*busy busy little bees

Bees are buzzing all around!  You may recall if you have been reading for a while, that we added our first hive to our farm property a little over a year ago.  Here in our small town we have the blessing of a local bee supply store with a very knowledgeable gentleman who is excited to share and help new bee keepers get started.  Beekeeping has been quite fascinating for Eric and I.  We have fallen in love with the whole process of beekeeping.  Well I will speak for myself, I love it!  I feel most happy when I am working our hives. 

Early this spring, a year later we decided to split our hive (this is important to do to a strong, large hive - or they will split on their own).  We split our Rosemary Hive and then we had it plus the split, Lavender Hive.  I have never seen a live swarm. A swarm is when a over crowded hive naturally "splits".  Part of the bees and the queen will leave to find a new home.  One day I was out checking out our two hives.. and I look over head in a nearby tree and see a swarm of bees!  On that day I marked off one of the things to do on my "bucket list".  I captured the hive and that is the story of how we now have three hives, Sage Hive.   This year our goal was to add one more rich vibrant hive to our property.  We had added two hives, but they were all  just starting to thrive - our main that had been split, the split and now this swarm.   Early on in the year we had put in an order for a nuc of bees from the local beekeeper.  I did pick them up several weeks after I caught the swarm and we now have 4 hives on our little farm property.  I have named the hives after some favorite herbs: Rosemary Hive, Lavender Hive, Sage Hive and Basil Hive.

 Isn't their work just fascinating? Amazing!  One of our hives will be ready to harvest in a month or so maybe.  You see the frame above has the comb all drawn out and nearly full of honey.  They have started to cap the top part of this frame. This means it is done! Of course, the whole frame will need to be capped before we steal harvest it.

We are new to beekeeping, meaning before a year ago, we did not keep bees. Honestly before a year ago, I had not even given it thought.  We are novices with 4 hives, in one year. If we can do it, you can do it!  We have read, researched and read more. Digested it. Now we are putting it into action.   We have 6 acres of land and our bees sit on the back portion off to one side. However, I know a man in Ft. Walton Beach Fl who lives IN the city limits on a small lot with houses on both sides of him who has 4 hives in his little urban back yard.  Never a problem that he can report of.   Have you thought of keeping bees? Considered it?  As I have said before, you wont regret it!

Isn't he cute? This is my dear hubby.  I first worked the hive alone simply because my dear hubby was still in another state finishing up a job before he could join the family here in Florida.  I never work the hives now without him. It is one of those things we do together. I love that!  I can be a bit of a control freak.. so when he first started helping me, I didn't want to listen to anything he had to say.. as if I was a master?  That is not the case now at all, we now work together like the bees in the hive themselves. Just another benefit!

*home sweet home

This post is for my sister, Lori, she simply is in love with the life of a honey bee and asked me to share more knowledge that I have gained through working with our bees. So, here ya go Lori!

Honey bees are amazing creatures and keep me quite fascinated. The swarm that we captured this past week were as mild and laid back as you can ever ask a bee to be.  As I may have mentioned before and if you are aware of bee life you may know this, but a swarm of bees load up on honey just before they leave the hive behind. This makes them docile, they bellies are full. Bees normally swarm early spring due to an over crowded hive. I did not have one bee that I am aware of, land on me -anywhere. The story is not the same for the day that my dh and I split our main hive a few weeks ago. My bee suit was covered with bees, in fact, from a distance I am sure it looked like I had a polka dotted suit on. I have not been stung this season and only stung twice last year. I am feeling more and more comfortable about working with this amazing creatures.

The swarm that I shook down into our empty hive body have put out the "Home Sweet Home" sign. They seem very happy and content in their new accommodations. We of course, could not be more please and grateful to the Lord for this sweet blessing. Our local bee master has a nuc of bees that we will be getting from him within the next week or two.

Did you know that honey is bee vomit? Yes, that is right, they ingest and vomit many times until the end product is honey.  Yummy, that is all I have to say!  Local honey (local to you) can be allergy medication to those of you who suffer with allergies from pollens during the bloom seasons.  

*swarming around from one thing to the next

After a long time away, my mother arrived back her for a stay in her RV that is on our land here in sunny Florida (I still pinch myself from time to time because I have a hard time believing that we live in Florida now). Today was just fantastic for gardening! The temps were just right for hard work in the out of doors, and some how there is always a breeze here. With all of this in mind Momma and I got to work!

We spent the first part of our morning carefully making 4 rows that were 75 foot long in the back garden plot for sweet corn and peanuts. In a week or so, we will plant 4 more rows - hoping for some down time in between each harvest. We may wait two weeks before we plant the next ones actually. It was awesome to be working in the gardens with my sweet mother, really awesome. I am so very grateful to her and my dad for teaching me over the years the 'secrets' of gardening. God used them to prepare me for this time - priceless. We managed to get some wild flower seeds, pepper plants, squash seeds, tomato plants and watermelon seeds in the rich soil today.

