the clear cuts.

I don’t use antibiotics and have always used natural pest control methods.  But I do use beeswax foundation – I just don’t like plastic, even if our government recommendations say it’s OK if you cover it in organic wax.  That just doesn’t make sense to me.  So no USDA Organic Honey from us, just wonderful honey from hives where only natural treatments are used.  It rather fits my philosophy: Do as little harm as possible as we stumble though this world.  And always tell your customers how you manage your bees.

Hope you all had a wonderful holiday season and the new year brings great joys.

14 MILLION YEARS AGO – HONEYBEES IN “NORTH AMERICA“

"N. American" Honeybee - Photo courtesy of Michael Engle

14 million years ago, we even had a honeybee here in North America. It’s nice to imagine them buzzing around the saber toothed cats and dire wolves.  Sadly, like so many wondrous animals, this honeybee species, Apis nearctica, died out.  Honeybees wouldn’t return to the western hemisphere until Europeans brought them over around 1622.

Until 2009, it been thought that the “white man’s flies” were the first honeybees to take to the skies of the western hemisphere.  That year Professor Michael Engle, a paleontologist- entomologist at the University of Kansas, and his team discovered and named the fossilized remains of a worker bee in Nevada.  A. nearctica is definitely a honeybee: it has hairy eyes, a barbed stinger, and honeybee wing patterns.

The fact that it is fossilized is pretty remarkable. Lacking bones, insects don’t usually preserve all that well.  The few remains of prehistoric bees that have been discovered have usually turned up suspended in amber: fossilized conifer resin. Perhaps their sealed fate was the end of a doomed excursion to collect propolis.

19 MILLION YEARS AGO – GIANT HONEYBEES IN “JAPAN”

Giant Honeybee Fossil

Sometimes conditions are perfect: the insects fall into mud and are quickly covered.  Temperatures and moisture are perfect and encase the insect in a mineral tomb. This happened to one ancestor of the giant honeybee.  The bee’s 19 million year old fossil was found on Iki Island in Japan.   Today there are no giant honeybees in the area.  The huge bees that can reach up to one inch in length need a tropical environment to survive.  They build their comb in the open air so cold weather is not an option for them.  They can now be found in Southeast Asia, Indonesia, and in India.

100 MILLION YEARS AGO – BEES IN “BURMA”:

Entombed in Amber

Older bees have been found, but they are not honeybees.  One of the oldest, Melittosphex burmensis, flew around 100 million years ago when dinosaurs were still strolling about the planet.  There would have been a significant difference in size: the bee was about 1/8^th inch (.12 mm) long.

The species was so newly evolved that it still shared some characteristics with its wasp forbearers.  They had the narrow back legs of wasps, as well as wasp spurs, but they also had hairs on their legs: which modern bees use to collect pollen.

Pollen was clearly of interest to these diminutive bees.  The only fossil of M. burmensis, a male trapped in amber, is holding a grain of pollen.  It was discovered in a mine in northern Burma by George Poinar, Prof of Zoology at Oregon State University, and his team, in 2006.

The combination of pollen and bees was about to make a big change in our world.  Prior to 100 million years ago, most of the trees were wind-pollinated conifers.  When M. burmensis took to the air, flowering plants were beginning to appear.  They and the bees and butterflies would all impact each other’s evolution.

M. burmensis either continued to evolve dramatically or died out.  Today, no living bee bears any resemblance to this unique species.

These are only three amazing discoveries. Fossils continue to allow us a view into bees’ past and show the on-going evolution of the various species in response to changes in the environment.  For bees this has stretched over millions of years.

A BIT OF A TIME LINE:

100 million years ago: The tiny Melittosphex burmensis still carried traits found in wasps.

60 million years ago: Bumblebees flew & the first honeybees appeared.

19 million years ago: Giant Honeybees live in what will be Japan

14 million years ago: Honeybees are native to what will be North America

1 million years ago: Apis mellifera appears.

A lot of time, a lot of changes. Hopefully today’s honeybees will continue to adapt and evolve to meet the new challenges that face us all as our world changes.  I do love bees, and I do love fossils.  Ah well, back to painting the honey storage shed.

Nuc and Strong Hive Ready For Winter

Winter has arrived, bringing with it 6 inches of snow, bookended by torrential rains.  My hives are all wrapped up: insulation above the top bars, roofing tar paper around the outsides, rolled asphalt “roofs” secured with sash cord.  This will help keep the full, strong hives warm and dry through our long winter.  But nucs face a challenge.

