*all cleaned up!

Bees are great housekeepers!  Remember I reported to you on our honey harvest? After Henry and I extracted as much of the honey as we could from each frame, we laid them out on a make shift table about 100 feet from their hive.  Sure enough the bees had the frames cleaned within 24 hours.  The honey bees did a great job as well as a few lucky bumble bees who got in on the goods!

I made the rookie mistake of leaving a honey covered plastic bag inside the barn on our way into the house with the full frames in hand. We discarded or tossed aside the plastic bag when we went through the barn.  I also left two frames in the barn when I had meant to go back and get them to put on the make-shift table to get cleaned up by the bees.  Eric and I later went out to the barn to feed the animals for the evening and WHOA!  We were met at the barns entrance with numerous bees swarming around that had been busy cleaning those two misplaced frames as well as investigating the plastic bag with great interest!   I had to now carefully removed the bag as well as get those two frames out in the field with the other ones.

I have read A LOT about managing a hive, keeping bees, being a good beekeeper, and the likes. I however have not given the same amount of time to learning HOW it is that the bees make the honey.  Today out of a healthy respect for the bees and a grateful heart for the flow that they produced for us,  I decided to do a bit of reading on this topic. I am amazed the amount of laborious efforts that have to be put forth to simply produce a tablespoon of honey.  Check THIS link out with some curious facts about the worker bees process of making honey.

When I went out to check on the frames to see how the cleaning was coming along I saw many dead bees. I was, as you can imagine, a bit alarmed.  I also saw all the bumble bees and thought perhaps a fight had ensued over the honey, and thought perhaps the bumble bees had won.  This was not the case at all.  I later found out that the life cycle of those bees had come to an end. I thought, well it is a good way to finish up life!  In the midst of what they OWN, that honey.

Tomorrow will be the day we open the hive one last time until spring!  I am excited to work the hive and see my little sugars one more time before they begin spending the next few months getting ready to weather the fall and winter months. 

*abundant harvest over flowing

I have said this before and I will say it again, we NEVER thought we would have honey to harvest this year.  God has really blessed our hive to literal over flowing! Even the local bee master, Mr. Bundrick is surprised that we got 50lbs of honey from our hive that we started the second week of May.  He had a nuc prepared for us the weekend of Easter, but Henry and I flew out to North Carolina to help pack up the rest of our things and finish our move.  Upon returning we were exhausted for several weeks, as you might imagine!  We finally followed through with a call and Mr. Bundrick came out to set up our hive mid May of this year!

We were supposed to finishing taking the honey this weekend but some of my family members were here visiting, so we put it off until Tuesday.  Henry and I went out on Tuesday morning, smoker in hand, with full gear on, ready to finish the job we started last week.  We took 10 frames full of honey, stirred up the bees and worked the rest of the afternoon away processing honey. Henry's help during this whole process was invaluable.  Eric usually helps with all the hive operations, but you have to work a hive in the middle of the day and Eric would not be off again until Saturday.  Hence, we have no pictures while working the hive.  I do wish we had a picture of when Henry had to leave the area because a single bee got after him. I assure you he did NOT look as silly as I must have looked the day I ran crazily away from several bees that were chasing me.  No stings again today! WOOT!

We have to do just a few things as regular maintenance on the hive this weekend.  Once these precautionary measure have been put in place, we will not make any changes on the hive until Spring 2012.

Henry is starting the extraction process. Mr. Bundrick has two extractors he lends out to his customers when harvest time arrives.  

Surely you can see that harvest time has arrived!  I would take each frame from the hive, give it a hard shake up and down to dispel any bees that were on the frame working when I pulled it from the box.  Any bees that were still on the frame had to be gently flicked off.  When you have the frame bee free, success has been reached.  The next step is to get that frame into a container or a clean plastic garbage bag.  

You can see the comb that the bees attached to the bottom of this frame. I had removed one of the frames in the box below the top one to give the more room (because I had read to do this.. don't do it!!) The bees made a beautiful comb but it cause chaos in your hive.  

Henry looked pained as he tasted the honey, but he really was enjoying it. He later told me he ate way too much honey and that he felt sick. 

Inside the rim of the home made extractor you see the delectable honey spinning out of the frames. 

Again, a good view of the honey being pulled out by force of the centrifugal extraction device. 

Like I said before, Henry's help was indispensable to me on this day.  We both took turns working the extractor. It was my turn to work the camera.  

Here Henry opens the spout for the first jar to be filled.  Oh what a day! 

The wax from this extraction was minimal, but what we are able to clean out will be used for lip balms.  We have made lip balms in the past with some success, but we hope to make a far superior product with the wax that our young bees have provided. 

Ah, I gotcha! Proof that you were eating wax filled honey since it is on your chin.  He looks a little intoxicated doesn't he. It is the honey, I'm telling you.  He had way too much. 