I went over to the check on the bee hives, just to monitor their activity and low and behold! I looked up and saw a swarm of bees in the tree over head. We are not sure where these bees came from.. meaning... were they part of our bees that split and swarmed or were they a "new" swarm that ended up on our property.  We are  hoping it is the latter, since we are waiting on a nuc at this time from our local bee master here in the area.   I, took off running to get my bee suit on, Momma is off in the distance a bit and I very enthusiastically yelled out to her, "I am going to need your help, RIGHT NOW! We have got to get this swarm right now!" and I ran quite a ways up to the house to get suited up to capture the sweet bees.  My mother said she was just as confused as she could be.  I yelled out that I needed her help right now and RAN in the opposite direction. She was right there when I got back and we managed to shake the branch into an empty hive box that we happened to have on hand.  EXCITING!

We are hopeful that the bees are still in the box, tomorrow we will check all three hives out and see what is going on with our bees. I will keep ya posted!

 Here is a quick little photo update on a few of our fowl friends. Isn't that turkey adorable? The little pullet is jealous of the bronze breasted turkey's spectacular show!

This is a very likely time to see swarms of bees on branches or other various places. To capture a swarm of bees  you can do as we did and take an empty hive body and carefully bring the  branch down over the hive body give it a good shake which will allow the bees to fall into it.  The bees have taken care to fill up on honey before leaving their last home so they are full and very unlikely to bite or be aggressive at this time. Not to mention.. they don't have a home to defend.  If you don't have an empty hive at the time of finding a swarm you can drop the bees down into a card board box that you have a lid for, or a plastic bucket with a lid and then you make haste to get a hive you can then shake the bees down into the hive.

*busy as a bee!

Last year at the end of March we put a hive of bees on our property, an awesome hive! A hive that in its first few months provided us with 50lbs of honey- that is unheard of. You should not expect to harvest honey from your newly added hive until the following year. The local Bee Master (as I like to call him), Mr. Bundrick of Bundrick Honey Farms set us up with an amazing nuc of bees!

We wintered our bees with a deep which had been the queens brood chamber since we put the hive on the property, but we added a supra full of honey to overwinter them as well. Old Man Winter was not really that harsh this year, so they did REAL well. Since we have such a strong hive we decided to try to split our hive, thus making two good hives.

We are amateur bee keepers learning as we go, with knees knocking!  Eric has been building, building, building!  He does not have all the fancy tools but he uses what he has and his ingenuity as well and we have ended up with some pretty amazing end products. He was able to build each supra and hive body for much less than than buying them from a supplier.  Mother Earth News has a Honey Bee Magazine that actually has plans for building your own hive. Eric basically used one of our purchased hives from last year to make his measurements before he began his work.  The only thing we had to buy was the frames (pictured below) for each box.   We purchased them disassembled and spent one afternoon working together until the project was completed.  This past week we put those bee hives that he built into place.  One of them has been put in place, but for now still waits on bees.

We are very hopeful that our now two hives will prosper and flourish from here. One or possibly both of them have to hatch out a queen, she has to take flight, mate and come back and start laying eggs. This all will take about 30 days and hopefully we success will be the end result!

We have our name on a list with Mr. Bundrick for a nuc, hopefully sometime this spring he will have one for us!  If we don't get one from him, we may have to make an order somewhere online. The third hive is actually going on our property for the sole purpose of harvesting for Eric's parents. They have been purchasing honey from a coop for years now and are excited about having their own honey source free of charge!  The only cost will be the bees themselves - about $90! 

If you have a bee hive on your property, and it is a strong hive, it is time to start checking out the space inside the hive making sure they have enough room, so you can avoid a possible swarm.  Once the bees plan a swarm.. there is little you can do to discourage them, as I understand it.  

*busy bees

This morning when I went out to feed the animals I decided to walk out and check on the bees.  They were busy taking flight, and others landing. I sat and watched intently for a few minutes, when I noticed the ones landing on the landing board has bags of pollen on their legs. Beautiful yellow pollen. I sat and watched for a few more minutes then ran back to the house to get my camera. This is what I captured.

Aren't they amazing!

If you are interested in beekeeping,  you may want to bookmark  Honey Bee Suite.  I have really enjoyed reading and learning from this seasoned beekeeper!  Read more about our bee adventures HERE.

*being brave for maintenance & HONEY giveaway!

We finally got the bee hive all taken care of for the approaching fall and coming winter months.  I knew it was not going to be fun due to the fact that I had some time ago, removed one of the frames from that center supra that I had to work in.