Nucleus hives don’t have enough bees to keep themselves warm in the winter.  Which is why you often see nucs sitting on top of full hives in winter bee yards.  That’s what I do at Brookfield Farm in Maple Falls, Washington.

(The photo was taken before the snow started falling. It’s nice to remember the green leaves.)

Many beekeepers just place the nucs on top of the stronger hive, but I wanted something a bit different.  There were a number of reasons:

Considerations In Nuc/Hive Stacking:

1) My hives all have top entrances, I wanted to maintain that for both the strong hive and the nuc.

2) Some winters seem to go on forever up here and I get worried about bee stores and want to slip the ladies a little bee candy in the new year.

3) I had read that in colder climates two pieces of wood would just about eliminate any “underfloor heating” the nuc would gain by sitting on a strong hive.  1/8^th inch hardware cloth screens were suggested.

4) Screens worry me: debris from the nuc would rain down on the strong hive.

So after a bit of head scratching, I came up with a design for a “hive separator” and Ian, my woodworker husband, made a few.  The design has its flaws, some of which you’ll see in the photos.  The flaws will be remedied when he makes the next batch.

THE BASIC DESIGN:

The design was based on a bottom board, and the flaws in that will soon become apparent, but they could all be worked around

Below the Bottom Screen of Nuc

The top rim should be 2 inches tall. (The photo shows an early design, the top rim was not tall enough, so I put an extension on these: a 1.5 inch “collar”).  The bottom screen of the nuc will sit on this platform.

Tiny holes – one-eighth inch – are drilled through the board to allow for heat to flow upward from the strong hive below

1/8th inch holes

Because of the design flaw, I add a “collar” that brings the drop below the nuc’s bottom screen to two inches.

The 2 inch drop is in case there are varroa.  I have read that varroa cannot climb up 2 inches, who knows why.  Hopefully just they just lack the will power.

The collar has propolis on it because the collars are normally used on top of hives during feeding and for winter insulation. They just happened to work here as well.

Collar Plus Rim = 2 inches

Insulation is placed around the edges of the top 2 inch rim, in hopes of keeping the warm air in the “tower”.

Insulation in Place

All of the above sits under the nuc’s bottom board and above the strong, lower hive.  The separator replaces the top of the lower hive.

Set Up from Strong Hive's Front

This is a demonstration of what the set up would look like from the front of the strong hive.  I built it up in my hayloft/work area because all the hives are under cover now.

The blue box at the bottom would be the top box of the strong hive.  I only use westerns, so each strong hive overwinters in 3 or 4 boxes.

The two little holes in the separator are the lower hive’s top entrances.  I have found two small bee-size holes (7/16th inch) work well, get much larger around here and the mice will get in!

Above the separator is the 2 inch extension collar – the new separators will have the correct depth (I think I keep saying that to remind myself to do it).

The blue above the extension is the BACK of the nuc’s bottom screen.  All my hives are on bottom screens (one-eighth inch hardware cloth).  No solid bottoms are on any of my hives.  The nuc faces the opposite way than the strong hive.

The yellow box represents where the nuc would be.  Yellow’s pretty until it gets dirty.

The Back of the strong hive; Front of the nuc

The view from the nuc’s front entrance, which is just at the top of the frame.

The black square is a covered hole. The extensions are collars that are normally used for top entrances, feeding, and insulation.

The piece of unpainted wood is a design flaw. It’s an opening where no opening should be.

The removeable cover: This opens the back of the strong hive, just above the top bars. I worry when winters get longer than normal, and like to shove in a little bee candy “just in case”.  Sometimes they eat it.  Most of the time they ignore it.  But it makes me feel better.  The hole in the cover is screened: it’s a ventilation concept that seems to work (but that’s another story)

How to get in

This is with the feed slot open. Normally you would see the tops of the frames, but that was a little too much to set up for this demonstration.

A RECAP:

The bottom area of the board:

• The design allows for 3/8 inch of space above the lower hive.
• The lower hive’s top entrance, a 7/16-inch hole is at the front.
• The back is a removable wooden slat.  This allows me to slide bee candy in for the lower hive if the winter lasts a month or two longer than expected.  (Each hive goes into winter with 60-70lbs of honey and pollen, but I still worry –To say I worry about things is like saying the sun rises: it always happens).

