Honey

Honey bees are movers and shakers

Steve HardinLeave a comment

The honeybees are amazing. They are taking more time than I had anticipated on a regular basis. When the hive split we managed to catch the swarm and put them over in the orchard. Annmarie had just given them a short box to allow them some more space after we added in the rest of the large frames to the brood box. We were talking about the bees yesterday and I suggested we go out and look at the orchard bees. We walked out and she popped the roof off and you could see bees and comb in the center lid portion. This meant they had probably filled the entire short box with honey already!

So she suited up and went out to inspect the hive. The hardest part of beekeeping is in figuring out how to keep the smoker lit with smoke and not flames! So after fussing with it for a while we managed to get it going. We lifted the hive boxes up onto the stand. This helps keep the insects away from the hive. I helped but I told Annmarie I had to be in the back of the hive as I did not have a bee suit on. We are getting pretty comfortable but I am not that comfortable that I want to be on the entrance side bending down to lift the hive boxes! Maybe eventually we can do all the bee care with no protective gear but I am not sure that will ever happen. Annmarie has been reading and now just uses nitrile gloves so she can have better dexterity when working the bees. So far this works great, she says she can feel the bees bouncing off the gloves but she has not been stung through them yet. I have not reached this level of comfort yet. She scrapped the lid clean but the lower boxes had been welded together by the bees. Once she got them loose the inside frames were still stuck. She is going to have to take the entire thing apart frame by frame to get everything cleaned up and correct. We think the entire upper box is already full of honey. So this weekend she will get two supers on the bottom and then one honey box on top so we can get more honey. We get about 3/4 pint from each frame. The one thing we have found out that we did not anticipate is how much beeswax is being produced. We don’t have a ton of it yet but we are close to having a pound of it already. That doesn’t sound like much but it way more than I anticipated. She peeked at the second hive but that one has the young queen and she is not as proliferate as the old queen. She needs to be a better leader!

Annmarie is looking at making wax impregnated cloth wraps for sandwiches and bowl tops. They work pretty dang good, I was pleasantly surprised and have been using them for my sandwiches. The sandwich bread is just as fresh as if I had used plastic wrap and its a whole lot easier to eat the sandwich from the cloth wraps. I think we are going to figure out how to get a store setup on our blog site for the cloth wraps and maybe even the honey if we can collect enough. If the wax keeps piling up we may even sell that but honestly if we mail it there could be issues with it melting in the mail system. We may only be able to mail beeswax in the fall/winter/spring time.

Lambs have begun!

Steve HardinLeave a comment

I am unsure what I did this last Friday. I know I was outside quite a bit, I did clean off the front porch like the wife wanted. I picked up trash around the farm and ended up working on the front gate latch. A board had to be added to the gate to get the latch in the right spot. It is still not quite in the right spot but it is working better than the piece of rope. So we are going to see how it does. It does look better than the piece of striped rope! We also cleaned out the old house, two more huge bags of trash out to the trash can full of construction debris. I managed to even do some cleanup around the machine shed. I remembered, we had to change a tire on the flat trailer and go pickup more wood for the office. We got the boards to build two slider doors and the wood for all of the trim work around the inside of the office. We had to unload it back into the old house as it was supposed to snow the next day. I did change the supplemental feed for the ewes from a molasses mix to alfalfa pellets. The pellets have a couple of percentage points more protein. The trouble with this is the sheep LOVE their molasses crack. They are not very impressed with the alfalfa. So I have had to mix in some crack in with the alfalfa pellets to get them interested in them. It is working. I had to take a dead ewe out to the bone yard.

Saturday was better organized as I wanted to really get the office floor done. I did not expect to finish it but if it is going to get done I need to make progress on it every day. I have PTO coming up next week and want to get the floor done. I would even like to get the walls done but with dry times for the floor I don’t see that really happening. Unless I can get the floor sanded and cleaned up in the first three to four days I have to wait 24 hours between coats of stain and polyurethane. I really need three coats of polyurethane so that eats up all the time needed to rub walls down with the wax/oil sealant I have purchased for them. It will take me a couple of days to get the walls rubbed down and then after the walls are done I can cut trim, rub it down and then install it. Once all of that is done I can get the office set up then I can work on making the two sliding doors. They will be the very last thing I do.

