Author farmeramyPosted on

My First Honey Harvest

I’ve been keeping bees for 2 years and a couple months, and I had yet to harvest honey (until a few weeks ago). Usually, you don’t harvest honey during the first year because your colony is building. And because I lost my first colony over the first winter, I essentially had 2 years of first year hives.

But this year is the second year for my current colony. So, I was stoked about getting some honey. The nectar flow started for the Spring and my bees refused to touch the honey super I put on top. (A honey super is a box you add to your hive to collect excess honey.) I tried a Ross rounds kit first followed by a super with normal frames. Nada.

That’s when I realized my bees had at least 3 full frames of honey in their deep brood boxes. So, I decided if they didn’t want to build out comb and give me honey up top, I’d take some from the bottom. I was able to pull 3 deep frames in early June.

My harvest process was pretty standard for those who are familiar with honey extraction. But for those that aren’t, here are the basic steps.

1.) Uncap the frames.

Each frame of honey is made up of wax honey comb. Each cell is filled with honey, and the bees put a little wax cap over each cell to seal them. To extract the honey, you have to remove the cap. I did this with a hot knife.

2.) Extract the honey.

I used a 2-frame extractor to remove the honey from the uncapped cells. An extractor is a metal drum that has a basket in the middle. The uncapped frames go into the basket. Then there is a crank that spins the basket. The force of the spin causes the honey to fly out of the frames into the wall of the drum. It drains to the bottom where there is a spout to pour it out.

3.) Filter the honey.

Once extracted, I had to filter the honey to remove little bits of wax and any other debris. I poured it through a double metal strainer, which was perched above a bucket with a 400 micron mesh bag. Each layer filters progressively smaller particles out.

4.) Bottle the honey.

Once filtered, I poured all of the honey into jars and bottles. All together, it was about 10-11 pounds. A relatively small harvest, but still a lot of honey!

My primary use for honey is giving it away to friends and family. I knew this harvest would be small, so I bought 48 2-ounce bear bottles to give away as many samples as possible. They were adorable.

And the exciting news is that I have more honey coming! During my (less than pleasant) hive inspection a few days ago, I discovered that the bees have nearly filled the empty honey super I had on top. I pulled another deep frame of honey (and replaced it with one of the empty frames from my last harvest), and I put a second super on top. Because the bees were agitated, I didn’t try to pull the full super and will do that in a month or so.

With the one frame I pulled, I tried a different method of harvesting that takes less equipment – the crush and strain method. It’s exactly what it sounds like. Basically, I scraped all of the comb and honey off the frame, crushed it up, and then put it through the same filtering system as before.

That one frame yielded another 3 pounds of honey, which is more than enough to hold me over until my big harvest in a month or so.

Now it’s probably time to invest in some better labels!

Author farmeramyPosted on

Keeping Bees Even When It’s Hard

As with many endeavors, there are times when beekeeping is hard. I don’t like to talk about those times much because so many people have a negative association with bees. When you tell people that you have bees, you can get a lot of negative reactions. “Do you get stung all the time?” “Can you even use your backyard?” “It doesn’t sound safe.” “How do you have the time?” No. Usually. It is. It doesn’t take that much time.

Genuinely, I love keeping bees. I’m constantly learning, I’m contributing something back to the environment, and the honey ain’t bad. But there are difficult days. Days you lose a hive. Days you have to clean out a wax moth infestation. Days your wife gets stung.

And days you get stung. Today was one of those days.

Why/How I Got Stung

When I get stung, which is honestly pretty rare, it’s usually my fault. I’m very fallible and I make mistakes.

First mistake, I only wore a t-shirt under my bee jacket. Usually I wear long sleeves, but it’s so hot. I thought, “it can’t hurt to only have one layer if that layer is a bee jacket.” Wrong.

Second mistake, it was a bad time to open the hive. It’s now July, which is when the bees are more defensive. The nectar flow has mostly ended and the bees have honey to protect from others. Also, it’s supposed to rain for 4 days straight, starting in a few hours. Bees know when the rain is coming and they don’t want their house open when it rains.

