We've been visiting with our bees periodically during the summer and it's always exciting to open the hive and see what they've been up to. Early in the season, our visits are primarily to make sure they have plenty of food to eat. Vermont springs can be a bit tricky...just when you think the snow is gone for good and the flowers ready to start bloom...it snows again! So we make sure the bees have plenty of honey and if not, we feed them a sugar syrup we mix up and pour into a feeder on top of the hive. This year, they didn't need much syrup. Once we have a nice warm day, usually in late April, we take off the mouse gaurds and hive wrap and do some general spring cleaning around the hive. We always check to make sure the queen is alive and well and check the population to see what might need to be done for treating mites or other problems. Our hive seems to be doing well....so we'll leave well enough alone.
March 15th
Well our bees made it through another winter and seem to be doing well. We completed our spring cleaning and were happy to find that the bees still had honey so feeding was light. We love seeing the bees at work around the farm and really admire their work ethic and organization. Of course we love the honey best of all!!
February, 2011
Well I just realized in all the excitment of starting our cheese business, I forgot to post info on our beese We actually had a great season in 2010. Although we lost one hive over the winter of 2009-2010, the remaining hive thrived and produced lots of wonderful honey. We were able to bottle and sell quite a bit as well as give some for holiday gifts. We're busy looking at the bee supply catalogues and figuring out what we need to order for the upcoming season. We will definitely add another hive and feel more comfortable this time around as we have a little bit of experience behind us. It is a constant learning process but we feel the value of the bees to the environment is well worth the little bit of effort on our part to keep them healthy and productive. We'll be adding honey to our real and virtual farm store this year and we will be using some of our own honey in our goat milk and honey soap which will be available this spring. In the meantime, the bees are tucked in their hive for the winter....wonder what bees dream about?
September, 25, 2010
Our bee keeping education continued this summer with some disappointment and some great fun and victory.
Sadly, only one of our hives made it through the winter...due, I'm sure, to our novice beekeeping skills. However, the hive that did make it was strong and busy all summer long. It was very exciting to watch the bee population grow and see their comings and goings. Even more exciting was a peak into the hive to find HONEY!! We were able to make our first honey harvest this summer and although the bee keepers efforts were clumsy and messy...we were successful in harvesting and bottling honey. We're excited about next season and plan are already in the works to add additional hives. Bees rock!!
August 15th These bees are amazing!! We've fed our new bees, watched them and finally the day arrived that we needed to inspect the hives. So, we picked a lovely evening to make our first visit to inspect the hives. That was our first mistake. They saw us coming...all of them. BECAUSE all the bees are home in the evening!! That was our first clue that maybe we weren't exactly prepared for this expedition. Our second mistake, we had only brought along a simple hive tool....and no simple hive tool can pry open a hive that is literally cemented together. (Well maybe not literally) But they were definitely STUCK together like gum on cement on a city sidewalk. We pried, they buzzed, we pried some more, they were congregatin, we decided we needed to know more and we headed for home in the company of some very annoyed bees.
After reviewing our failed expedition, we decided to talk to some bee experts. That's when we learned that evening is NOT the time to piss off the bees. You can imagine, coming home after a busy day working hard in the fields. Maybe just sitting down to a nice dinner...only to hear rapping, smell smoke and see huge faces peering into your living room. Now that I think of it, I'd be pissed too. So, next expedition, we picked an afternoon...and we were much better armed for this trip. We loaded up our yellow wagon with the smoker and some hay for burning in the smoker, extra tools for prying just in case, our shallow supers, our extra deep supers, more bee food and piled all of this in our little yellow wagon and headed to the bee pasture (which is what I am now calling our front yard ;). Well, it looked pretty busy for a quiet afternoon...but we decided to go for it anyway. We fired up the smoker...blew some smoke around to "quiet and calm" the bees....the fire went out ......we lit the smoker again....puff puff...it went out again...Finally got it going, or so we thought. We pried open the hive top...puff puff...the fire went out. So, second lesson learned...pick a day when the wind is not blowing. Finally, having replaced the fuel in the smoker, we are able to pry open the hive and there she was.....THE QUEEN!!! Standing there totally surrounded by the buzzing of bees on this beautiful sunny day, looking at this amazing hive of activity was so awesome I now understand why people have been so fascinated with this hobby for so long. We were able to open each hive, inspect and see how busy they have been, and do our work. In return for their hospitality, we left them a lovely gift of sugar syrup in their feeders....Thank you bees! They even provided us an escort from the bee pasture ;)
July, 2009 Our first step in developing our hives was to order ALL the supplies and to prepare the hives before the arrival of the bees. The hives are wooden "boxes" called supers and each box had to be painted as well as all the other pieces that go into the making of the hive. We also had reserved our bees a few months ago from Smichinski's Northern Bred Bees in Oakham, MA.. I picked up our bees around 6 PM. That is a quiet time of day for the bees and they have all returned "home" to settle in to the hive. This apparently is the best time to pack them up for their trip to their new home and what a trip home!! Thunder, lightening and downpours so heavy I had to pull off to the side of the road. I arrived well after dark and we installed the bees on their new platform and left them alone for what was left of the evening. Since that first evening we've checked the hives, fed the bees and watched. They actually seem quite peaceful in their new home.
Wonder how they'll feel about home invasion?
Septemer, 2009 Well our first summer as bee keepers is coming to a close. We are helping the bees prepare for winter with supplemental feedings of syrup. Soon we'll be wrapping the hives to keep out the winter winds. This has been an exciting time for us as new beekeepers. We'll not have any honey this year as we are leaving all the honey for the bees to get them through their first winter. We'll look forward to 2010 as our first year of harvest. The bees will see you in the spring!
AGS-Lifetime member (American Goat Society), ADGA (American Dairy Goat Association), VTDHIA (Vermont Dairy Herd Improvement Association) American Cheese Society All website content is the sole property of Sharon Peck, unless stated otherwise, and is not to be copied/duplicated in any form without express permission from Sharon Peck.