The holes:

• They are 1/8 inch (or less): bees cannot pass through
• They allow the passage of warm air from the lower box to the upper box (the nuc)

The top area of the board:

• The two inches is so that if there are mites in the nuc, when the bees clean themselves, they will fall to onto the board (and hopefully, not down onto the lower hive).  It is said that mites cannot climb back up into a hive after a two-inch fall.
• The edge insulation is my attempt not to lose too much heat as the warmth travels through that 2 inch “mite drop” zone

Both Nuc and Strong Hive Have or Share:

Both the nuc and the strong hive have top entrances

Both are wrapped in tarpaper

A piece of asphalt roofing sheet “rain hat” is secured to the hive with sash cord.

Strong hives overwinter in at least 3 westerns.

Nucleus hives overwinter in 2 westerns.  (I only use westerns in my operation because I can’t lift anything bigger.)

Ready For Winter

It makes quite the tower when it’s done, because it is a stack of 5 westerns.

I also use the separators in the spring.  Here nucs are being kept warm on top of strong hives prior to their move to new bee yards.

That’s the news from Brookfield Farm Bees and Honey in Maple Falls, Washington.

How do you overwinter nucs?  I’m always interested to find a better way.

I thought of peg board (predrilled holes) for the board between the two areas. I don’t really like to drill holes.  But Ian, the woodworker husband, says that the peg board would disintegrate in our damp weather.  Any ideas?

Tower of Beeswax

The bees are all tucked in for the winter, which leaves time to do those little chores, like render the beeswax.  The wax from my hives soon becomes a part of the salves and lip balms I make and sell.  I wouldn’t make these with other wax, because I know the wax from my hives comes from hives in which no chemicals nor antibiotics are used.

Wax is a sponge.  It will absorb any chemical that is placed in the hive.  That’s one of the problems now in frames from hard chemical operations: the residues have built up over the years so many of the frames in those bee yards have multiple chemicals embedded in them.  But that’s another story that was covered by Jennifer Berry in Bee Culture Magazine back in 2009.

My beeswax comes from three places: 1) Cappings wax: the wax that is cut off the front of each honey frame before extraction.  2) Drained slum gum : an awful word for the wax that float to the top of the buckets after extraction.  This is labeled off prior to bottling the honey.  3) Comb that the bees sometimes build in their top collar, which has a top entrance.  Usually a piece of burlap cloth stops them building, but some hives just see it as a place to free-form build.  (I’ve only got a picture of the comb, because I didn’t think about the blog until I was already working.)

Comb in the Pot

I have a very low-tech method of beeswax rendering. Where larger operations have a very nice, machine , and bee operations in warm areas have wonderful solar melters  ( No Public Domain photos to be had for these).

I have my husband’s old 4-gallon capacity jam pot.  He doesn’t mind, he’s too busy making furniture and bee gear to make jam – that is a bit sad, he made good jam.

To begin, I place about an inch of water into the bottom of the pot.  The pot is placed over a low heat on the shop burners.  Wax is slowly added to the water, which I stir with a thin piece of clean wood. It’s important to make sure that the melting wax/water mix does not come to a boil.

Please note, beeswax is very flammable.  I keep a fire extinguisher near by although I’ve never had to use it.  If you render wax it is very important to never walk away from the stove when wax is being melted. This year I had not only the extinguisher, but I also had a supervisor watching my every move: Aggie, my 18 years old barn cat (she now directs the kittens).

I render wax in a special room in the barn we call the “kitchen.”  It’s where I also make pollen subsitute, syrups, and, in hard years, bee candy.  Wax rendering can be very messy.

It’s not only messy, but it’s a pretty ugly process as well. There is propolis, bee cocoons, wax moth cocoons and silk, and even little wax moth larva that have been born while the comb wax has been hanging in bags through the year.  Cappings wax is pretty clear, but the slum gum adds bits of honey that still adheres to it into the mix.  It never ceases to amaze me that this glop will soon be a clean pillar of wax.

Not Very Pretty Yet

Skimming is a Necessity

As the wax melts, all of these things and more will float to the top.  This is skimmed off using a spoon.  When all the wax is melted and debris cleared from the top of the pot, it is time to pour.

The first pour is done though a sieve with three layers of cheesecloth into another pot.  This catches a lot of the icky stuff.  In the photo you can see some wax moth larvae that have met their demise.

First Filtration

Wax Moth Larva & More

Second Beeswax Pour

For the next pours I used clean milk cartons as wax containers.  I like them because when the wax sets up you can just peel the carton away

Each carton is topped with three layers of cheesecloth.  I have used paint strainers in the past, which work quite well, but I like the cheesecloth because the holes on each layer are not lined up with each other, creating a better filter. Plus, the waxy cheesecloth makes great fire starters.

