• Tag Archives honey
  • The Garden in September

    Lughnasa                                       Waning Artemis Moon

    The onions, red, yellow and white, are in the storage room ready to go on the wooden racks when I have a minute.  The honey, too, is on the bottom row of our shelving unit, collected in canning jars and resting in the boxes that held the canning jars in the store.  Kate’s just put up 7 packages of frozen kale and swiss chard, for use in the dead of winter when greens from the garden seem very special.  She’s also making applesauce from our six apple crop.  I picked them a bit too early for eating.  Chicken breasts and pie dough have been set out to thaw since I will make chicken and leek pot pie later today.  This is a busy time of year, but it is also a fun and satisfying time.

    The potato plants have not died back, so they await digging and drying and storage.  The garden of 2010 has begun to wind down.  I still have to plant garlic, mulch a few beds, weed the perennial flower beds and later plant the bulbs, but the number of tasks has begun to dwindle even though the size of some of them make a lot of work still left.


  • Bee Diary: Honey Extraction, Day 2

    Lughnasa                                       Waning Artemis Moon

    Artemis Hives have given up their surplus honey, all under the Artemis moon.  We started this morning with Kate putting a plastic drop cloth down on the deck while I went out to the colonies to see what was still there.  The divide had, as I expected, nothing.  That means, oddly enough, that they will need to be fed over the next few weeks before winter sets in.  The parent colony, the big dog as far as honey production, produced a good bit.  Two full supers plus maybe half of a third.  We’re well over three gallons now, probably closer to five.  I’ll get an exact count soon.

    Honey extraction has its straightforward side.  Take the full frames, stick them long side up in the honey extractor and turn it on.  If there is a significant amount of 400_honey-extraction_0239capping, there is an additional step, uncapping.  Kate did this chore with the electric uncapping knife.  We had at least one extractor run with 80% or more capped.  This honey was darker.  We can bottle it right out of the extractor after filtering.

    (Kate inspecting a frame to see if the honey has been extracted.)

    The rest had less to no capping.  That honey has a higher moisture content and, as I said yesterday, has to be heated to kill the yeast and thereby avoid fermentation.  The taste difference is insignificant to my palate.

    When we spun out the first six frames, all went well.  We emptied the extractor, took the honey in and Kate heated it.  By the time I brought the next two supers full of honey frames, however, the bees had found us.  It took a bit longer because we were further from the hive than the honey house (at least the building I’d intended to serve as a honey house.), but they found us.  After that, all sticky, sweet operations had numerous bees in attendance.  They were not aggressive, but they made the process a bit more nerve racking.

    Once again the heat caused sweat to cascade over my eyebrows and into my eyes, inside the bee suit where the eyes cannot be reached by hand.  I wore the bee suit because the bees are more defensive during honey removal.  Makes sense.  But that damned bee suit amps up the humidity and heat.  Not fun.

    We now have half-pint, pint and quart jars filled with an amber liquid, a sweet product made, collected and bottled right here at Artemis Hives.


  • Bee Diary: Honey in the Jar

    Lughnasa                                    Waning Artemis Moon

    The waning Artemis moon has a golden hue tonight, honey colored, as it sits on the northeastern horizon.  A band of clouds created two dark lines, parallel to each other and about a third of the way down.  It looked like a view of the moon from an ukiyo-e print.

    We have bottled our first honey.  Those four frames from the package colony, not even full frames at that, yielded almost a full gallon of honey.  We strained it through a coarse, medium and fine filter and put it into half pint jars for the most part.  It looks beautiful and very satisfying.  Artemis Hives has begun to produce.  I think I’ll tip a half-pint out in the woods to honor the namesake goddess.

    Tomorrow I’ll work first on the divide, since I know it has very little honey in the supers.  It plugged up the third hive box with honey back in late May, early June.  After that I’ll move to the parent colony.  The parent colonies produce the most honey because they are vigorous and are not storing honey for the next year.  It will be interesting to see how much we get from the parent colony since next year, if everything goes well, we’ll have two parent colonies and two divides.  Four colonies should produce plenty of honey for our own use and to give as gifts.

    It’s going to be hot with dewpoints in mid-70s.  That’s good for working with the honey because it flows well when the temperatures are high; that’s bad for working with the bees because I have to wear a veil at least.

    We bolted the honey extractor to the deck instead of using the honey house.  Did that for a couple of reasons.  First, it’s much further from the colonies and second, it’s much closer to the kitchen.  Also, the mess, and it is a messy process, can be contained with drop cloths.


  • Bee Diary: Honey Extraction

    06-27-10_package-colonyLughnasa                                   Waning Artemis Moon

    The honey extraction has begun.  Kate and I assembled the extractor this morning.  I am not at my best during the accomplishing of mechanical tasks and got a bit testy.  Kate gave me some space; reengaged.  Then I considered aligning myself with the flow of our day–instead of bucking it because I felt incompetent, got my head and heart back in connection and we solved a problem together.  The directions for attaching the power unit were, to be kind, vague.  Bordered on the non-existent, really.  Together, however, we figured out to raise the drive shaft far enough to makes its union with the industrial strength Baldor motor work tight.  It’s a work-around for now, but I’ll connect with the folks at Dadant and we’ll get it done right after we’re finished with the honey harvest tomorrow.