 Unsuspecting. Quiet on the home front. Happy. Content.  - This was the status before I got started changing the furniture around as it was inside their cozy hive.

 Once I took the supra off (which you see over to the right) the free standing comb they meticulously made stayed in place on top of queen excluder (the silver frame thing you see there).  Down below lie the queen, safe and sound.  I did not disturb the "hive" part of their home at all on this visit. I figured I was doing enough damage as it was.

One of the purposes of working the hive today was to remove the queen excluder so the bees can work their way through the hive for food in the winter. You see, the bees all sort of gather together and move in a mass to stay warm during the winter months. If the excluder stays in place this will inhibit the mass from moving easily to feed as needed during those lean times.  

I have carefully placed the supra back on top of the deep which is the area I allowed the queen to lay eggs this past season.   I did rob one more of the frames in the supra, so we got about 5 more pounds of honey. I replaced the full frame with an empty one, of which I feel sure they will have filled in no time.   Inside the supra you can see where the free formed honey comb fell when I lifted it up. What you see in the supra now is the last part, which I was NOT removing on this particular day. I figured I had changed the status of the hive enough already. 

 You can imagine that I did have some crazy buzz bys from several of the honey bees during the course of all that I had to accomplish on this visit to the Beehive. I escaped this particular visit with NO stings (again)! Woot!

Busy. Not missing a beat. Of course, if I had not disturbed them, they may have been working to a different beat.. not the clean up mode. 

 I did end up using my hive tool to remove this from the excluder so I could bring it in doors.  Upon doing this the comb broke more and honey, delicious amber colored hone, oozed from here and there.   These creations are amazing, they waste nothing.  They are busy cleaning up every little speck of the disturbed honey. I put an empty frame into the supra, perhaps they will store this in that frame.

Angry. Disgruntled. Confused. Sideswiped. Disturbed. - Status of the hive when I was done. 
I left the excluder out for them. The housekeeping staff would be out soon to take care of the mess.  We are again, thanking God for the harvest that He provided us with this year through the mouth of a honey bee.  Did you know they regurgitate on two different occasions during the honey making process? Anyway.

In keeping with THANKS, with gratitude, I will be giving away a jar full of raw honey with comb to one of you next Monday (August 29th).  Thanks to each of you who read our blog!


In order to qualify for the random drawing please leave a comment on this post anytime between now and next Monday, August 29th  and I'll announce the winner ( random drawing ) that following Tuesday morning.   If you would like two opportunities in the drawing FOLLOW my blog and post this on your blog to spread the word!  If you follow through Google Reader or receive this through a feed burner, please sign onto the blog and leave your comment in order to get an opportunity to win the pint of unprocessed raw honey!

This was shared at:
Farm Girl Friday Blog Hop
Farm Photo Friday
Show and Tell Friday

*all cleaned up!

Bees are great housekeepers!  Remember I reported to you on our honey harvest? After Henry and I extracted as much of the honey as we could from each frame, we laid them out on a make shift table about 100 feet from their hive.  Sure enough the bees had the frames cleaned within 24 hours.  The honey bees did a great job as well as a few lucky bumble bees who got in on the goods!

I made the rookie mistake of leaving a honey covered plastic bag inside the barn on our way into the house with the full frames in hand. We discarded or tossed aside the plastic bag when we went through the barn.  I also left two frames in the barn when I had meant to go back and get them to put on the make-shift table to get cleaned up by the bees.  Eric and I later went out to the barn to feed the animals for the evening and WHOA!  We were met at the barns entrance with numerous bees swarming around that had been busy cleaning those two misplaced frames as well as investigating the plastic bag with great interest!   I had to now carefully removed the bag as well as get those two frames out in the field with the other ones.

I have read A LOT about managing a hive, keeping bees, being a good beekeeper, and the likes. I however have not given the same amount of time to learning HOW it is that the bees make the honey.  Today out of a healthy respect for the bees and a grateful heart for the flow that they produced for us,  I decided to do a bit of reading on this topic. I am amazed the amount of laborious efforts that have to be put forth to simply produce a tablespoon of honey.  Check THIS link out with some curious facts about the worker bees process of making honey.

When I went out to check on the frames to see how the cleaning was coming along I saw many dead bees. I was, as you can imagine, a bit alarmed.  I also saw all the bumble bees and thought perhaps a fight had ensued over the honey, and thought perhaps the bumble bees had won.  This was not the case at all.  I later found out that the life cycle of those bees had come to an end. I thought, well it is a good way to finish up life!  In the midst of what they OWN, that honey.

Tomorrow will be the day we open the hive one last time until spring!  I am excited to work the hive and see my little sugars one more time before they begin spending the next few months getting ready to weather the fall and winter months.