It did not take long to use up all the sand paper I had on hand. So I went to town to buy more and Mr Professional cut insulation for the attic. He had brought out a 21” sander and I had a 18” sander so I decided to buy sandpaper for both sizes. I went to two different stores and bought all of the course paper they had in both sizes and ended up picking up some kind of paint wheel that attaches to a drill. I was sure we would run out of paper and would not be able to remove any paint. The little device did work but the 21” sandpaper on a higher horse power rotary belt sander did a much better job of tearing up the old paint. We made great progress and I think we can get the last of the paint off in one day.

Sunday was not going to be another office day. I went out to open the barn doors and discovered that there was a screamer lamb in the midst of all the ewes. This always makes it hard to figure out who is going to claim said loud mouth. I got the ewes to leave the barn fairly slow and then there was only a lamb standing there hollering and a ewe at the far end of the barn. I walked down there and sure enough she had a twin all curled up sleeping in the straw quietly. So this meant putting up panels at the far end of the barn to create five creches. We then hung feeders, filled up buckets with water and alfalfa pellets. Now the barn is ready for Monday morning when Annmarie comes out to let the sheep out of the barn.

We needed to sort off nine sheep to get five loaded up for transport to the butcher on Sunday evening. The other four will go on Friday. Of course the animal trailer has a flat tire also. I cannot seem to find my cheap little 12V tire pump. So that meant getting the back of the pickup cleaned out so we can slip in the animal pen. Of course we used the tractor, it was easier but the animal pen needs some welding repairs and we had to keep it together with strategically placed straps. We did get it in and strapped down after cleaning out the pickup and tossing the stuff in trash, a little in machine shop and the rest on the burn pile. The next problem is to get the sheep to run up into the back of the pickup so we do not have to lift them up into the pickup like last time. There is a very old ramp on wheels that is bent and beaten up. We tried to straighten it out but got stopped by a very thick piece of angle iron. It was going to take way more time to straighten it out and fix it then I was was willing to invest. So after looking at the corral I decided that we could make a ramp! So three 2×4 and a bunch of scrap wood and screws later we had a 8.5’ ramp. We used a iron T-post to rest the ramp on and had to use a couple of pallets to keep the sheep from squirting out the sides. Next time we are just going to remove the tailgate from the pickup and we will be able to just back right up to the ramp. The only thing I need to do is to add a few more boards up the sides to block the view over the sides from the sheep. They could have just jumped off the ramp right over the sides of the corral while loading up if they had so desired.

I used the puppy on a 30’ lead line to herd the sheep. This was fairly productive, but there is no way the puppy can be let off lead and in with the sheep. Once we had the sheep in the corral I left the puppy in the yard. She kept sticking her head into the corral and trying to crawl into it with the sheep. I finally had to lock her in the back yard. She ran back and forth along the fence caterwauling because I would not let her at the sheep. She seemed quite determined, this is a good quality in a sheep dog!

I have been scraping the honeycomb and honey into a sieve trying to get the honey out. I did not want to set up the frame extractor for one frame only. This way is slow but I am getting honey!

Honey ahoy!

Steve HardinLeave a comment

This week was amazing! Some things got done that really needed it and it was a banner week. I was able to arrange for the septic tank to be pumped at the same time as the safe cracker came out to break into our old Victor safe. We wanted to use the safe but needed the combination to do it. The septic tank truck arrived first and after I briefed him on the plan to go into the barn lot and across the spring the safecracker showed up. I had him go in and start in on the safe. He had to wade through the alpaca mob to get to the gate. They were in rare form and all bum rushed him as he got out of the car. I got the septic truck into the barn lot and once he saw the spring crossing he said nope, he thought he had enough hose to pump it from the front gate. So we went back out and he he backed up to the gate and started hauling hose. It took four sections of hose to reach the septic tank and you could see the outline of the tank in the dead grass. He started digging and was right over the lid, as soon as he pulled the lid I realized we were lucky! We most likely could not have made it to the end of the year without having problems or destroying our drainage field. When the main drain pipe was replaced, just before we arrived the plumber took it all the way to the septic tank! This was very nice. It is a 1000 gallon concrete tank and he got it all pumped out and then I sent him down to my mother-in-law’s to pump her tank, we think it had never been pumped but were not sure. It was worse than ours but again, it had not caused problems or ran out into the drainage field.

