How to Rob Your Bees of Their Honey

I must begin with a disappointment.  We lost one of our hives to moths…

"It happens to everyone," says our beekeeper mentor friend Mr. Dover, a local honey-selling, bee-keeping extraordinaire. He has over 70 hives on his property and he lost 30 this year to moths.  "Once they get in, there's no getting them out."  

We didn't even know we had moths until a few days ago when we went to rob the honey.  Last I checked, the hive was great…I spotted the queen, and our supers were FULL of honey!!  This was the one hive of our three that had 2 supers on it, both loaded with sweet honey.  Our other 2 hives only have one super. This was our strong hive as well!  I always was able to spot the queen, the bees were always plentiful, and there was always good larve production happening and the supers were well organized with honey production happening on all 9 racks.  Here are some pictures of what those nasty moths did to 18 months of hard work from this colony.

Well, at least our hens had a heyday eating all those moths and their larve!!

We were blessed to be able to rob the honey from one of our other hives!  This was quite the first time experience, as everything has been with farming!  We opened the hive and smoked the bees to calm them down.  I removed the   entire super box and took it with me to the barn.  There were still some bees on it, but as I took each rack out I gave it a good bang on the side of the barn…that got rid of the bees! We recieved council from our friend, Mr. Dover, and he taught us how to build our own honey strainer for less than $30!  No need to buy expensive extractors!  Very simple method:

2 five gallon buckets

 -one with a spicket put on the bottom and the top lid inner part cut out

 -one with 1/8th inch holes drilled all over the bottom

Method: put the bucket with all the holes drilled on the bottom on top of the other bucket and let it rest in the top that was cut out.  Into the top bucket cut out the honey from the supers.  Ben has taken an interest in the bees so he helped me with this.  These perfectly cut pieces of wax and honey we saved to put in our jars.  See all the white caps?  That's how you know the honey is ready to be taken!

Next, break all the caps.  Again, no need for expensive equipment…just a cheap pair of gloves and some good old fashioned squeezing!

 Put the top on the bucket and let it sit for 2-3 days to strain out of the wax.  See the comb we kept in the jars?  Yum!

 After a few days, fill your jars!  We robbed 9 frames from one hive and ended up with 2 gallons!!  Very thankful for every last drop of it!  The wax remaining in the top bucket is going to be placed in a homemade glasstop box where the sun will melt it and all the impurities will be strained out. 
This is considered raw organic honey because we did not heat it to purify it.  We didn't even filter it!  The more wax bits and pollen the better!…more health benefits with all that!    A bit of wisdom we have learned…honey cannot be labeled non-GMO because there is no way to guarantee the bees have not taken from GMO seeds.  Bees have been recorded to travel up to 90 miles to get pollen!  Their normal range to travel is 3-5 miles, but they will do whatever is necessary to survive!  If you are in need of supplies to make this contraption visit www.brushymountainbeefarm.com

Farm Happenings

We have added to our goat herd…actually I should say we have replaced a buck.  In the summer we were blessed to receive 7 female purebred Alpines.  Alpines are a larger goat, and the 3 bucks we have are a smaller breed.  The one we have replaced was a purebred dwarf Nigerian and the other two are our babies, born in February, that have dwarf Nigerian in them.  The females have been in heat for the past month…Pongo (the one now gone) even broke through the fencing to get to them so he could "do his duty"…ahem.  Well, after allowing all 3 bucks a chance to do their thing with the girls in heat we quickly realized after observing (yes, this is something you have to do when you own animals :) ) that none of them could mount the girls properly because the girls are all too big!  Our neighbor, Mr. Jerry, who is a goat owner himself, suggested we get an Alpine buck to mate all the gals.  He actually personally knows the owner of Split Creek Goat Farm.  So after a phone call, we were on our way to pick up this handsome guy!!

 He wasted no time in becoming familiar with his new gals!

He's handsome, isn't he?!  We will put the females in with him when we notice they are in heat.  We are going to try and spread the mating out so we have a good supply of milk too.  The addition of baby bucks to sell will be a good supply of income to our farm since we now have purebred females and a pure buck.  Of course we will need to purchase another Alpine buck to mate any females that come from him.

Graycie and Ellie's sunflowers have gone to seed!  We have left them on the stems to dry, and now that they are wilting we are going to do a couple different things with them.

We cut all the heads off.  We're going to keep several to continue to dry them and save the seed for next year.  This year we only planted a handful in a box, but we have decided to plant them along the entire fenceline next year…it will be beautiful!!  Can't wait!

We are going to feed some to the hens as well!  Off Ellie goes!

We don't let anyting go to waste here!  We pulled the stalks up and are giving them all to the goats!

 They loved it!  I bet the stalks tasted sweet like the seeds!

This was actually really fun!…we rubbed the sunflower heads and let the seeds fall out everywhere.  The hens were appreciative, as you can see!

I didn't even notice Ellie dipping hers in the waterer until I posted this picture…ha!!

