How to produce speciality honey and lose money doing it.

-Posted by Isaac

This is kind of a filler blog post. We finally got our website fixed up for nuc sales, and I was searching for some cool bee pictures to load. In looking for pics that would fit on a nuc page, I stumbled across several shots from this year's trials and tribulations involving buckwheat honey. So we'll just talk about that.

As you know, honey can take many colors, flavors and forms.

With speciality honey, you can let the bees produce a varietal (tulip poplar, buckwheat), or you can add something to the honey itself (lavender, lemon verbena infused).  It's something different. Something interesting. A value added product, and it may just be a hit!

Five or six years ago, we decided to take the leap into producing buckwheat honey. A few people had asked about it and we were sort of curious too. It would definitely be something different-- rich, black, robust honey with almost the consistency of molasses. Plus, maybe, just maybe, people would be willing to pay a little more..

In order to produce buckwheat honey, you need buckwheat and you need bees. Lots of each! We've tried several routes in bringing the two together. We've hauled forty hives to Amish country, three hours north. We've rented twenty acres from my grain farming brother. We've used set-aside land from my produce farming sister.

And the results have been pretty good. Meaning, we've been able to produce enough buckwheat honey to keep it in stock. And make a little money in the process. It's not cheap renting ground and equipment, buying seed, moving bees, etc...

This year with the buckwheat, things took a turn for the worst.

It all started ok. I had my little farmer along to help.

We originally thought we were going to rent three small fields right where we live. Totaling 20 acres. It was going to be a breeze. The equipment was all right down the road at my brother's, and we wouldn't have to move a single hive. I'd just sit back and let the honey roll in.

But that idea got nixed right before planting season. Family politics? I don't know?

Instead, my brother said we could rent a small wet field five miles away. More expensive rent, no less. Boooooo!

But we decided to give it a go anyway. I figured that if I planted by the end of April, we'd still get three blooms out the the deal and make enough honey. So on a bright sunny April 30th, Bridger and I went to work.

20 strong hives coming out of apple pollination were my intended buckwheat producers. Problem was, that field was so wet, I was forced to place the bees at the back of a guy's yard on the adjacent property. "Don't you worry." he assured me. "My grandpa had bees. I know all about them."

Well as it turned out, he may have been a bee lover, but his wife most certainly was not! After two stings and three phone calls, I was forced to consider alternatives. Besides, the neighbors were having a little trouble digesting the idea. ("I'm deathly allergic! DEATHLY!") So I moved the hives. Hey, I'm a nice guy.

It's no easy task to move 20 hives (Especially when you're not getting paid to do it.) We had to place those bees at a new location miles away, and bring in 20 more. It took most of the night. By this time it was mid-May and the field was dry enough to place hives out in the middle, far from annoying people.

And oh yeah, I dropped one of those pallets when the forklift hit an unseen hole in the dark. From about five feet in the air, four hives came crashing down. The result: a lot of mad bees and quite a few stings for poor Lafe and poor me. Around 1 am. Oh the fun!

Then on top of that, wouldn't you know it, we had a frost! May 20th. The latest frost ever. (In the farmers' memory.) It zapped our beautiful buckwheat!

So much for the first bloom. We had to start over.

Another round of driving all that equipment five miles, the disk, the seeder, the drag. And half way through this second time of tilling, the tractor blew up!

Well, maybe it wasn't a true blow up... but it was a fire. A hydraulic line had burst up under the hood and sprayed the hot manifold. The result was a fire big enough to burn up a lot of stuff pretty quickly. Although I was quick to react (once being a volunteer firefighter) the half can of Pepsi I threw on... just didn't do...

Maybe I should have peed on it.

Regardless, the result was two weeks of down time and more money out the door. By this point the project was feeling somewhat futile.

In the meantime, we planted and dragged the half of the field that did get tilled.

You just never know what you're going to do on the bee farm.

This led to an unintentional succession planting. I guess it worked out for the best. It made for an extended bloom.

By August, the bees were finally doing what was supposed to happen in May: making buckwheat honey.

Because we were busy pulling summer honey in August, collecting pollen in September, and pulling fall honey in October, I just let the buckwheat supers sit on the hives. This may or may not have been a good idea. The buckwheat bee yard was the last one I pulled. It turns out, they did end up packing those supers...

...but the honey wasn't quite as dark as buckwheat should be. The bees had mixed in quite a bit of fall goldenrod.