I had to go in the house for the big reveal after the safecracker got the safe open. It was empty except for a 1974 penny. So obviously the safe had been open until then. The safe guy not only opened the safe but he serviced the lock and ended up sanding a couple of edges of the door to get it work correctly. The door had sagged a little. The tolerances are so close that he did not have to remove much. I then had to prove that I could open the safe. This turned out to be a little more complicated than I thought. The safe has four numbers and the route to get there is very specific and cannot be deviated and is not intuitive. As far as we are concerned this is just one more barrier to getting into the thing. We have been practicing ever since then to get used to opening the thing. That evening I took the little lock box and cleaned off all the rust and spray painted the outside. I reassembled the shelves and put it back in its spot, you don’t see any of th new paint job but it was pretty rusty on the outside before I did all of that. We are going to get a new rug for the bottom then I will move all of our paperwork over into the old safe. I think I need to get about 4-5 folders to sort the paperwork better. Currently it is just thrown into a pile that attacks you whenever the safe is opened. This way legal documents can stay in one place. No one will get my social security paper card, they will just steal it off the internet.

I had to work late and Annmarie woke me up via phone to say there was a coyote out on the hillside and to bring a long gun. I thought about just going out in my slippers and underwear but it has been getting cool at night and I wasn’t sure how far up the creek she was, so I got dressed first. As I was slogging my way up to field #3 I spotted the coyote up on the bluff but then I spotted an elk butt. By the time I got up to where I could shoot the coyote had vanished but I got to see a three point bull elk with four cows and four calves going up the hillside and over the hill. It is way too early for them to be down this low. I suspect this is where the calf came from last weekend. The farm always surprises us.

We have been working on feeding our bees and figuring out how to get them through the winter and what we need to do to get more flowers next spring for them to eat on. Both of our supers are full, the top one with honey and the bottom with bees. Annmarie checks every few weeks and she finds the queen bee every time. I avoid the bees but did go out and feed them a pollen pack a couple of weeks ago, they were very calm and happy to see more food. So while talking to Annmarie yesterday I convinced her that we should try out our honey this year. Since we’re going to feed them through the winter we can take out one frame of honey was my premise. After a little bit of discussion she agreed, the only problem was she had just gone into the hive 30 minutes prior to our discussion and installed mite treatment. So she ran out and pulled one super and just hung it on the side of the hive, we have little metal poles for this. We decided that we would wait till night time for it to cool off before retrieving the frame.

I went out and spent a few hours on the tractor digging a diversion ditch for the next flood and then we went to town for dinner. We got back after dark and she went out and retrieved the frame. At the back door she hollered for me to come remove the bees. I grabbed a paint brush and brushed off about eight bees, we both got inside and shut the back door. I spotted two bees in the laundry room. Annmarie went to the kitchen and then started hollering for me as I had missed some bees. On the way to the kitchen I got stung on the right thigh! I never saw the bugger coming, never knew it was there. It hurts, it had been a while since I was stung by a honey bee. I now changed tactics, the first shot had been fired and my leg hurt! I grabbed the fly swatter and popped three bees in the kitchen and two more in the laundry room then suddenly it felt like I had multiple bees inside the leg of my pants. I dropped my drawers in the kitchen to my ankles hollering about more bees when the puppy rang the bell to go outside. So I shuffled over to the door with my pants around my ankles to let the puppy out. I managed to find the actually stinger in my leg and remove it and my leg started to instantly feel better. It still hurt. I grabbed the large sheet cake pan and put the frame in it and then covered it with Saran Wrap. I killed four more bees under the plastic. So the bees had to sacrifice nine workers for us to have one frame of honey. Annmarie also said that the frame had a lot more honey in it when she pulled it out. The bees had stolen a bunch of honey from the frame. We watched more videos last night and saw that we need a storage container to prevent that and that we should always collect on a warm sunny day. I had to kill one more honeybee this morning in the kitchen! The goal this year was to learn. I almost never touch the hive, I have been stung. Annmarie futzes with the hive all the time and has never been stung. I am unsure what I am learning.