I did need to do a quick check after taking a few deep frames of honey out a few weeks ago and harvesting and because I had a totally empty, foundation-less super on top and wanted to see if they had done anything with it. But I didn’t think about the timing.

I should have just done a quick peek. Instead, I got excited about how good it looked inside and tried to do too much. The hive was open too long. The bees got agitated. I was working in a cloud of frustrated bees. The pictures below show how many little stingers were on my suit afterward.

All of those little dots are stingers where the bees attempted to sting me.

And because I was wearing a t-shirt, a few got through and I have three stings on my arm, one on my wrist, and one on my stomach.

It sucks when this happens. It hurts, and it’s a little scary. Once I realized how disturbed the hive was, I quickly abandoned my attempt to pull honey frames, threw a second empty honey super on top, and closed up the hive. Usually when I walk away from the hive, all the bees get off me pretty quickly. But they were especially agitated today, so I had to walk around the house to the front porch in my bee suit and run the porch fan to get them off.

Why I Continue to Keep Bees (Even When It’s Hard)

At this point, I sound like a crazy person. Why would I keep these things in my backyard? Why would I have a hobby where I can get hurt?

Immediately following a bad inspection like this one, I ask myself these questions. But I always decide to keep going because I truly get so much enjoyment from them and they continue to be great teachers.

On the enjoyment front, I got my first batch of honey a few weeks ago! I want to do a whole post on the process, so I’ll save the details. But it was very cool. And when I got into the hive today, they had built out comb and mostly filled the 3 deep and 10 shallow frames I added just a few weeks ago. These bees are really doing great. No wonder they are defensive, they have a lot of valuable stuff to protect.

I’m also always learning with the bees. Every mistake has brought new lessons. And the bees are complex; learning how they operate has really been fascinating.

Mostly, the bees teach me patience. My nature is impatient. I want instant gratification. I want to get things done and accomplished as quickly as possible. I hate waiting. But the bees don’t care. They operate on bee time.

Today, I should have been patient. I should have remembered it’s a bad time of year to have them open. When I saw a full super (box for collecting honey), I should have thought, “Wow, this is great. Let me give them another super so they have room to grow, and I’ll come back and harvest all of this at a better time.” I could have been in and out without incident.

There are about 50 other times I should have been more patient with the bees. And I’ve learned each time. Bees are full of life lessons, and they’re the best little teachers I could ask for.

Author farmeramyPosted on

Spring has sprung!

All of my plants (except for sunflowers) are now officially planted in the garden. Seeds are sprouting and a rainy few days have really helped move things along.

Leaf Lettuce, Tomatillo
Kale, Tomatoes
Radishes, Carrots, Broccoli
Green Beans, Cucumbers
Squash, Corn, Cauliflower, Peas
Sweet Potatoes, Blackberries
Fruit Trees, Herbs

And finally, my first (and tiny) harvest of the season!

Author farmeramyPosted on

Bee Watch – April 2019

Short version: The bees are doing well!

In late March, I was able to do my first hive inspection of the Spring. I moved the 2nd brood box to the bottom and checked all of the frames. The queen had clearly recently been active (I was able to spot larvae and drones were present but I was unable to spot her). The hive was pretty packed with bees, which was great news!

At the end of March, my wife got her first bee sting since I started keeping bees. And it just happened to be right under her eye where she experienced a “late large reaction” and her eye swelled shut 2 days later. Fortunately she is not allergic and with the help of some steroids cleared up pretty quickly. And she was very gracious about the whole thing.

In early April, I went ahead and added my first honey super to the hive. It was a bit early, but the hive was so packed and I wanted to try and prevent any swarming by giving them some space.

Honey supers are the boxes you add to collect honey. For my first super, I am using a Ross Round kit. Essentially, it is full of round plastic containers in which the bees will build comb and pack honey. When full, you can take out the containers, put lids on them, and voila you have nice little packages of raw honey comb.

In mid-late April, I did another inspection. There were bees up in the super, but they had not yet built any comb in the Ross Rounds. The video below is an excerpt from that inspection. The hive is still going strong, and I didn’t see any queen cells on the bottom of the frames so I’m hoping to avoid a swarm this year.

