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  • Harvest Day

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Lughnasa                                                      Waxing Harvest Moon

    Yesterday during the honey harvest (before the swarm) activity shifted among pulling frames from honey supers, delivering them for uncapping (Kate), getting them set in the extractor and going downstairs to work on Mark’s Saudi visa.  Shifting from the concrete tasks of honey to the abstract and electronic tasks associated with the visa application caused some mental whiplash.

    We had a few setup problems.  In fastening the extractor to the deck (again) we positioned the rack so we had to work with it in the rear, clumsy but not impossible.  After we got it in place, we loaded it up with fresh frames full of honey.

    Turned it on.  Nothing moved except the electric motor.  Neither Kate nor I are what I would call mechanical geniuses so we dithered with it, trying this and that, until we discovered it needed the top snugged against one side to allow the motor to mate with the rod connected to the centrifuge.  After that the extraction moved along as  planned.

    Not sure on the total yet but we have at least double last year’s harvest, maybe more.  Now, though, we have to bottle it and get its moisture content checked.  Anything with a moisture content below 19.6 (if I recall correctly) is grade A honey and will keep forever though it may crystallize.  Just warm it up and it will become liquid again.

    Honey with too much moisture will start to ferment.  This may be ok with you.

    The harvest took from around 10 am until 3:45 or so.  It was at that point that I decided to test my bee’s perimeter defense with my head.


    📂This entry was posted in Bees 📎and tagged

  • Movin’ On

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Lughnasa                                Waxing Artemis Moon

    This feels like the last day of this illness.  Kate thinks I picked up the original in the hospital, so its nasty behavior could reflect its origin. Wishing it gone.

    Back to the garden, the Latin, the novel, Sierra Club work with a long stretch of here time.  Just waiting on the extraction equipment to arrive and then we’ll create a true honey house.  I plan to turn Mark Odegard’s design for our honey labels into a metal sign for the honey house.  I’m also thinking t-shirts and baseball caps.

    A quiet time bee wise, just waiting for the bees to finish doing their work in the supers.  Saw one gal working today on the Russian sage.  Each time I’m out there and a bee is there too; it moves me, a true companionship with the natural world, with insects, of all things.

    We paid my annual premium for long-term care insurance.  To talk about “my” long-term insurance feels a little creepy, even if it is sensible.


    📂This entry was posted in Aging Bees 📎and tagged

  • Late June Hive Inspection

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Summer                        Waxing Summer Moon

    Mark and Elise came over today.  We wandered through the garden and the orchard, followed by Rigel and Vega.  They licked and pressed and jumped.  New people!  New people!  Oh, boy!  Oh, boy!  New people!  Rigel and Vega found Leif and Tate and Tate’s twin really, really interesting.  Baby head!  Baby head!  Oh, boy!  Oh, boy!

    Mark and I went out to the hive and popped the lid after suiting up.  The smoker worked better today, but I’ve still not got it down.  There are a lot of bees.  I thought so, but Mark confirmed it.  There are lots of brood, plenty of honey and a few uninhabited queen cells.  We scraped and checked each of the 20 frames, leaving two frames out to insert into the new box we put on top.  The hive is now three boxes high, its maximum.

    Next week or so, the honey supers go on the third box.  About half the size of a hive box the supers fill up with honey.  They are the work product that goes into the centrifuge for extraction.  A typical super has about 30 pounds of honey.  Seems like a lot to me.

    Mark finds the bees fascinating per se, the honey a bonus that sometimes pays for the bees and the equipment in a given year.  I agree.  The hive construction project alone interests me.  The six sided cells, the propolis, drone, worker and queen cells, the making of honey and its storage reveal a life way and a life form unlike any we contact in the usual day to day.  There is more, too: the queen and her squadron of drones, hopeful suitors, all but one of whom will live and die unfulfilled, the solitary life of the queen, moving from cell to cell squeezing out egg after fertilized egg, the workers who build the cells and scout out food, coming back to communicate in a well known  complicated dance.

    Many bee keepers work without suits and gloves.  Honey bees that survive our winters have a docile temperament and are not as defensive as the ordinary person would imagine, though Mark says they get more protective in the fall when the beekeeper begins to take the honey.   This might seem a bit cruel, but in fact the bulk of the honey, say 80-90 pounds, remains in the hive boxes and has enough nourishment for the hives to over winter.


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