We will not have comb to put in our jars of honey as a general rule, but since I had created that mess in the hive by removing that frame, we used what we harvested in a few jars. I think having a bit of the intricately designed honey comb in the jars makes them simply beautiful.  A work of art! 

This particular jar reminds me of the honey we used to see at my grandpa's and grandma's when we would visit. Momma told me that Granddaddy used to rob the bees in the wild and this is what their jars of honey looked like. 

I visited the hive the evening after we took the honey.  This is normal activity if the hive is full and they are trying to keep the queen cooled. I am a bit concerned that I may need to put a supra back on for the bees but Mr. Bundrick told us when we harvested the honey to go ahead and take the supra off until Spring.  What you see here is now their hive. We are going to give the supra (the smaller box on top)  to the queen as well so she can use it for brood or whatever she desires.  We will remove the queen extractor (the silver sliver) this weekend, which currently sits between the hive box (larger bottom one) and the supra (above it)

We set the extracted frames (and the supra box) about 100 feet from the hive so the bees will be drawn to it and clean it up. Once they have cleaned it up we will store it inside the barn until next spring. Then we will do it all over again!

Sharing over at Deborah Jean's Dandelion's blog hop.

*got milk?

Well we don't have milk yet, but we have EGGS! 

Who would have ever thought that raising fowl would be so much fun. I am serious.  I suppose you could say that I live too far out, see too few interesting things to think that chickens are fun.  I used to live in a rather large town with every possible restaurant at your finger tips, as many theaters as one can imagine and shopping galore! I no longer have those things available to me (45 min drive one way to get to them). I don't miss them. At ALL.

Our hens and their two roosters were all ready for bed by the time I finally made it out with their kitchen scraps. I was a bit delayed in getting out to the barn before I realized that it was to late for them. They are early to bed and early to rise!

This little sugar cracks me up!  Goldie's comb is so large and floppy for her tiny feminine frame.  She always looks as if she is sporting a do of the fowl kind!  I imagine she can hardly see from her left eye. She has a twin (Rebel,the other Buff Leghorn in the bunch) and she doesn't have this same "problem".  Goldie and Rebel would rack up beside each other each night but as you will see Rebel has found a new spot.

Of all the nesting boxes my darlin husband built for this large group of prissy girls, only about 4 boxes are being used, fought over and even double nesting is going on.  We have this one Deleware Chicken that refuses to wait to lay  her egg. If she is ready when her desired nesting box is busy, she will just go stand over the hen that was there first, make a bunch of noise and lay her egg on the other one's back. Just  yesterday I was watching this strange behavior and the egg rolled out of the chicks vent into my hand because I was afraid it was going to roll off onto the ground.  

If you look just above the coop you will see a chicken.  This is Rebel, she has given us great proof for the giving of her name. She does things her way. This is her new way of sleeping.  (I just remembered: Henry and I clipped the wings on all the chickens just a few days ago. All that is except Rebel.. because she was  out in the garden area all alone and could not be caught.  So she still has her wings to fly whenever and where ever she pleases.

 I currently have 4 dozen eggs in our fridge.  We have several "customers" buying eggs from us but we need to bump that up to 8 families a week.  Our 19 hens are now all laying on a regular basis which is providing us with enough eggs to sale for profit.  If we are able to sell 8 dozen eggs each week the cost of  supplemental chicken feed, rabbit feed and goat feed will all be covered by the hens  hard work!

*the fiber of our lives

Cotton.

160 days frost free needed for growth.

I am not a cotton farmer, I do not know anything at all really about this important crop or how to properly grow it.  What I do know is my dear friend, Jen, gave me some seeds to plant for fun and plant we did.  We have watched these beautiful deep green plants grown and bloom for months now.  The bolls on the plants have been waiting for the right moment to show the beauty that lies within!  Just this past week the bolls started opening to show forth the beautiful white cotton.

Are you raising young children? Are you home educating your children? Or are you just curious like I was about the cotton plants stages of growth? Either way, I have numerous seeds that I would like to share with some of you.  If you are interested in a few seeds please leave me a comment below and I will get in contact with you.  Here is a great link for educators about the cotton crop.

I am going to allow the cotton to dry out nicely and use it as part of our decor somewhere in our home. I will use some of the nicely opened bolls to make some cotton angels and other crafts.

This is the last crop in our summer garden spot. This week the area will be tilled for the fall crops!  We will be planting broccoli, cabbage, beets, onions, late corn, some more tomatoes, and more. Are you planting a fall garden? If so, what are you planning to plant?

*Honey, we got honey!

All of us around Erilyn are whooping and hollering! We couldn't be more excited about beekeeping than we were this afternoon upon returning to the house with two frames of delicious honey!  Eric and I have been planning to check our top supra for possible capped honey. Boy, what a delight it was to open the top board and find fully capped honey cells, our gift was finished.