Since this inspection, it’s been pretty warm and the nectar flow in the city has definitely begun. I was hoping to do an inspection this weekend to check the super, but it was rainy most of the weekend. So, I’ll have to wait until later this week.

Author farmeramyPosted on

Spring is Coming!

My first seeds of the year are planted!

No photo description available.

The temperature got into the high 60s today, and the bees are busy!

And I ordered all of my container fruit trees today! I used a few different nurseries to get the best prices and options. Our container trees will be: lemon, clementine, avocado, lime, peach, and cherry.

Spring is coming, I can feel it.

Author farmeramyPosted on

2019 Garden Plan: Schedule & Map

I was super early when it came to choosing crops and ordering seeds this year. Now that it’s March, I needed to get going on my planting schedule & garden map. It’s time to start sowing my first seeds, and I didn’t have a plan yet! Who am I? I don’t even recognize myself without a plan.

So, I sat down this morning and got to work over some coffee and eggs (backyard fresh from my favorite suburban chicken farmers – perfect inspiration).

Schedule:

Our last frost date is around April 2-15. I plan for 4/15 to be on the safe side. To plan the timeline, I always pull up a Zone 7 planting schedule for backup, but I mostly just use the guidance on the seed packet.

I lay out all of my seed packets on a timeline and sort by whether I am sowing indoors or outside.

Then, I can translate that into a rough, written planting schedule. All of my planting has to happen on the weekends.

Planting starts tomorrow!

Garden Map

Because I will start planting my cold-hardy spring crops outside next weekend, I also need a map of where everything is going.

In terms of space, I have 3 primary beds (4′ x 8′, raised a few inches). I use buckets or grow bags for potatoes. I have a small ground bed in the back corner for sunflowers. And this year, we are converting some raised flower beds around our patio into beds for strawberries and herbs.

There are some key things I try to consider when mapping out the garden for the year:

  • Spacing & Quantity: This is the most obvious. How much space does each plant need / how many plants per square foot? How many plants do I want of each vegetable? That will let me know the square feet needed for each.
  • Height: I don’t want tall plants blocking sunlight from shorter plants. In the diagram below, the bottom of the page is South, which is where the sun is coming from.
  • Structures: This year, my tomatoes, tomatillos, cucumbers, peas, and snake beans will all need some variety of support structure. So, I have to be cognizant of where and how I will place those.
  • Timing: The planting & harvest timing of different vegetables allows me to rotate crops during the same year in the same space, which can help me grow more and optimize the small space I have. For example, lettuce, kale, and spinach are cold weather crops that I can grow around the edges of the tomato beds. By the time it gets too warm for the greens, the tomato plants really start to take off.

2019 planning is complete! Time to garden.

Author farmeramyPosted on

Bee Watch – February 2019

Given that I lost my bees over the winter last year, I have spent all winter nervously watching my bees for signs of a strong colony. My wife even got me a thermal imaging camera for Christmas so I could check the temperature of the hive when it’s too cold to open or see any external activity.

That photo is from late December, and it was a great sign that the bees were doing well. Since then, we’ve also had some days above 50 degrees, so I’ve been able to peek in and see the ladies out flying around.

This past weekend, I took advantage of the warmer weather and was able to open the hive and add some homemade bee fondant. This will help ensure they have plenty of food and don’t starve in this last little stretch of winter.

The colony appears to be very strong. Fingers crossed, knock on wood, etc. that we get a strong start to Spring!

Author farmeramyPosted on

2019 Garden Plan: Crops

The new year is here, and I’ve already ordered seeds for the year. I received my annual seed book from Baker Creek in December and spent my holiday break pouring over every page.

I did not recalculate the Reitz Farm Value Index this year because most of the inputs remain static. Instead, I made a few adjustments based on the lessons learned from this past year.

Subtractions:

  • Beans: I don’t have enough space to grow a crop large enough to really get a good harvest, so every year I end up with just a cup of shelled beans. Going to forgo them this year. (Will still plant green beans.)
  • Cabbage: They take up a lot of space. My success rate has been low on actual heads. My wife hates cabbage. If I were to recalculate the index, these would fall out.
  • Bok Choy: Failed to sprout last year, and I don’t like it enough to spend a bunch of time experimenting. Bye bye, bok choy.
  • Spaghetti Squash: Also unsuccessful last year. Squash vines take up a bunch of space, and since I’m not doing 3 sisters this year, I’m out of space.