I pour the wax two times.  The first pour goes from the pot through the cheesecloth into a milk carton, and then I remove that cheesecloth, and pour that container of wax/honey/water through another 3-layers of cheesecloth into a second milk carton.  Then I let it sit.

It has been cold here, so the wax completely set up overnight.  In fact, it started to set up during the final pour.

All The Beeswax

The solidified wax floats on top of the honey and water in the carton.  So, the peeling off of the milk carton is best done outside or over a sink.

It can be a lot more than this

It can be even more than this

It will just scrape off

The finished wax will have a thin layer of debris stuck to the bottom, where the wax met the water. No matter what you pour your wax into, this debris will be embedded in the bottom.  Thus the smaller the base of the container, the more concentrated the debris, which is why I use milk cartons.  No debris should be inside the wax block.

The bottom debris can just be scraped or cut off of the block of wax, and there you have it – after a few hours of melting, filtering, filtering again, and letting it set up it’s done.   It’s a lot of time, which is why good beeswax does not come cheap.

Beeswax - Now Pretty

Side note: if you render wax and find that once it sets up there is debris in side the wax, or it is not as clean as you wish, DO NOT DESPAIR. Just place the solid block in the pot with an inch of water over a low flame and do it all again: melt, skim, and filter; the same way you did before – you just need at least one more pass.   How do I know this?  Well very little in life works out perfectly the first time we try something – after all that’s often the most important learning moment.

Kind of like watching paint dry

How did the supervisor feel about it all? As you can see she felt the process to be a bit dull.  Her second in command “Mack-The-Knife” (aka Macky) felt that reading was a far better use of his time.

Beaumont : one of my packgoats

August beekeeping in my area is slow.  This is the northwest corner of Washington state, as August arrives, there are still flowers to be had: fireweed, golden rod, thistles, and pearly everlastings all bloom around this time, but just enough to fill a super in a good year.  So August is when I put an empty super on each hive and start walking into the wilderness.  Or so it is in most years.  This year was a little different.

The 10 months of rain (no joke) that have made for a disastrous honey year here, left deep snow still standing at the 5,000 foot level in the mountains.  I don’t generally care for snow hiking.  I’m willing to put up with a bit of snow in mid-October, but not in August.  I must admit pushing though snow with a full pack on my back does not sing to me.  The pack goats are also in agreement that they would rather not sink belly deep into snow – somehow it takes all the fun out of walking for them as well.

So what’s a Beekeeper to do?  Tour Washington state in short walks: from the desert to the mountain rivers to the ocean.   What follows is a sample of my meanderings in Washington State

The Desert:  Dry Falls, Central Washington.

Dry Falls, Washington

This walk was done on the way route to pick up honey from John and Martha Kraus. (Kraus Honey Company Link) The Kraus Honey Company honey house is in Fruitdale, Washington, near where the Spokane River meets the Columbia River.

Dry Falls are the bones of what was possibly the largest waterfall that ever existed on earth.   The top rim is 3.5 miles long.  The drop is over 400 feet – 10 times the size of Niagra (according to wikipedia).  When the waters flowed, they are thought to have churned though here at around 65 miles per hour.  That was a while back: about 20 thousand years ago.

Bumblebee & Ladybug

During the last ice age a ice damn created a massive lake in Montana, “Lake Missoula”.  As warming began, that damn melted or floated, releasing the waters southwest into what i

s now Washington, Idaho, and Oregon.  When another ice damn melted, the waters turned and headed down the Columbia River, leaving Dry Falls high and dry.  Today, it’s a sculpted area of immense beauty.  High rock outcroppings, lovely pools, and wildflowers – which draw an amazing array of insects.

The Mountains:  Cougar Ridge and Skyline Divide: Whatcom County Washington.

PK, packgoat in training (a babe)

These are easy: they are both about an hour from my farm.   Cougar Ridge provided one of the few walks that the baby pack goats could do this year because it lies a bit lower than the snow level.  Skyline Divide was a fast late-season walk between rainstorms, which have arrived early this year. Both of these lovely ridges are arms of Mt. Baker, our active volcano that is the second most glaciated mountain in Washington.