This week we will replace the top supra with new frames for the busy bees. We were really hopeful that the frames would be ready for harvesting, but somewhat doubtful based on the things we have read about young colonies.  Our hive has grown so much since we got it back in the spring.  When we added the second supra, I felt like we had a good chance on honey in our first season.  By the weekend we will likely have 50lbs of dark amber colored honey.

Eric has become the smoke master.  He has not protective gear on because he is not working directly with the bees.  He is usually close by, but not directly involved so he feels safe enough just wearing a long sleeve shirt.  He is also my eyes and my careful guide when I need it.  I have got the moving slow part down really well.  In fact, when I put get all suited up, I switch into a different gear - SLOW. 

Mr. & Mrs. Beekeepers

Just look at that full frame!!!! Maneuvering this heavy frame with the gloves is not as easy as it might look.  I work carefully, and very meticulously all the while the gloves really make the job harder- perhaps safer, but harder. I am trying to work my BRAVE up enough so I can go to the hive under regular maintenance glove less.  If you look in the background you will see a container with pebbles in it as well as water. This container serves as our bees water source, a safe place for them to get water and not drown in the process.  Before we put this out for the bees we were finding numerous honey bees floating in our pool daily.

Momma was there with a clean plastic garbage bag for us to slip the frame into until we were ready to leave the area.  I had to give the frame several hard shakes to get the bees off. Many flew off, but some were more difficult remove.  I had to lightly flick them off the frame in order to rob them of their precious honey. We ended up with two live bees in the bag, which we set free when we got up to the house when we took the frames out of the bag.

Here we are putting the top board back for now. We still need to harvest the other 8 frames in this supra.  I am so glad we only took two the first time around. It was a lot of work. Exciting. Interesting. Joyful too!  We are an awesome team!   NO stings to day at all!

Let me encourage you - if you don't already keep bees, look into starting a colony next spring!  We have no idea what we are doing and we are harvesting our first supra of honey just 4 months after getting our hive started.  Mind you, we are NOT taking the surplus food supply that our sweet bees will need to weather the fall and winter months, but the other supra. The bees are keeping busy these days most likely with the blooms on the many, many Crepe Myrtles all around our neighbors property as well as a few on our property.

When we opened the top board on the hive we found 15 to 20 (visible to us) Hive Beetles.  We saw these little beetles skittering around and had no idea what they were or why they were there. Upon a bit of research, we found that these critters can be little to great harm based on the strength of the hive. Either way I will be paying Mr. Bundrick a visit tomorrow to get something to take care of the beetles that are known to be deadly to Florida bee hives. We don't want to take any chances.

We did harvest the honey in our spacious kitchen, um.... I think every surface in that kitchen was covered with sweet honey and wax.  With this having been our first time in claiming and harvesting honey, we were totally inexperienced in every step even though we had read everything "bee" that we could get our hands on. 

Here momma is helping scrap the honey off of the frame into a pot with as strainer in place. 

We ended up with about 10lbs of honey from two frames!  If the rest of the frames go this well, we will end up with about 50 lbs of honey this year!  This will help balance out the cost of investment made earlier this spring to get us started in keeping bees.

Stay tuned for more updates on our "Erilyn Honey Harvest Summer 2011".  (all photo credits go to my nephew Skyler, he did a great job didn't he!?)

*she lives

Yes, she lives and she lives well!  These pictures were taken in February of this year when I had been without my my hubby off and on, more off than on mind you - since Thanksgiving.  We had agreed early on since our selection of breed was GIANT that she would not be all owed to sit on OUR furniture.  We held this through until January'ish.  

Look at me Mommy, don't I look precious up here? I am so comfortable. I can be your companion and lay beside you when you rest here since Daddy is not here. It is my job, Mommy, to snuggle with you since Daddy can't right now. HOOK. LINE. SINKER. 'nuff said.

What? Your gonna have to put a stop to this? What? You and Daddy agreed that I couldn't sit on the furniture? The idea of this disgust me Mommy.

Mommy, PLEASE. Don't I look so cute?  Um yes, Frayja, you do. That is how it all started, but you and I both know that it should have never stared and that it has to come to a quick end!  I did confess to Eric my waywardness. We agreed that it STILL was not a good idea, for many reasons.  Frayja is such a quick, smart, fast learner and breaking this habit only took a day or two.  She is still allowed to lay on her one piece of furniture and thankfully she does not get confused as to what is hers and what is not.  We are very happy with her temperament, with her obedience and her place in our family. 

This one was taken just this morning during a much needed rain. She asked to go out to potty, but made it no further than the front porch.

Owning her piece of furniture... 

Summer of '11

Perhaps you are wondering how she is getting along with the chickens, rabbits and goats and maybe even the cats.  Well  let me just say that she feels she is unduly challenged on a daily basis!  She is learning to be gentle with Julie and Munch (our inside cats). If she was able, she would love to show every one of the rabbits and every one of the chickens her tonsils.  We tried to introduce her to the sweet goats - it is going to take a while before she learns to be calm and gentle with them. But over all, she is well!