    I removed four frames from the package colony, a gift really, since its primary job this year was to grow into a parent colony that I can divide next spring.  The bees do not like it when you take their honey.  I have one sting to show for that.

    There were several lessons from the honey super removal.  First, I put the empty super that held the frames after I removed them from the hive in the wagon attached to the lawn tractor.  Worked well logistically for me, but I ended up with an inch deep and foot square pile of mad bees on the bed of the wagon.  I had to use the bee-brush to brush them all onto the ground.  That made them even less happy.  I realized that doing several colonies and working each colony in turn would result in one bee yard full of mad bees.

    So, tomorrow I will put the empty honey super on my standby, the wheel barrow with a wire dog crate door on it.  Don’t laugh.  It works.  That way the left over bees will be either in the wheel-barrow or on the ground, not in the wagon bed.

    Second, the package colonies frames were not 80% capped, so I had to heat the honey to 145 to kill yeast and avoid fermentation.  Heating the honey turned tricky when it climbed above 145 to 160. I’m sure the yeast are dead now, but I don’t know yet what we’ve done to the taste of the honey.

    Our extractor holds six honey super frames and we only put in four so that made balance a little tricky at first.  The extractor is very much like a washing machine, though the extracting baskets rotate rather than agitate.  It acted like a washing machine with a load of rugs, really gyrating at much above 60% speed.  So, we ran it at about 58%.  Took about 20-30 minutes.

    We got a lot of honey.  From four frames.  I’m thinking we may have more than I imagined. We’ll see tomorrow.


  • The Harvest Season

    Lughnasa                                               Full Artemis Moon

    Ragged.  Bug-ridden.  Tired out.  The garden needs attention, too.  Stole this one from a Star-Trib column this morning.  It’s true, though, that the garden has begun to head toward the compost pile.  That’s what harvest means, the plants die or die back and we take the seed pods or roots or stalks and leaves.  This year the harvest will include honey.

    The shiny stainless steel extractor, sans motor which is still on its way, now sits outside on our deck along with the plastic pail with its 200 micron filter and its 600 micron filter.  There is, too, a Rubbermaid commercial product which is an uncapping container over which we remove the covers on the honeycomb.  After uncapping, they go in the extractor.  After the extractor the honey gets filtered twice and then stored in a plastic pail while awaiting bottling.

    Also getting a big load of mulch today, more for the orchard and the vegetable garden.


  • Movin’ On

    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.


  • Bee Diary: August 6, 2010

    Lughnasa                                     Waning Grandchildren Moon

    Hive inspections today.  The package colony, the youngest of the three, began life here in late April.  Now it has three hive boxes full of brood and honey, a honey super full and has two near empties for the rest of what the summer offers.  I’m pleased I’ve gotten honey from this colony so soon.  The parent colony still has two full honey supers, a third nearing full and two near empties.  The divide has expanded itself to the necessary three hive boxes for overwintering, but early on filled the third hive box with honey.  Since then it has shown little interest in the two empty supers I put on a month or so ago.

    The upshot of all this, at this point, is that we will have honey.  How much depends on the nectar flow over the next couple of weeks, but enough to justify purchasing extracting equipment.  It also means that I have two strong parent colonies going into next spring, the divide and the package, assuming, that is, that they survive the winter.  My mentor indicated that some people “knock the old queen on the head” in a parent colony, then requeen it.  If I decide to do this, it would see me next spring–again, assuming winter survival–with three parent colonies.  That would mean that in May I would have six colonies instead of four.

    Right now four seems about right for what I’m trying to do.  I don’t have commercial intentions, though I may sell some honey.  I want honey for us, for friends and family, for gifts and I want to continue learning about bees.  I’ll decide over the next few weeks.

    After extracting the honey, I also have to check my bees for mites and nosema.  A bridge not yet crossed.

    Also spent time in the vegetable garden where I found my onion crop ready for harvest.  I pulled them out, whites reds and yellows, put them on another raised bed, now empty of its parsnips, so they can cure in the sun for three days.  Then, some weeks on a screen drying further and finally downstairs in the storage room cum shop.  Picked green beans from the plants I put in between the potatoes and also gathered in some swiss chard.  Greens tonight.  New potatoes aren’t ready yet.  I look forward to them.  Potatoes fresh from the garden are like a different vegetable.

    Under my new schedule I’m supposed to work out now, but I’m going to do it after the nap.  At 4:00 pm I claim an hour of my birthday present from Kate, a massage at the oddly named, Massage Envy.


  • Bee Diary: July 24, 2010

    Summer                                                 Waxing Grandchildren Moon

    Tried out my new Alexander bee veil.  It ties across the thorax with a string and has only covering for face and neck, preventing bees from crawling under the veil and from scrambling for a hit to the face.  Having suffered one of those I’m glad to have my face protected.

