September rally

-Posted by Isaac

Starting with the Honeyfest, September is the month for festivals. We all have our favorites. Here’s one in southern Ohio that our family will never miss:

…As long as our kids are young. It’s great free entertainment. We go for the music and the bouncy houses. And of course the pawpaw food and pawpaw beer.

It’s more of an Earth loving, science loving, hippie, peacenik crowd. The first thing I like to do is research the parking lot.

Most years we camp with our hippie friends.

And we enjoy hippie things like pollinator appreciation.

But the Pawpaw isn’t the only rally for pollinators. Not to be outdone, the Farm Science Review just north of London holds its own brand of science and pollinator appreciation. Later in the week, we made our way to a small green oasis in the middle of the Big Ag extravaganza.

We hear all the time about how we need our pollinators and how honey bees account for about a third of the food we eat… but in the midwest they certainly don’t account for a third of the Ag economy. Around here, Corn is King.

It’s a corn driven economy, and that becomes very evident at the Farm Science Review.

It takes big machines to handle all that corn. We see the future on display at London, and we see the present on our drive there. Corn is most definitely King.

It was somewhat empty at the FSR this year.

Partially because the farmers were all in the fields. Harvest has come early to central Ohio. But another more ominous reason for the lack of attendance was the present price of the commodity. When corn falls below $3.00/bushel, basically below the price of production, farmers are not quite as interested in looking at shiny new machines.

Not even shiny new monster trucks.

I’ve had my criticisms of Big Ag before, and as you may know it’s landed me in hot water. I won’t go there this time. Let’s just hope that the price of corn goes up. It’s scary that so much of our food production lifestyle here in Ohio depends on communications with the world. A lot hinges on the Big Ag economy.

Plus, Lord knows, we all need to eat. And communicate.

Speaking of eating… speaking of good eating… the goldenrod continues to be fantastic! Our bees are getting fat.

Just look at that pollen!

On the pollen runs this week, it was all I could do to keep up. Every other day the traps needed emptied.

Between the running and collecting, I plugged away with the mite treatment. Finished up with the last yard yesterday out at Circle S Farms.

I dropped these bees in early August and was happy so see that they did their job. Pumpkins everywhere! It was hard not to trip. I was even happier to see that most of the hives had also made a box of honey.

Some lucky years, if the stars aline and the weather is perfect, we get to double dip with the pumpkin pollinators. Hey, we’ll take it. Better for the bottomline. No, that’s not pumpkin honey. Judging from the smell, I’m guessing that the bees found the goldenrod in nearby Battelle Darby Metro Park.

We’ve got bees in five different pumpkin locations. As it’s not my normal route between yards, usually I’m able to see something new or different on the drive. This time, sightseeing on my way home, I couldn’t help but stop to admire the showcase of some true patriots.

Is that a threat or a promise?

Had to stop the truck for this one. I really wanted to capture that big Confederate flag in its full glory, but the wind wouldn’t cooperate. After a few long seconds of photo taking on the sly, it occurred to me that these folks were most likely very strong supporters of the Second Amendment. I’d best get a move on.

Luckily I didn’t see a soul.

Maybe they were all at the rally?

Fair Weather Beekeeping

-Posted by Isaac

What a wonderful week!

But it didn’t start very wonderful. Cold, wet, clammy, the bees were nasty. I was on a mission of mite treatment.

This involves splitting every hive body,

checking brood and colony health, then putting the acid pads in. You can see how much the bees appreciate that acid.

It’s a quick job. I almost got 600 done in four days. And it’s also a necessary job… mite-free bees in September should equate to healthy hives in the winter. But it’s not a fun job. Especially when it’s cold and the foragers are all hanging around with nothing to do. When I pop the lid and start splitting boxes, they quickly discover a purpose in life: sting the crap out of that guy!

I took quite a few stings on Monday and Tuesday. And the bees were so angry hitting my veil, I could barely hear the radio. It was obnoxious.

Treating a yard takes about 20 minutes, but it’s not a hard thinking 20 minutes. Sometimes I like to live in my mind, but this week, what with the hurricane and the politics, I opted for the truck radio. It’s sort of fun to do a yard with Ari Shapiro (NPR), then do the next yard with Rush Limbaugh.