Additions:

  • Cauliflower and Broccoli: Their index score was high enough to make the cut last year, but I manually nixed them because I’ve had pest problems with them. If I’m more attentive and conscious about that, I think I can do better.
  • Strawberries: Strawberries can colonize a garden bed, so I have avoided them. But we agreed to turn one of our raised flower beds (approximately 12′ x 1.5′) into a strawberry patch this year.
  • Snake Beans: These looked super cool in the seed catalog and worth a shot. I’ve been reading a lot about them, and I think they should be fun!
  • Fruit Trees: After binge-watching Big Dreams, Small Spaces (with Monty Don) over the last month with my wife, we’re feeling inspired to plant some fruit trees. A couple apple trees in the ground in the front yard, and six smaller trees in containers scattered thoughout the back yard.
    • I seriously recommend Big Dreams, Small Spaces if you are looking for inspiration. It has reinvigorated how I am thinking about my space.

Vegetable Seeds:

So far, I have purchased the following seeds:

Yet to acquire: potato starts/eyes, blackberry plants, tea herbs, herbs

Fruit Trees:

I won’t buy fruit trees until a little closer to spring, but when I do, I’m planning to buy the following:

Next up, I need to start laying out my blueprint for the year.

Author farmeramyPosted on

2018 in Review: The Bees

2018 was a good year for the bees! After losing my 2017 colony over the winter, I ordered a nuc (nucleus hive) from a semi-local apiary.

The prior year, I ordered a package of bees from a large apiary in Georgia to start my hive. They were good bees! But nucs have a higher success rate and getting them locally meant I could pick them up instead of subjecting them to the US mail.

Unfortunately, this year’s record setting rainfall was not only problematic for my garden, but it made trouble for local apiaries. That meant I didn’t get my bees until the very end of June instead of the beginning of May as expected.

Getting my bees late meant a few things.

(1) My primary focus needed to be helping ensure they built up a strong enough colony to survive this winter. So, I fed them sugar water for most of the summer and early fall.

(2) They were aggressive. Typically, when you get bees in April – early May, they’re pretty docile. In late June – August they get more aggressive. The natural nectar flow has stopped, so other bees and insects are trying to rob the hive. This makes the bees very defensive. So, installing them during this time was not fun. In fact, I forgot to smoke them at first and ended up getting multiple stings on my legs. This is the first time I have received multiple stings.

I also did regular inspections every two weeks for a while so I could assess when the colony had grown enough to necessitate adding a second box. If you don’t add the second brood box soon enough, the bees get cramped and swarm. Not a good result for someone trying to build a strong colony for winter.

Doing hive inspections during the “hot” period of July – August led to a few more stings. Mostly mild, single stings, but not particularly pleasant.

The good news is that even though the colony was aggravated by my late summer disruptions, it was growing stronger. These are some hardy bees.

And thank goodness because in September, it looked like Hurricane Florence was going to make landfall in the mid-Atlantic and cause very strong winds in DC. I entered into total beekeeper panic mode and might have gone a little too hard on strapping down the hive. Fortunately for DC (and unfortunately for the Carolinas), we didn’t get hit. But now I at least have a system for anchoring down the hive when needed.

In preparation for the winter, I did a final hive inspection and winterized in mid-November. And they had calmed down some – no stings!

I’m trying not to make any of the mistakes of last year. I didn’t feed them any pollen patties this year because they had such strong honey stores. I think they’ll be fine on their own. I’m also going to avoid opening them in January, even if there are some warm days. Basically, I’m taking a bit of a hands-off approach and letting them lead their own survival.

They do seem to be a genuinely very strong and proficient colony. So, I feel confident they can make it. Fingers crossed! If they do survive, I should have my first honey harvest in 2019!

Author farmeramyPosted on

2018 in Review: The Garden

2018 is over, and when it comes to gardening, thank goodness. Not a peak gardening year. The biggest challenge was the rain. So so much rain. In fact, it was the wettest year in DC history! The summer was especially rainy, and it did not bode well for most of my crops.