But after all the headaches and stings and expenses ($6000 to date), we're going to call it buckwheat. BY GOD, IT'S BUCKWHEAT!

Just over 700 pounds of the good stuff. Did it pay off? Will it break even? Well, you can do the math...

Spring Break

-Posted by Isaac

If you have awakened from hibernation and care to peak your head out, you'll find that our Ohio spring has arrived about 60 days early this year.

The bees seem to be loving it. They're eating us out of house and home! 

The kiddies, the goats, the kitties, also loving it.

A kid'll eat ivy too. Wouldn't you?

Of course the obvious answer to this wonderful winter heat is climate change. Carbon levels shooting through the roof. (This just in: 2016, hottest year on record. Three consecutive record breakers! '14, '15, '16. Boom! Boom! Boom!) Keep it up, man! Hells yes, you need a lift kit on that F450! (And some bigger tires won't hurt nuffin.)

But that's just the obvious answer. I for one would like to give a little credit to our new President Camacho. Sworn in just today! See, I told you he was going to fix everything!

Won't hurt nuffin, Muffin.

So this week we had ourselves a little spring break. Three of us anyway. Myself, Mom and eight year old Mason. The younger (and louder) half stayed with Grandma.

We went west. To the Grand Canyon.

There, we found winter. Long lost winter.

Jayne and I had talked it over before Christmas, and we thought it would make a great gift for our young energetic hiker. And we were right!

The views were spectacular!

Eventually things cleared up. The lower we got, the hotter it got.

At the bottom we stopped. Two nights of camping. 55 degrees. Not too shabby.

I tried to explain some geology, some stratigraphy, some deep time... to my eight year old.

"Dad, just let me take a picture."

Don't get too excited!

All geology gurus know what I'm showing here at the bottom of the canyon. Above my hand- 570 million year old rock. Below my hand- 1.8 billion year old rock. The Great Unconformity. Wow! Just sit back and ponder this awhile!

We did.

They had signs to explain the significance of this.

Written in "geology."

After two days of oohing and aahing, and maybe learning a thing or two, it was nine miles back up to the top.

Where we again found winter. Long lost winter.

But we didn't stay in the snow very long. On Wednesday we made it back to heat wave Ohio. What a wonderful little trip.

On Thursday, delivering more honey to the Dublin Whole Foods, I found out they've taken an ironically peculiar angle to pushing our product.

Because nothing goes better than hot tea mixed with honey on these frigid January days!

Fighting the Weather

-Posted by Isaac

Well, it was nice to see the bees out and about today.

Considering where we were a week ago. I went up north last Friday to buy a bunch of nuc boxes, and within ten minutes of loading I couldn't feel my fingers or toes.

Yes, we're selling nucs this year! (Stay tuned.)

I think it was a balmy -15 degree wind chill that day.

Just a few days later, temp of 55, we filled our January quota for the Hocking Hills. 

In the rain.

But it was still cool.

We had just a tad of rain this week.

Kidding. Not that much. Sorry to scare you. This is an image from California where they really are drowning this week. Many beekeepers are starting to wonder whether the great almond pollination is even going to happen. They have less than a month to dry out.

What we dealt with is wind.

Nasty, hard, fast, long wind. You can see it tore the greenhouse to shreds. I asked Lafe to work on the clean up, and he decided that the goat pen was more important. Whatever works, right?

That same gusty wind in the bee yards turned out to be a problem. About 10 lids got flipped off and one stack of supers came crashing down.

I spent today going from yard to yard, checking up, cleaning up. By afternoon the last dozen yards were checked in a solid downpour. It made things interesting. I found out that the Pilot can handle itself nicely in mud.

Maybe we're ready for California.

So Far So Good

-Posted by Isaac

How's that resolution coming?

Not so well? Well maybe you need to feed it! This awesome display greets you as you walk in the Whole Foods entrance at Easton. Lemons and honey? Strange sales pitch, but I think it has something to do with detoxing into the New Year. Maybe?? Whatever they're pitching, it's obvious that Whole Foods has the same resolution as us-- to sell as much local honey as possible.

Well, I'm now full swing into my winter resolution of perfect beekeeping. And so far, so good. We're at a whopping 0% loss, having now popped over 500 lids.

Not joking! Zero dead hives! (But I am joking about 0% loss being a resolution. That's about as likely as the NFL calling.)

This week I made it around to most of the yards. Checking up, feeding when needed. Most hives look like the above picture. No bees visible, a nibbled patty, all quiet, and all is well.