No, it’s more than fun. It’s an experiment in human psychology— same news… but pick the universe you’d like to inhabit.

mmm… maybe that doesn’t quite describe it. Yesterday I was telling sister Becky about my station flipping antics. She summed it up nicely— “Isn’t it just the difference between fact and fiction?”

Yes, that’s another way of putting it…

By Tuesday afternoon, things started to look a little better.

This week was the first of the goldenrod! By Wednesday, with a little sun in the recipe, the orange pollen started to flood in. And so too the nectar.

When the bees are drying goldenrod nectar, you smell it from a distance. A warm, musty, dirty-sock aroma that you instantly recognize from ten or fifteen feet away. It’s lovely.

Early in the week, with the smell just barley wafting, I shook a frame. A few drops:

By midweek, the cells were starting to fill, and you could see the new white wax on the edges.

And by Friday, sunny and hot, you could pop about any lid and instantly see that we’re going to have a fall honey crop. This was the week! The week we’ve been waiting for.

How amazing it is! Just a few days with the right combination: strong bees, dry weather, heat, and bloom.

The goldenrod is our September savior.

And I realize something about myself. I’m a fair weather beekeeper. Yes, I’ll still do it when the weather’s crappy. And yes, it still beats any other job I’ve ever had. But I don’t enjoy it, I don’t relish it, until the sun comes out and the flowers bloom. When the bees are busy, I’m happy.

And I’m pretty sure they’re happy too. If it’s possible for insects to have emotions. At least they’re not angrily pecking at my veil. By Friday with the goldenrod in full bloom, you could practically work those hives in a t-shirt. Everything gets a lot easier.

And much more productive.

Honeyfest Recap

-Posted by Isaac

As you may well know, every year we do this little two day festival in Lithopolis. 

The Honeyfest.

I think this was the 11th or 12th year. It's a small festival by Pumpkin Show standards, but it's still growing and pulling in thousands of people. Honey lovers. For the beekeepers around here, it's our biggest weekend of the year.

Jayne is the mastermind behind our setup. 

We're right in front of the Scioto Valley Beekeepers honey extraction building. New this year: the bee mural. For two days we got to admire this awesome work of art.

And we're just down the road from the bee tent. Barry Conrad and his bee beards are a staple of the festival. 

As usual, he's got a beautiful girl at his side. This year's American Honey Princess is the highly captivating Jenny Gross from Wisconsin. We listened to her entertain, teach, demonstrate, and basically promote honey bees all during the festival. 

Some come for the honey bee education, most come to stock up on honey. As you might imagine, you can find all kinds and sizes. Even some speciality honey.

Our friends, Dan and Cortney Williams were set up for the first time this year. Dan specializes in queen production but as you can see, they also know a thing or two about honey production.

New beekeepers bring new ideas. Dan's brainchild: using gallons of honey as tent weights.

As it turned out, those tent weights were needed. This year's Honeyfest started as usual, a beautiful warm Friday afternoon...

...then the clouds... then the wind ....and by Saturday morning, the scene had very much dampened.

And that became the main story of the 2018 Honeyfest. The rain.

Unceasing, unrelenting rain from start to finish. We all took a good drenching.

But spirits remained high. Unbelievably, the honey lovers still came out. 

What has always proved to be our biggest day of the year will once again be just that. Unbelievable! A little wetness wasn't going to stop our loyal honey fans. Thank you guys!

It's now Monday morning and we begin to dry out.

I've got bees to think about, Jayne's got orders to fill, and the kids have school. Back to normal. We carry the memories of a wet but awesome weekend.

Some of us even have bragging rights. I'm pretty sure that by now, the entire third grade knows all about Maizy's first place in the Junior division Honeyfest photo contest.

We'll see her genius on display in next year's COBA calendar. 

This life may be too good to survive.

-Posted by Isaac

We're here! We've arrived! Finally made it to the promised land. This is the year that we get to send all four of them off to school.

Seeing the ripened fruits of our property taxes. Thank you Westfall Schools!

So Jayne and I get to act like kids again.

We had all the kids in school, and we had an anniversary. To celebrate, we made it down to Lewisburg, WV to catch our favorite band.

Front row seats to see Shovels and Rope at the historic Carnegie Theater. What an awesome gift Jayne got herself. As always, I'm happy to be along for the ride. And what ride it is! I borrowed the title of this post from one of their songs. It seems fitting for this time of year. For all kinds of reasons.

