Honey extraction day

I find it hard to believe it's been a month or more since my last post.  It's been a very busy fall!  The vegetable garden produced a lot of tomatoes even though I didn't think it would.  So a lot of tomato sauce was made and frozen.  I frenched a lot of beans and froze them too.  I believe I mentioned the peaches from the Maine house and they are in my freezer.  Blueberries too.  Now I need to begin using up the wonderful produce I foraged or grew this season.  I realized I had a lot of ramps in the freezer that I'll begin eating soon. I've had too many other fresh vegetables on hand so the ramps will wait until the fresh items are gone.

I picked another half dozen cucumbers just a week ago...almost unheard of in October without a hoop house.  I think they are finally done producing but what a long time I've had fresh cukes this year. I hope that the late season will make the upcoming winter feel shorter.  One can always hope.

Then I went away on a trip for a week.

Then it took me a week to catch up on household chores as well as staining the deck.

The deck was yesterday.  But before I started that project, I visited the beehive and added a triangle board which stays on for 24 hours.  The purpose of the triangle board, if you recall, is to remove the bees from the super that will be extracted.  So today I will go back to the beehive and remove that super and bring it into the basement where I will extract the honey.  I'm not sure if I'll be able to complete the extraction today given there's a football game at 1PM that I can't miss so I will fit it into breaks from work over the next few days.

Once extracted, the honey will sit in the house for a period of time to let the bubbles settle down before bottling.  I'm happy to get some honey this year since the spring troubles slowed down the bees progress in terms of making brood and then honey.  But I think the longer season has helped.  The second super I added has not been drawn out much at all.  I'll probably just remove that super too because for the next several months, the bees will be just clustered in the deeps to survive.

I'll begin giving them fondant after today, to give them some extra to nibble on in addition to the honey stored in the second deep.

I added the bales of hay to the other side of the hive yesterday as well.  Once I take off the two supers and the top hive feeder, the hive will be much shorter to a few bales of hay will go to the back of the hive and I'll, at some point, add my piece of plywood over the top for some extra protection this winter.  I will then keep my fingers crossed that they survive the winter.  In the spring, I want to divide this hive into two.

Sept. 16 - Checking the hive

I was pleased yesterday when I went into my hive.  It looks like I will have some honey after all.  One of the supers has several frames of honey so I moved that one to the top and the fairly empty super under it so they can begin to work on that one.  I doubt they'll have time to do much with the lower super given it's mid-September, but maybe they will if we have a warm autumn.

Meanwhile I decided to feed them again because I want them to have enough honey and food to last the winter.  Later on in the year, I'll swap out the syrup with fondant, like I did last year.  That seemed to help winter them over...at least that's my hope.

First ever peach crop(s)

In Maine I planted a peach tree several years ago.  When the house was rented, the tenants hoped for a peach crop a few years ago but the tiny peaches that were there when they began their tenancy disappeared within a few weeks and they got nothing.  The following year, there were no peaches at all.

Sometime within those two years, I did some pruning on that tree.  This year, when the tenants left, I saw that the tree was loaded with peaches and fully expected them to disappear from one weekend to the next when I went there.  I would check them each week.  Each week they got bigger and the trees branches weighted to the point I thought they'd break.  In fact, I propped some up because they definitely were going to break if I didn't.

In the end, I harvested a box of peaches...hundreds.  My neighbors also came and took what they wanted.  An unbelievable peach year!

And in Vermont, I planted a tree two years ago and got about 20 peaches from that tree this year. 

What was best about these peaches other than the quantity is that no pesticides were used on any of them.  I didn't find any insects on the peaches.  On the outside of a few of them was some black spots that looked like mildew or something like that but they get peeled off during preparation so that was no problem at all.  I'd rather that than pesticides.

Peach tree in July...wish I'd have taken a shot at the end of August to see how it weighted down with peaches.  Here I was really focusing on those beautiful orange flowers!

Preparing for fall - It's not all about me and my honey

I have to remember that the bees serve a much bigger purpose than supplying me with honey! With their help, we have better crops.  Without the pollinators like honey bees, we'd have no crops at all.  Just think about our food source or lack of food without the bees.

So when I start to be sad that I will probably not have honey this year, or so little, it's not worth mentioning, I just need to keep telling myself that if I can keep them alive all winter and keep the hives producing bees, I am still doing good.

Actually, I'm enabling them to do some good or perhaps they are enabling me to feel useful!

I have located some free bales of hay that will be used, like last year, to surround the hives for the winter.  I used them, if you have been reading that long, on three sides of the hive and a piece of plywood on the top.  I also wrapped the entire hive, except for the entrance, with roofing paper.

 In this image  above, I had started a small hive (nuc) that you see on the left in the fall.  That didn't work out.  It was too small to winter over...just not enough space and brood for them to keep warm, I think.  So I won't do that again and will wait until the end of May to start a nuc next year.  I can't wait to have two hives.  As you know, patience isn't be strong suit!  But I learned my lesson this past spring when I started a nuc too early.  Next year, I intend to do it right!

Today I will go into the hive and see how things are going.  It's also time to put on the mouse guard because the mice will be looking for a warm place and I sure don't want it to be in the hive.  Just add this to the entrance of the hive to keep out mice but allow the bees to come and go as they please.