A bit time consuming, but a fun learning experience :)

Big brother Ben telling Ellie how to do it…she did her best ;)

Now that the kids have shared a treat with the hens it's time to collect eggs!  Seeing so many hens in the pictures you would think we are getting a lot of eggs every day, but all the reddish hens, our cinnamon queens, are still considered pullets.  They are not mature enough to lay eggs yet.  We should start getting eggs from them in February.  We have 35 laying hens total right now so when they do start giving eggs we will be getting quite a few!!  And they will be for sale :)

We checked our 2 bee hives today.  One colony has loaded up with honey…15 frames were full!  And it tastes sooo good!  The weaker colony only had 7 frames of honey stored.  We will be feeding them both over the winter with sugar water.  Everything we have read has said to do so.  Neither hive had a queen though!  No brood!  Not sure how we lost both queens AGAIN, but both colonies successfully replaced their leader last time, I'm sure they can do it again.  We will be seeking advice on what to do about this dilema since it's winter and it could possibly take a greater toll on the colonies not having a queen to be laying brood.  Here you can see all the honey capped off, stored for winter.

So thankful for all we have here on our farmstead, and we LOVE sharing all we are up to with everyone :)

Preparing for Backyard Bees

A good investment for any homestead is bees.  Benefits include pollination of your garden, honey and beeswax.  Back in November we ordered 2 colonies.  Each colony comes with 3 pounds of bees (approx. 3,000 of them!) and a queen.  We were a tad unprepared due to momma's lack of educating herself (woops!)  

You should have your bee boxes set up and ready before you pick up your bee colonies.  We didn't.

One great thing about having a large family is this...many hands equal light work.  It's so very true.  What would've taken a few days from just one or two people working, we finished in less than 2 hours!

Here is what we learned that evening...

A hive consists of many elements.  Many.  And it all had to be put together or painted before the bees could be installed.

1)bottom board 

2)entrance reducer 

3)brood box

4)frames to hold the larve and eventually honey that go in the brood box

5)foundation to put in the frames for a new hive.  They are made from beeswax and give the bees something to start building on.

6)queen excluder.  This is a metal frame that keeps the queen below in the brood box.  She cannot fit through the slats, and thus cannot lay eggs in the upper boxes where honey is stored.

5)a feeder for winter months.  There are several types...we are trying 2 different ones; a top feeder and a plain old ziploc bag

6)top

Everyone took part and it was quite the learning process...talk about real live science class!!!

Ben is removing a wood slat from the frame so that daddy can add the foundation.  Once Jason places the foundation in he tacks the wood slat back in place to hold it in.

Caitlin and Graycie's job was to paint the boxes.  This is not absolutely  necessary and we would've prefered the wood to be natural so the hive can "breathe" better, but after talking to many different experienced beekeepers they all gave the same piece of advice...paint them so they last for years.  Only the outside was painted, first with a oil based primer, then with regular latex paint.

The next morning the kids and I brought all the components outside and picked a SUNNY spot to assemble them.  There are beetles that will invade the hive if you put it in a shady spot.  We put the hives up on bricks to make it easier for us to get into them.

10 frames belong in each brood, but the method we are using to get the bees in the hives requires a space for their box they came shipped in.  In 5 days when we check on them, the box will be removed and the rest of the frames installed. 

Once the bees get established in their box there are several different options for building the hive vertically.  For now, we only got an addition for 1 brood...a "shallow super".  It's called a "super" because that's where the super honey is stored!  There were 3 different sizes, we went with the smallest for now.  

Once the hives are 80% established, meaning when we check on them 8 of the 10 frames are full of larve, we will need to add a "super" to each hive.  The only reason why we added 1 super at the beginning is for a feeding source (we are placing a ziploc bag of sugar water and it needs a place to be). 

Here daddy is explaining the process of getting the queen bee out of that box that is full of worker bees!!  Pretty tricky!  

Our 2 colonies

Being new to this, and considering the investment these bees are, we did not want to screw this up!  So we decided to call upon a friend who has experience...Ben the Bee man! (he goes to our chruch!)  What a blessing to have a friend who is willing to take time out of his day to come install our bees!!  Thanks Ben!

The queen has been removed from the big box and is still in her own separate small box...the worker bees have to eat her out of the box!  It is corked with sugar and once they eat all the sugar she is free!  Her box was attached to one of the frames with a rubberband.  The box that the colony of bees came in is then put beside it, open, so they can all come out...you have to work fast!!  Sorry for the lack of pictures but it was so intriging I forgot to look through my lens!!  Here Jason is placing the queen excluder on top of the brood for the ziploc bag of sugar water to sit on.  

 And there you have it!!  Our 2 honey bee hives!  We will check back in 5 days to be sure the queens were both released and the worker bees are starting to build.  The day after we did all this we were outside trimming our peach trees and noticed the bees all over the flowers blooming on it!!  They already feel "at home" :)

This post linked to the barn hop
and frugal days sustainable ways #67