Looks like we have summer for a few more days this week!
The big event of last week was the harvesting of the honey. Dave — my bee partner — came over to assist. It is good to have someone who knows bees and has the right equipment.
The first step in harvesting the honey is to remove the bees from the honey supers. The honey supers are the top most boxes on the hives. During the course of the season as the lower boxes are filled with bee larva, pollen and honey we put addition boxes on top to give the bees a place to put more honey. We put a “queen excluder” between the main supers and the honey supers to prevent the queen from going into the honey supers and laying eggs. The result is a box of frames containing only honey.
So, as I was saying, step one is to remove the bees. Asking nicely doesn’t seem to work. Getting a court order to vacate has no effect. Unfortunately the bees have to be forcibly removed from the hive. And trying to removed them one by one is fruitless. As you take one out of the hive two more sneak back in. It is like trying to round up a herd of cats. Just can’t be done.
So we resort to technology. Some people call them leaf blowers. We call them bee blowers. By setting the honey super on end we can take a leaf blower and blow all the bees out of the hive. It doesn’t seem to make them too angry – probably just a little dazed. Can you imagine being in your house cleaning the kitchen when suddenly the roof is removed and a big machine blows you out the door? I would guess this is how the bees feel. In some ways it is a pretty cool experience being in the middle of 1000’s of bees buzzing all around you. The sounds is louder than you expect.
Before I go on to the next step I thought I would offer a bit of advice for aspiring apiarians. When blowing bees out of the honey supers be sure to wear pants that do not have holes in the knees. Let’s just say I learned the hard way and that bees, once inside your pants, do not stay near the location of the opening.
After the bees are relocated we take the bees over to Dave’s magic honey removal cave located in what was formerly known as his garage. It take a lot of equipment and of course dollars to extract honey. So it is nice to have someone who is willing to share his equipment.
The next step is to cut off the tops of the honey combs exposing the honey underneath. Dave has a fancy machine to do this but with only two honey supers we figured using a knife would work just as well with less waste.
Once the combs are cut we put the frames into the centrifuge. This spins the frames at a reasonable speed to force the honey out of the comb. At the bottom of the centrifuge is a drain with a bucket to catch the honey. This takes about half an hour.
Once the honey is collected we filter it to remove chunks of wax and bits of bee parts. At this point you have two options. You can either: A – heat the honey to about 120 degrees for day or B – Not heat the honey. Heating the honey causes a change in the honey that allows it to store longer without crystallizing. Some people think this destroys some of the nutritive value of the honey. We chose not to heat it. I could say that I made this decision to provide the best, most nutritious honey we could. But in actuality I didn’t want to impose further on Dave. And with only 30 or so pounds of honey I don’t think it will last long anyway.
The next step is to load the honey into honey bears for sale to our members. We are doing this as I write this newsletter. I don’t know how many bears we will have. But I would guess we’ll have to limit purchases to one bear per member — at least for the first go round. The price is $5.00 per bear.
I have to say that I think the honey this year is the best I’ve ever tasted. I don’t know if it is the combination of squash, pepper and tomato nectar or something else, but I thought it was quite delicious.
Enough about honey and the bees. What can we expect for this week’s vegetables? We have an assortment of great fall veggies including but not limited to winter squash, potatoes, carrots, peppers (though these aren’t a fall veggie), salad mix, broccoli, kohlrabi, napa cabbage, onions, garlic, shallots, pie pumpkins, radishes, bok choi and some other things I forgot. The broccoli and kohlrabi are just starting to mature so we may not have a lot of these this week. The potatoes will be either romance — a red potato — or fingerings; both are quite delicious.
Garlic Planting Party
Just another reminder that we will be hosting a garlic planting party on Saturday October 15th from 10:00 am until done — weather permitting. Lunch will be provided. We have a good crew volunteering so far but we can always use more. Please let me know if you can help out.
FruitShare
No fruit this week but next week we will have a delicious box of mixed pears. I’ve always enjoyed the pears in the past and I suspect this year will be no different. If you would like to purchase a box a la carte please let me know. Price is $39.
MeatShare
We have MeatShare arriving on Friday. Plan to pick up your MeatShare at the farm at your next pick-up time.
No CheeseShare this week. We have one more week of cheese coming up next week.