Bees and bear - a near miss I think

Today I traveled 140 miles each way to pick peaches off my tree in another state.  She's crazy, you might say.  But in my defense, I planted that tree about 7 years ago.  This is the first year I've had this kind of crop.  In fact, it could be argued that this was my first crop.  And what a crop it was.  The branches of the tree aren't that big yet so thankfully they were flexible.  Because they were bent to the ground, laden with fruit.  I was so afraid that the chipmunks, birds and other wild beasts would get the peaches before I could get back there and afraid they'd get overly ripe too.  Anyway I came home with a large box of peaches that I now need to prepare.  I also left some for my neighbor up there as well as my ex tenants.

I will freeze them because I have a large freezer and it's easy to do.  Then, over the winter, I can make crisps, pie, cobbler and whatever recipes I can find that could use their wonderful flavor.  My daughter wants to add them to her smoothies too and that will be delicious.  What fun it is in the fall, getting the harvest in and "putting it up".

But I digress from the subject of this post.

My office is on the second story of my house with a bathroom off that. The bathroom has a nice sized window looking out at the back yard.  I happened to be looking out the window just after returning home with my peaches and saw a black bear at the edge of my lawn!

I still hadn't unpacked the car where my camera was so I just stepped out on the porch corner to see where it was.  It was to the side of my shed...to the right...between that and the fence around the beehives.  He stopped  and was looking around and then spotted me.  I asked him what his plans were and he turned and ran up the hill behind the house.  I am sure that if I hadn't gone out, he would have gone toward that fence.  I sort of wish I had watched it all play out but I was too afraid of losing my bees!

Now is the time, I think, when the bears are out trying to find as much food as possible to fatten up for the winter.  I was very glad that I had changed the batteries on my electric fence so that if our bear friend did touch it, he or she would be happy to find food elsewhere.  At least that's my hope!
 
I sure am glad I didn't try to have hives without that fence or I'd have been doomed...no doubt about it in my mind.

Honey in year two? A list of all the things that went wrong

I'm hoping I can harvest some honey this summer but I'm not sure what I'll end up with.  Here are the issues I have run into this season.

• Started out with good hive that wintered over - that was very encouraging...but that didn't last

• In early May, I tried to split off a new hive by grabbing brood, bees and honey from last year's hive and start a nuc

• A cold spell, that lasted at least a week killed all the bees in the new nuc I started

• Then I realized the queen died in last year's hive 

• I bought a new queen, put it in the hive in its little cage that it and the other bees were supposed to eat the candy plug so the queen could get out.  You give it 5 days to do this.  I checked in 5 days and the queen was dead.

•  I bought a new nuc with a queen to start another hive...still on my quest to  grow my business

• By this time, it was June and the rains started.  It rained practically the entire month of June.

• I was advised to merge the nuc with the old hive to try to get a good strong hive.  I did this and it worked. 

• However, I was told to add the queen excluder which I left on until early August.  Then I read that adding the queen excluder would reduce the amount of honey you get.

• Queen excluder came off and I started feeding the bees sugar water, something I did last year but didn't do this year. Not sure if it'll help with honey production but it will feed the bees and hopefully help them get through the winter.

•  I have people clamoring for my  honey...but last year's reserves are almost gone and am not sure what I'll get this year.

• I did say that this blog would tell my bee story...good or bad.  I'd say that this was a real learning year...and most likely a lean one.

Blogger a bit too busy to blog

This has been a busy summer so far and I expect it will continue to be the same until it's over and beyond.  Readers who have been with me for a while saw that last summer was what I think of as a "building year". I spent a lot of time digging out paths and covering with landscape fabric and wood chips, building my $40 patio, described in a few of my earlier posts, and of course starting my beehive.

This year is being spent maintaining!  And this year, I am needing to maintain two homes and a school garden.  Sadly, I need to spend several hours to get the school garden in shape for September.  I've gotten there about as often as I can, given the other maintenance that I've been doing but still feel like it's my orphan garden. The maintenance I'm speaking of has mostly been in gardens although I've spent time getting my Maine house back in shape and getting tasks done that it needed. 

My Maine home, rented the last few years, became vacant at the end of June.  That is two years of virtually no garden work occurring so I have spent time each weekend bringing those gardens back.  I also had the front porch refinished and trim painted so that it looks inviting again.  I'll snap some photos next weekend.

I bought this house in 2004 and it had no landscaping at all except for a few piddly shrubs.  It had an above ground pool there which I had taken out when I bought it.  That left me with this big bare grass-free circle area in the back yard.  I turned that into a pond and garden. Here is the back yard the next year where I used two existing trellis's and a board to make an archway, put a few chairs there and a birdbath and a few shrubs and called it a patio.

Back yard, year 2005

Back yard, year 2007

A few years later, the area looked like what you see above.  The pond is about 8' in diameter and about 3-4 feet deep, which I dug myself.  I had a load of field stone delivered because southern Maine, in my area, is all sand so it's easy digging. I used the field stone to trim the pond and get somewhat of a path from the side door down to the pond.  The path was never finished though.  I ran out of field stone and just never got around to it. Then I got some pea stone to make a walkway around the pond and added the outer plantings.  So there are plantings around the pond, a path and then more plantings.

Back yard August 2013 --  slightly tilted shot...not the garden's fault

This weekend, I will take another photo from the same spot so that you can see how things have matured in this section of the yard.  It really looks like I imagined it would as I was building it, forming a little private retreat in the midst of nature.  With the addition of a little waterfal to the pond, it's so peaceful to sit and watch nature all around. It's a lovely spot.  A glass of wine; a plate of cheese...frogs croaking, bees humming, butterflies circling...what could be better?