Labeling Honey

Posted on September 18, 2012 by Jason

This was the first batch of labels that were applied. After only applying this small run I realized I made a mistake.

At long last the honey labels came in.  In the past the small amounts of honey produced by the bees had just been given away and sold “unlabelled” to friends who didn’t care, but this years crop was too large for that.

Perhaps I was over thinking it, but coming up with a label for this simple product was harder than I thought it would be.  As I see it there were several factors to consider in choosing a label. Continue reading →

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Bees can overcome OR Bee happy with what you are given

Posted on September 14, 2012 by Jason

It is Friday.  I haven’t had the opportunity to rant on anything the last several weeks mainly due to lack of frustration.  I was reminded of something this week while on Facebook and voila!

Honeybees occur naturally in Japan.  So does a very formidable enemy to the honeybee.  A war has been waged between the two for probably longer than any human can know.  Unfortunately Japanese honeybees don’t make as much honey as the European variant does.  So Japanese beekeepers have gone down the same road as beekeepers everywhere and decided to import bees from far off lands in hopes of larger honey crops.  This first video shows the results of this folly (WARNING: this You-Tube video has a caption in it showing a word that some may find offensive, it is a three letter word). Continue reading →

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Bottling Honey

Posted on September 10, 2012 by Jason

The help is really appreciated.

Beekeeping has made me over use the phrase, “I am done, but not completely”.  I say it often since I caught this buzz.  This years extraction is over, but I am still not done completely.  I have no buyers for 5 gallon pails so everything needs to be bottled.  It has to be the most tedious part of the entire process. Luckily I have a good helper.  My daughter has been assisting, wiping off drips and spills as well as capping the bottles.

Continue reading →

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Escape boards revisited and video editing

Posted on September 7, 2012 by Jason

Several days ago I discussed the use of Escape Boards for clearing bees from honey supers.  At the time there were several unedited video files on the computer that I just didn’t have time to fool with.  Things haven’t slowed down any, but yesterday morning a concerted effort was made to sit down and learn some new video editing software.

Continue reading →

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Basic extracting

Posted on September 5, 2012 by Jason

As I said in yesterday’s post I was able to get the supers pulled that I planned on extracting this fall.  I knew going into this extraction that I did not have enough buckets to hold all of the honey that my bees produced this summer.  As a result I left a lot of supers on hives until next spring when I will extract again.

In this post I mainly wanted to show how I have been extracting honey and the hardware that I am using.  This is a process that needs refining.  It took me two days to extract 19 of my own and 4 more for a good friend.

The honey is all now in buckets and will be bottled as soon as my bottles arrive at the door.

Any questions or comments?


 

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Beekeeping and the weather

Posted on September 4, 2012 by Jason

I am becoming aware that keeping bees and being employed in a conventional job are not very compatible. In an ideal bee keeping world my job would be more weather dependant. In the event the weather is crummy I would go to work. If the weather is nice and bees need working I would be working bees.

Super removal required a ladder at two of the hive sites this year.

Last Friday demonstrated this point to me perfectly. I had been watching the weather all week hoping to get all supers pulled prior to the arrival of what used to be Hurricane Isaac. The Weather Liars had all forecast that the rain would arrive on Saturday, because Isaac was such a slow moving storm. I wish that my accuracy as a pharmacist only needed to be on par with weather forecasters.

Every once in a while I would get a peek out the window. Things were looking good.  Perhaps the weather had been predicted correctly. I was relatively calm about the prospects of getting the final 7 supers of honey pulled after work. Then I heard a fellow employee walking past my office telling another, “it sure looks like rain out there”. Continue reading →

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Escape Boards

Posted on August 30, 2012 by Jason

I have feverishly been preparing for honey extraction this weekend.  Coordinating my work schedule with the weather is normally my biggest concern.  Luckily I think I will have all of the honey supers pulled before the remnants of Hurricane Isaac reach the area. It’s going to be a rainy weekend, might as well spend it inside extracting honey.

This is the form of escape board that I use. When being used the side with the triangle and screen on it is DOWN.

I have seen several different methods for getting bees out of my honey supers.  The method I decided on was the use of escape boards.  As with everything in beekeeping different people have different opinions on clearing their bees from honey supers. I settled on this method several years ago because it doesn’t require chemicals and I have too many supers out to remove every frame at extraction time. Continue reading →

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So why haven’t I been posting?

Posted on August 28, 2012 by Jason

I am preparing for honey extraction this coming weekend.  Tomorrow after work, escape boards will be placed on 5 hives.  Then Thursday the supers will be pulled from those hives and the escape boards will be placed on 5 other hives.  Either Friday afternoon or Saturday morning the supers will be pulled from the remaining hives.  Extraction will begin on Saturday and I will continue until they are all done.

I will be taking pictures as well as video of much of the process.  The postings may be a little scant this week, but there will be a load of stuff coming soon.  Please bear with me.  I know this is supposed to be a blog about bees and beekeeping and I will be getting back to that soon. Continue reading →

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Time to take down the traps

Posted on August 22, 2012 by Jason

Staging of traps back home.

We are at the end of the swarm trapping season.  Before leaving for vacation I retrieved several traps.  As with all things in beekeeping I learned some things in the process and I will be sharing them with you.  Many of these lessons required fixing or cleaning something so I won’t have a problem remembering… :\ Continue reading →

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Sorry for being MIA

Posted on August 21, 2012 by Jason

Waves crashing into the pier-head where the Manistee River flows into Lake Michigan. This day would have been pretty rough for fishing.

It has been too long since a post has been made on LetMBee.com.  I apologize for the delay.  I went on a two week vacation salmon fishing on Lake Michigan out of the Manistee River.  The camp ground I stayed in advertised Wi-Fi, but it was unavailable both of the weeks I was there.  I found a public library in Manistee that had Wi-Fi, but I was too busy fishing, cleaning fish, and canning to leave.

We caught our limit this morning (15).

 

We boated somewhere between 85 and 100 fish in the two week trip.  The species consisted of mainly Chinook (King) Salmon, Coho Salmon and Steel Head, along with a couple of Lake Trout.  The fish were smaller than normal this year with an average weight around 10 pounds.  We caught nothing above twenty pounds.  I canned right at 100 pints while there.  I have probably 30-40 more pints worth frozen waiting for a canning day. Continue reading →

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