A few are hungry monsters.

And some are in between. Needing fed on top, but still plenty of honey on the sides. 

Most of these in-betweeners were still pretty heavy, having several inches of honey between the cluster and the sugar patty. Why the bees are sitting so high, I don't know. Considering the frigid temps.

But then, bees laugh at cold. Maybe wind and draftiness and moisture will get them, but cold, that's nothing. Even single digits. Just think about it. Wouldn't you stay warm if you had 10,000 bodies crammed around you?

I love bee work in the winter. (Especially with no dead-outs!) It's calm, it's quiet, it's relaxing. You just take your time, you enjoy the stillness. You may even recite some Robert Frost, if you know any. Hehe. Whose woods these are I think I know...

And the work is quick. All you're really doing is checking up. Popping a lid, maybe throwing a patty on. You can cover hundreds of hives in a day. Especially with your weekend help.

Of course sometimes there are interruptions. Every job entails some form of unwanted interference. Even beekeeping. Here we have a freeloader.

Maybe it's my E.O.G. flaring up again, but this generation really makes my blood boil! When I see the nonchalance of these entitled slackers coming right up and and asking for a handout, like sugar patties grow on trees...

This is what's wrong with the country!

What a bum!

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.

-Posted by Isaac

Happy New Year folks! I hope your 2017 is the best of times and only the best.

Thinking about this past year, 2016 shines out as the very best bee year we've ever had. I'm sure we had some hard moments in there, some stumbling blocks, but my reminiscing is often very selective. Remember that awesome summer! Remember all that honey!

A reflective optimist I am. But also a prophetic pessimist.  I mean, things are bound to get worse, right? The good old days are long gone, right? Jayne and I were watching Portlandia last week. We learned that there is actually a term for my dark-viewed infirmity. It's called E.O.G.

Early Onset Grumpiness. At least Jayne thinks that I have this condition. And in truth, I have been called a pessimist once or twice. But speaking for myself, I contend that I'm simply a realist. Not dark, not a grumpy young pessimist... just real. 

It's almost embarrassing. To be human. You know what I mean?

I think about how bright, how optimistic we began our 2016. We  all have our New Year's resolutions. This year Mason and I had a goal. We had a dream. Using my cousin's home gym, we stuck to the plan.

Beekeepers need to stay ripped too!

But then at some point, cold reality set in. We realized that the NFL is never going to call. Not in 2016. Not in 2017. Not ever.

Maybe I can still play for the Browns.

Not a pessimist. Just a realist.

Let me try to illustrate this concept with some pictures from this week. And if I have lost you in negativity and realism, I apologize. Please understand that it's just the disease talking. My E.O.G.

Around the holidays we like to show off our fancy, expensive, high performance vehicles. We wear the latest fashions. We colonize our fine homes.

But we wreck the joint.

And that goes for our environment also. We wreck the joint. I swear, you people think that Mother Nature is your personal joy ride.

But she's bigger than us! And she'll buck you off if you don't watch out.

The temperature is heading up! The seas are a'gonna rise! Quit with your denials. Your delusions. Do you people think this is a Disney movie!? La la..Life is much better, down where it's wetter. La la la...

Is that what you think?? Huh??? Well I've got news for you.

That's not a Dory fish, son. That's a shark.

Let's see. We've covered dashed dreams and scrapped resolutions. We've covered societal and environmental problems. How about the economy?

 It stinks!

Oh sure, our economy is just fine. Our bees are buzzing and booming. 

But when you step back and look at the big picture, the economy as a whole... we're in the pisser!

And it stinks!

Not a pessimist. Just a realist.

Did you think you were simply going to skate into some bright cheery 2017? Believe you're gliding down the highway...

...when in fact you're Slip Sliding Away.

I hate to burst your bubble. I mean someone's got to settle you optimists down. Show you some truth. I simply refuse to don your rose colored glasses.

Or are they beer goggles? All I know is, you happy happy happies turn me into a Groucho.

But on a brighter note, I can say this. At least one respectable thing happened in 2016. Some of you got smart and finally put a competent leader in office. A miracle almost. And he's going to fix everything!

(A clip from my favorite movie. Not for children's ears!)

 A 2016 Idiocracy sendoff! See, in order to find some decent leaders, all it takes is the realistic threat of impending doom.

 Happy New Year! 2017 is going to be awesome.

I give you my word.