The Oceans: The Qyullayute Needles, Olympic Peninsula, Washington western shore of the

Qyullayute Needles : Olympic Peninsula

This is the western shore of the Olympic Peninsula.  It’s called the southern walk.  I did the northern walk about 2 years ago.  The formations are mainly sandstone and siltstone. The wear of weather and tides have carved them into amazing crags that rise like fantasy towers from the ocean.   In the fog they can seem like another world. At low tide they and their tide pools can be explored, as long as one keeps an eye on the time: the tide comes in quickly here.

(You can find more geology details about this exquisite area at  this link: Geology of Western Olympic Peninsula Link.

A churning ocean, astounding rocks and stone towers, are only part of the attractions of this coast.  Wildlife surrounds you as you travel: gulls, cormorants, bald eagles, sea lions, and river otters (those took me by surprise – river otters in the ocean, who knew?). And, of course, bumblebees.

All this beauty comes at a price.  The headlands that jut out into the ocean must often be climbed rather than walked around.  Climb is the correct word.  In each location there is a rope, with knots in it.  “Walkers” must pull themselves up walls of mud that can tower 200 feet high, while carrying one’s pack.   So along with the joys of the area, one gets the challenge of a climb.  I admit it, I could do without that challenge.

That’s the travelogue: Washington, land of adventures: from the deserts, to the mountains, to the oceans.  A glorious place to live, and, usually, to keep bees.  Let’s hope for less rain next year.

Ready to Spin

I have a wonderful 20-frame Maxant extractor.  It is well made, works great, and easy to handle.  The only problem I have with it is that the tap is higher than the very last bit of honey.  Honestly, I don’t see how it could be otherwise, unless a tap was put right at the center bottom of the tank.  I bet that would cause some problems in either how the extractor would work or how they can be made.

After a bit of pondering, I figured that if the extractor was small, like a bucket, I would tilt it.  I presented my dilemma to my husband, Ian, he of the woodworking side of the family, and he came up with a nice sturdy stand that can be tilted, extractor and all, once the majority of the honey has drained.

Going For The Last Drop

His solution was to add a second piece of wood on top of the extractor stand.  This piece of wood is hinged to the top of the stand.  The extractor is held in place by a tight ring of wood screwed into the top piece of wood.

The Details

When the process if finished and most of the honey is drained, I can lift the back of the top piece of wood, push some 4X4’s under it (we always have off-cuts of wood around here), then let the remaining honey drain out.

Do you have any innovations that you’ve come up with in the honey house or in beekeeping that you’d like to share?  Please do, we can all learn from each other.

Up-River Hives in Summer

This has not been a good year for honey in this northwest corner of Washington state: ten months of rain is not good for beekeeping. I did manage to harvest a very small amount of honey from my more westerly, farmland, bee yards.   However, the majority of the honey from these hives went into the up-river hives, which were lacking enough food for the winter.

The Two-Finger Lift

No, this is not rude, just rudimentary.   The way I knew that my up-river hives were lacking stores was to lift them with two fingers.  If I can reach under a hive and pick it up using my index and middle fingers, there’s way too little honey in that hive.

Brookfield Farm hives down-river at Spring Frog Farm at Holistic Homestead, WA

Sadly, the up-river hives were very easy to lift.  Because of this, I began to pull honey from the westerly farmland hives first.  These hives didn’t deliver a lot, but they had some to spare.  As I worked my way up-river, the majority of these frames were put into hives that lacked stores.  Yes, I could have fed more sugar syrup, but honey is better for the bees.

How I Balance Hives:

All my bees live in westerns.  I can lift a full western, but I have issues with deeps and three-quarter hives.  So, all my hives over winter in three westerns.  When I pull honey, I do it frame by frame.  It’s slower, but I average about 50-60 hives, so I have the time.

If the bottom western is left alone.  Usually it is filled with pollen and brood.  If the bees like it like that, it’s fine by me.  The next western, if manipulated, has the remaining brood with honey on each side of it.  The top western is primarily honey.  If there is a lot of brood, I’ll leave a fourth super on top, with honey.

Winter Frame Formation

Now these are not packed side to side.  My hives over winter in 8 frame formation.  I might use follower boards in the 1^st and 10^th positions.  Follower boards are simply pieces of wood the same size as frames of honey.  Or if I run out, I’ll put in empty drawn comb.  If there is a fourth super on the winter hive, that will have only 6 honey frames in it.  These are in the center, with follower boards on either side.