    The virtue of the Alexander is that it is much, much cooler than the bee suit, requiring no heavy upper body jacket.  The disadvantage, that I discovered today, is that bees can sneak in under the sweat shirt and sting  your wrist.  Next time I’m going to wear a long-sleeved t-shirt and maybe rubber bands at the wrists.

    Today, like last week, involved checking honey supers.  The package hive has begun to fill up the single honey super I added to it last week, so I added another super to it today and put on the queen excluder, which I forgot last week.  The parent colony has two supers pretty full, perhaps all the way, but the other three supers have little weight.  I don’t candlemoldwhether this is normal or light, though some folks seem to have several honey supers filled on older colonies.  I guess you get what you get.

    The divide, too, has made little headway into the honey supers.  The divide has already filled its top hive box with honey and could be “honey-plugged.”  Maybe I’ll have to reverse the hive boxes.

    Dave convinced me to start gathering bees wax, so I’ve begun scraping it off where it’s in excess, balling it up and bringing it inside.  I forget whether I mentioned getting a candle mold and candle-making accessories, but they came with the Alexander veil.  A late fall project.  I want to make enough candles to burn during the long night of the winter solstice.

    This is a bit easier stretch with the colonies.  It will be followed by a lot of extracting work.


  • He Lives

    Summer                                              Waxing Grandchildren Moon

    By God.  I’m beginning to feel human, here in my own skin, awake.  No, not enlightenment, in fact, I don’t even think I want enlightenment, but recovered.  Feels pretty damn good thank you.

    Had no takers on the Kachina spotlight.  I’m not a carnival barker for art.  When I go to a museum, I like to wander, reflect, not get pulled into a conversation by a stranger.  The tour, that’s something else.  People choose to go along, to have a companion who guides their experience.  I like that.

    The Anishinabe to Zapotec tour though had 10 including two docents.  We had a lively and interesting conversation about the Kachina, the house screen, the Valdivian owl, and Chalchiuhtlicue.  We finished with the Lakota ceremonial dress and the Whiteman.

    After the A to Z Roy Wolf brought two friends and Judy, his wife, to see the Matteo Ricci map.  We had a good conversation about it.  They all had Jesuit connections.

    Back home tuckered out from 2+ hours on my feet.  Long nap and out to eat with my sweetie.  We sat next to a table of 40-50 somethings who were out on a date.  The table talk included a lot about the scumbags they’d left and the things they didn’t do:  no dancing, no dining out in public and not anything normal like hanging out at the mall.  Wish I’d had a tape recorder or a note pad.

    Now I’m back with a few free days ahead, only a China tour coming up next week, a tour type I enjoy with a group, a Chinese language study class, I’ve done before.  Bee day looks like Sunday.

    Kate gave Ray, the kid who mows our yard, a packet of comb honey and promised him a jar when we extract.  He smiled.


  • The Odor Of Sanctity

    Summer                                    Waxing Grandchildren Moon

    Have you ever smelled fresh bees wax?  A smell that takes you right to the essence of the natural world.  It exudes a sense of well-being, freshness, vitality.  I harvested some honey today for the Woolly meal on Monday night.  The honey and the honey comb offer that same sensation; perhaps, as latter day Catholics might have said, it is the odor of sanctity.

    The experience this morning took me back to two other smell, for me equally enmeshed with the natural world as our obvious home.  The first one, of the longest standing for me, I experience in the  produce cooler at Cox’s Supermarket when I worked there as a boy.  This smell combined apple scents, oranges, bananas, lettuce, watermelon, whatever was in season into a perfume that drew me back often.  I would sneak away from stocking shelves or breaking down boxes, push the plunger that opened the door, step inside and be transported to paradise, a place where everything suggested abundance, nourishment and fine flavor.

    Another one of these scents came to me only this year as I harvested parsnips.  Lifting the tapered white parsnip out of the ground, I brought its roots, only just holding the parsnip in its intimate relationship with the soil, to my nose.  Ah.  Again, freshness, vitality, well-being.  It was as if, for a moment, I inhabited the parsnip’s underground world, the place where it truly lived.  There, with the scent, I could trace the connections between the parsnip and its source of nutrients in the soil around it; I could feel the back and forth of vegetable and soil as they interacted in a dance older than the oil beneath the Gulf, older than the iron ore on the range.

    Yes, as I think of it, the odor of sanctity is it, exactly.  The sacred blossoms into molecules that excite this oldest sense, the one that relates us most closely to the rest of our animal brothers and sisters.  The sacred emerges from the sophisticated work of the honey bee turning nectar into honey.  The sacred emerges from the fruits of the earth as they await transport to our tables.  The sacred emerges within the top layers of  soil, that thin web of living things that supports the plants from which we all take our sustenance.  Yes, the sacred emerges in these places, and it sends out an aroma to draw attention to itself.