But it wasn’t all bad! We still got plenty of vegetables from the garden, and I still love my tiny little urban farm. Here’s a quick rundown of how things went.

Topics of Interest

In my original garden plan, I had a list of topics of interest – things I wanted to learn more about or try. Here’s an update on what I did with those.

  • Soil testing: Didn’t do it. Probably still should.
  • Composting: Working on it. I bought a compost tumbler at the beginning of the year and a fancy new trash can to collect compost without making our kitchen smell like rotten fruit. I did a pretty ok job here, but have not harvested compost yet. Struggled to get the right balance between brown and green materials. Hoping to have some this spring.
  • Animal control & pest management: Didn’t do a lot here and didn’t have any issues.
  • Tea ladder: We planted tea herbs and they grew great! Then, I laid them out to dry and put the dry herbs in tea bags. They tasted like eating grass because I didn’t actually research how to make tea – oops!
  • Melon patch: Didn’t do it. Still convincing my wife to give up a portion of the yard. Not likely to win this debate.
  • Side yard bed: Didn’t touch it. Still have some herbs growing there, but mostly ornamental plants.
  • 3 sisters: Total fail! My squash never grew larger than a few inches. And the varieties of beans that I grew were far stronger than the corn, so the bean vines basically took over the corn stalks and drug them to the ground.
  • Flame weeding: Bought a torch (/flamethrower), but didn’t use it for this. Mostly just burned a bunch of boxes in the fire pit like a responsible adult.

Crops:

Also in my original garden plan, I developed the Reitz Farm Value Index to determine which crops I would grow for the year. Here’s a quick report card on the results for each crop.

  • Lettuce, Spinach, Kale: B+ (These always grow well and did this year. I could have harvested more regularly, but whatevs.)
  • Tomatoes: C (Not as good as usual. I tried a lot of new varieties and it didn’t pay off. Got a lot of cherry tomatoes as usual, but the rest of the crop was light.)
  • Carrots: A (Big success! I have had horrible luck with carrots, and this was my first year with a strong crop.)
  • Radish: A (The easiest garden vegetable continues it’s long-standing record.)
  • Zucchini, Yellow Squash: D (Usually a strong crop, the heavy rain got the best of my squashes this year. I got about 5 zucchinis/yellow squashes this year before the plants rotted out.)
  • Green Beans, Beans: C+ (These did ok. Harvest wasn’t as strong as prior years, but still decent.)
  • Corn: D (Would have been great if I hadn’t grown some very sturdy beans that drug them to the ground.)
  • Peas: B- (Spring crop was strong. Fall crop was unsuccessful.)
  • Sunflowers: A- (They were so big and wonderful! And then I waited a little too long to harvest. A heavy rain came and wiped out all of the seeds, so I didn’t get a harvest.)
  • White Sweet Potato: B+ (These grew great in buckets. I let them go too long, so when I harvested them in *cough*November*cough* there were a lot of cracks and a few had rotted. But when peeled, most were great. I made soup.)

  • Cabbage: D (Why do I keep growing these? The heads never get tight enough, I never harvest them, they take up a ton of space, and my wife hates cabbage. They are off the list for 2019.)
  • Bok Choy: F (Never grew past sprouts.)
  • Spaghetti Squash: F (Also never grew more than a few inches.)
  • Tomatillo: B (Planted 2 plants this year so they could pollinate. Both grew to be gigantic, but only one fruited. Still a pretty big harvest.)
  • Blackberry: F- (The seedlings I bought at the beginning of the season didn’t survive – I suspect due to frost. So we bought a few more plants – basically sticks with roots. They also died. Total fail.)

Reflections on the Year

I started this post a little negative. After sifting through photos to put in the post, I realized it was more successful than I thought. I made the best I could out of a rainy situation.

The garden continues to be a fulfilling endeavor despite its challenges. I had a busy year outside of the garden – lots of travel and professional commitments. The garden was grounding.

There’s a lot of lessons learned from this past year and changes I’ll make as a result. There are also some new things I’d like to try. 2019 will be a fun year for the garden!