Do you agree?

Lewisburg is a small town cultural hub in southern West Virginia. Lots of Civil War history down there. In fact the morning after the concert, we were hiking in a nearby state park and stumbled on the reenactment of the Battle of Scary Creek.

Neither of us yankees had ever been to a reenactment. We spent a couple interesting hours walking through the Confederate camps, talking trash, quoting Abe Lincoln. 

When the battle finally happened, it occurred to me that life as a Civil War actor was probably much more comfortable than life as a Civil War soldier. 

This battle happened in July, 1861. Maybe it was just me, but it seemed that the 2018 reenactment may have lost some of the original edginess.

It was a fun trip, but we couldn't play forever. All four of our little soldiers are in soccer this year. This means practice almost every evening, and the chaotic Saturday routine of waking up and putting on the armor. Ready for battle! (It's now 6:50 a.m. and the rush begins in about 5 minutes... I just heard someone stir.)

Jayne and I are clueless coaches this year. But I've learned from years past, you don't have to be a soccer genius to coach 4 year olds. You just spend more time on directions- like which direction to kick it.

Let's hear some bee news...

We finished up with the summer honey extracting last week. No sooner had the last frames run through, and I finally got the call to move the last thirty hives into the pumpkins. We have about 48 on various farms already. This group came from our home place, and it was sure hard to take those girls away from the beautiful buckwheat.

But they had work to do.

They say that honey bees are not as vital to pumpkins as they are to other crops like apples. This may be true, but every year I see plenty of evidence that they still work hard on those big orange blooms. Within 20 minutes of me setting the hives down, every flower within walking distance had several bees pecking around.

And finally...

Got the pollen traps on! This is never a job I look forward to, as it takes several days and the bees are never happy. They just don't like those things. It takes them a few days to figure out how to work the traps.

Some learn faster than others. The above shot was taken four days after the traps went on. You can see the hive on the right is starting to figure it out.

Hopefully as the goldenrod comes on, they'll all jump on that learning curve. Even the dummies.

Beeswax- From cappings to candles

-Posted by Isaac

It's been done again and again. Some bright person finally sees the light and turns the direction of the entire business. They follow the money. 

Not the case with us. We're still stubbornly keeping bees. But it's not like we're turning a blind eye to the possibilities...

How do you make real money in beekeeping?

Just looking around, paying attention to other business trajectories, it's easy to see the path. Very easy. I think I can sum it up in two steps:

1. Quit beekeeping.

2. Make candles.

(Or soaps, salves, lip balms, lotions, etc...)    Have you ever heard of Burt's Bees? Root Candles?

Some bright person finally saw the light. 

Years ago, Jayne requested that we devote at least a small corner of the bottling room to beeswax. That corner continues to grow:

And if we were smart, we'd turn the whole building into candle production. Too bad the Honeyrun beekeeper is still in love with bees.

For this post, I thought I'd show a little of the wax processing. This is the journey the wax travels from cappings to candles. If you'll remember from the last couple weeks during the honey processing, the first step is to remove the wax capping that the bees put on the comb. Once the honey frames go through the uncapper, a slurry of honey and wax builds up in a big hopper underneath.

About once an hour, that slurry is augured up into a wax spinner. The spinner has a big screen that catches the wax and lets the honey flow back down into the sump.

It also drys the wax. Basically it spins all day. At the end of each day, the tacky-dry cappings wax is scraped off the screen and collected in a barrel. 

We start rendering the cappings when the barrel gets too full. Usually this is within a week.

Warning to beekeepers: if you wait a month or more, you'll have beetle larva in your cappings.

As the cappings melt, it separates. The pure golden wax is ladled off the top.

And poured through a bucket filter. This one is 200 micron. 

The molds are then put in a freezer for a day. Or in this case, with the freezers full, the cooler room works.

It's a lot easier to pop those molds out when the wax is cold.

At this point, you've got a solid clean block of beeswax. To turn that wax into candles, it needs remelted. For years we used two small double boilers. Finally last year, some bright person (Jayne) saw the light and we bought a real wax tank.

Jayne caught me dunking.

So we now have a continual supply of liquid wax. When the candle molds are wicked and ready, the wax is simply ladled off the top and poured.

The beeswax side of the business is amazing. And continues to amaze me with each passing year.

Maybe someday this dumb beekeeper will see the light.