This configuration has worked over the years.  When I first began, it soon became clear that my bees never would go to the 1^st and 10^th frames if there was honey there.  Our winters are very cold, and damp.  I figure by November the bees never leave their cluster, and simply eat their way up through the hive.   You can find a blog post I wrote on research about temperature and cluster size here:

Extraction Made Depressingly Quick

A Darker Honey This Year

With the hives balanced, often through donations of honey frames from stronger hives, there was little honey left to extract: three and one-half supers.  Quite a change from last year when I had the extractor going for three days straight.  It took longer to set up, and then clean the extractor than it did to actually extract the honey.  The honey, however, is delicious: one of nature’s great gifts.

yep, that's all there was left to extract

Interesting Observations From Bad Times

Nature is always interesting, if frustrating at times.  Some of the up-river hives had enough stores for winter, but nothing to offer up to extraction.  These hives were simply left as they were.  No honey was put in; no honey was taken out.  I have never before gone into a winter without manipulating a hive, because the hives have always had extra honey.

Next spring will be interesting.  The hives that were simply left alone were not in the textbook formation of “how to set your hives for winter.” Some had honey stores above the brood; some had brood all the way to the top (I over winter in three westerns).  But I figured: they must know what they’re doing better than I do.  I certainly hope I’m right that they are right, but I shall see come spring.

The bees have traditionally shown me that they really do know much more about themselves than I know about bees.  This makes perfect sense to me.

How about your bees?

The weather’s been nuts all over the world this year.  Have you had any new experiences because of the weather?  If so what did you, or your bees do?  Do share, we can all learn together.

Rain by Anna Cervova

Rain and Bees, not a good mix:

2011 has not been a good year for honey in the northwest corner of Washington State.  10 months of rain does not make for a good harvest.   The rains affected the honey harvest of nearly every beekeeper in the northern Puget Sound area (northwest Washington state).  At Brookfield Farm in Maple Falls,  pulling honey this year was a vastly different experience from any in my decade or more of beekeeping.

Brookfield Farm Bee Yard Locations:

Brookfield Farm Hives at Spring Frog Farm

I have three new bee yards in Whatcom County.  They are in wonderful farms about ten to fifteen miles down river from my bee yards in the foothills of Mt. Baker.   That may not sound far, but around here climate, weather, and plants can change drastically in that distance.  These new yards are on the flatland farms.   My up-river hives are nestled in gardens and fields between northfork of the Nooksack River and mountains, or perched on low ridges.

A few of Brookfield Farm's "up-river" hives

The mountain hives normally produce a very light honey: fireweed, snowberry, thistles from the late season, with an undertone of Big Leaf and Vine Maples from the spring.  Mid-season adds a plethora of flowers from self-heal to thimbleberry. This year these hives produced enough honey to feed themselves and put a small portion away for winter.

My more westerly bee yards produced a dark, robust honey. It’s the color of espresso.  The taste is a heady, heavy berry flavor, blackberry, raspberry, and blueberry, with hints of the arugula, brassicas, and other northern crops.   These yards produced enough for winter stores plus extra for their sister bees up-river and a bit for extraction.

Dark Honey from Brookfield Farm

Why some hives produced a surplus while others needed honey:

Location, location, location – it affects beekeeping as well as real estate.  The closer and more constant the pollen and nectar, the faster the bees could collect their harvest and bring it to the hives.

At the slightest hint of clear weather, sun or a light drizzle, my bees would head for the flowers, then dive back into the hive.  The problem was that often one or two days of lighter weather (I won’t say sun), were followed by a week or two of downpour.  The bees could not get out again during that time.  So they ate the food that they had collected.  Logical, of course, but that meant they often had no stores laid by.  One friend lost hives to starvation in the middle of an agricultural area this summer.  The bees just simply could not get out to get the food just beyond their hives.

When the weather did clear, my bees down in the farmlands had a far easier time of locating and harvesting their food than those in the mountains.  At the farms the bees could “walk to work”.  The food is directly before them, or in a near-by field with few obstacles to slow their flight.

In the mountains, after a week or so trapped in the hive by rains, the bees would need to find the new locations flowers, then spread the news in the hive, and get the foragers out there.  All before it would rain again. The rains would often stay for a week or more, by which time new flowers would need to be located.  A lot of time searching, and often for flowers beaten down by the rains.  Nectar and pollen were in short supply.

The result was that by fall, many of the up-river hives needed frames of honey, which were provided by excess honey from the hives in farm bee yards.

It has been an “interesting” year at Brookfield Farm Bees and Honey.  “Interesting” as in the curse “May you live in interesting times.”

Next week: Pulling what excess honey there was and balancing the hives at Brookfield Farm, Maple Falls, WA.