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| Our hives in the new apiary, covered with snow but sitting in the sunshine. |
It was a very busy fall for us. Our first priority for the
fall was to move the bees to the new apiary. It has lots of room for growth,
and we can park a trailer in there as well, which is the long term plan – then we
can keep some bees on the trailer, and move them from orchard to orchard,
getting that wonderful fruit pollen. It makes amazing honey. For the move, the
hives were loaded up on the back of the truck, the tables were hauled over (we
don’t like to have the hives directly on the ground because then they are just
too inviting to bugs and critters who might have a hankering for some bees –
yes, we mean skunks. They don’t care about the honey but they sure do love bees…
and not in the good way.)
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| Taking the honey from the FlowHive |
We also extracted our honey… lots of honey. When all was
said and done, we ended up with about 1100 pounds of honey. If that sounds like
a lot, you want to try to store it all in your kitchen pantry! Like all things,
there was still some learning this year in the extraction department. We
harvested our FlowHive for the first time, with mixed results – it was a very
messy process! We also harvested 32 pucks of honey in the comb, and were very
happy with that. With a little bit of that extracted honey, we did all our
preserves and especially our jellies, using less than a cup of honey per batch
instead of the many cups of sugar normally used, and it turned out wonderfully.
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| Moving the hives to the new apiary. |
So, what about 2017? The hives are topped with snow, the
bees are inside making sure the hive stays at the right temperature, and we are
pondering the next honey season. As always, it seems, there are hive boxes and
honey supers to be made. That is a never-ending task, it seems, as we grow.
Since we hadn’t anticipated the growth we had last year, we used up every
available box and frame, so there is work to be done there. We need to make our
‘shopping list’ of necessities – like queen excluders, calculating as best we
can how many hives we will aim for next year. It’s hard to anticipate because
so much depends on the winter. This winter has been very cold, unusually cold,
with a lot of wind, so we could find that the hives are not as strong in the
spring as we hoped. We also had a long fall, so they could have depleted a lot
of their stores before the cold weather came. We also are over-wintering with
single hives, instead of doubles, so there will be less stores for them to rely
on inside.
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| Our honey in the comb, ready for sale. |
Without knowing what we have when we start the year, we
almost require a couple of contingency plans. If the bees do well, and they are
up and running strong early in the spring, we will have to decide if the focus
will be on creating more hives, or creating honey, and if we go with creating
honey, do we do more liquid honey or honey in the comb? We can also focus a bit
more on gathering propolis and pollen instead of just honey, or we can decide
to create hives to sell for other beekeepers, spreading diversity and helping
new beekeepers get established. Regardless of what route we take, we know we
have to re-queen the hives which raises the question of ‘growing’ our own
queens or purchasing queens. We learned from last year that to purchase queen
cells are much cheaper, but much more of a gamble. The growing of queen cells
is an involved and intricate art, requiring a careful hand at the start when
the harvest the day-old larvae, and absolute vigilance in monitoring and timing
their growth to be able to move them appropriately at the right time. Being off
even one day has dire consequences, so we need to be sure of what we’re doing
and when we’re doing it. The learning curve on this task is, honestly, a bit
intimidating, but the benefits, especially for our own hives, would be
substantial.
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| University of Purdue -- growing queen cells. |
We have to look beyond these issues though, and consider
what we do with what our bees produce. Selling hive nucs and queens are one way
to make this gig pay, but are those enough or do they deplete our own ability
to produce honey? We have been selling our honey, by the jar, by the puck and
by the bucket, but is there more we can be doing? We have gathered a lot of
beeswax over the last few years, so perhaps it’s time to find a use for that,
something that will help to make this more than just an interesting hobby.
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| When you have angry bees because you have just taken away all their honey, you have to get creative when working outside. Greg is geared up to do some welding, while wearing a bee suit! |
So while we sit and ponder, and dream of sunshine and
flowers for our bees, we will have more than enough to keep us busy (besides
just making new hive boxes). We will pull out the aprons and the pots, and do
some experimenting with the many wonderful by-products of bees, integrating the
wax and hopefully the pollen and propolis, so more people can reap the
benefits. At this point, at least for a few more weeks, the evenings will be
spent reading and researching. The days inside the house will be spent testing
and sampling. We’ll try to share some of the results as we go. It could be an
interesting (and messy) journey.
