Bees And Snow

It is the middle of winter here on Cape Cod. In fact we are getting another snow storm as I write this blog post.

Left:  Icickles hanging from the cover of  the hives.



















Already the cold winter has claimed the life of one of our hives. It seems that they starved only inches away from stores of honey and pollen. The weather must have turned cold for too long of a time. The cluster of bees could not move to a new location.

I cleaned out the dead bees and placed the hive bodies in storage. There are 8 frames of honey left in the dead hive along with frames full of pollen. A new package of bees in the spring will take advantage of the hard work done by the deceased hive.

Right:  Bees were flying and still gathering pollen in the middle of November.  They needed all the food they could gather after the bad summer season we had last year.

As I mentioned earlier we are experiencing an unusually snowy and icy winter this year. The snow from one storm turns to ice just before another one hits. Of course we have been fortunate compared to other towns further inland where they have received much more snow. Our deepest accumulation has only been 6 inches or so, compared with feet of snow inland.

The bees have been consuming much bee candy this winter due to the colder temperatures. It was nice to see them flying in December, on the two days temperatures climbed into the 40’s.

I have one nuc hive I am trying to over winter in one hive body that seems to be struggling. It contains one of the queens I raised last summer. I’m keeping my fingers crossed that they will make it.

Left:  A cluster of bees feeding on bee candy places on the tops of the frames of comb.  This candy will last them about one month.

This time of year I start to get a little stir crazy. I find myself sitting and dreaming about the bees and spring. There is not much beekeeping activities to do other than wait for the new catalogs and the bee journals to come in the mail. Well...  a glass of mead while reading a bee journal isn't all that bad..

What new products will we find and be trying out this season?

There it is again…. As the snow falls….. I’m dreaming of summer!

Spring Has Sprung

The first day of spring has arrived! And it has arrived in beautiful fashion!

Temperatures rose into the low 70’s this weekend, allowing for a quick inspection of the hives.

The crocus flowers are blooming, allowing the bees to collect much needed spring pollen. The pollen they collect will be used to boost brood production as they “build up” in size in preparation for the spring honey flow.

 

Right:  The first Crocus to emerge on our property, and a week early too!

The warm temperatures over the past few days have been a wonderful reminder of days to come.

Several times I found myself sitting out near the hives just watching them fly in and out, heavily burdened with yellow packages of pollen on their back legs. Some bees were busy dragging out the dead from winter loses, while others just seemed happy to get out and into the sun shine.

I have been keeping a written record of the progress of the hives over the past years, and I am happy to report that the crocus bloom is running about a week ahead of schedule…. An early spring.

I guess the Ground Hog was wrong!

Left:  A worker bee returning to the hive with some of the first spring pollen.









As I mentioned the rise in temperature allowed a quick inspection of some of the hives. Sure enough, young brood, and capped larva were observed on two if not three frames of bees. The queens probably started laying eggs sometime in February.

Some cells and already emerged, perhaps these were the bees I watched taking their first orientation flights in the sun.

Pollen patties were once again added to the hives. I have been surprised how quickly they have been consumed. Each colony has been through a patty a week since the beginning of March. In a few more weeks we will begin providing sugar syrup to the hives to imitate the collection of nectar. This will stimulate the queens to lay even more eggs, and cause the hives to build up faster.

Above:  With the cover and inner cover removed you can see the new small hive beetle trap installed.  The trap is baited with an attactant oil.  The bees will chase the beetles, and the beetles should enter the trap to hide, where they will meet there demise.  You can also see a new pollen patty just added to the colony along with the remains of the white bee candy.  The yellow "frame" to the far right is a division board feeder which will be used to feed the bees sugar syrup next month.




Now is our buildup time. The more bees in the colonies come May. The more honey will be on the hives in August.

Some dead hive beetles were found on the sticky boards below the screened bottom boards. This indicates that some hive beetles are continuing to survive, with the bees, through the winter. I purchased two different types of beetle traps to use in addition to the bottom board traps I have been using. These new traps fit between the frames in the upper hive body. They are baited with an attractant oil. I have not used these before. I hope they work. The next inspection will show if this trap works.

Left:  Progress of the mead I started in February.  You can see how much it has cleared over the past month.  To the right is a photo taken at the height of fermentation. 

I plan on drinking this mead while we are extracting honey this Septermber!

The bee candy was once again added where needed, even though there is still abundant honey still in the combs. The bees have now been “trained” to feed off of this candy, although with so much honey left in the comb these hives will have to be watched carefully for swarming in the months to come.

I had quite the feeling of accomplishment this weekend. It is nice that all of the hives survived this winter. Perhaps, after 31 years, I have finally figured out how to prepare them for winter.

Or perhaps, I was just lucky.

 

Winter Beekeeping - Make Some Mead

What else to do… What else to do…

I "must" find something to pass away the winter days without the bees……

MEAD…
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Right: Lemon and orange zest and juice along with 12 pounds of honey.
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Honey was for thousands of years the main sweetening agent known to humans.


Life, Courage, Wisdom, and strength were believed to be provided by honey. The Bible, Hinduism, Aristotle, Virgil, Celtics all echo the praises of honey.
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Left: Zest and spices ready to be boiled in the "must"

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There are many types of mead. Dry, Sweet, Wine like, Beer like, mixed with fruit (Melomel), mixed with herbs (Pyment, Hippocras, Metheglin, Cyser).

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Right: Pure water and spices boiling to create the "must". Once cooled the honey and yeast will be added and fermentation will begin!

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In its simplest form, honey is mixed with water and fermented. The amount of honey mixed in proportion to the water controls the amount of alcohol that can be produced in the final drink. It also controls how sweet the drink will be. In this simple form the flavor of the mead will be created by two things… the flavor of the honey used, and any flavors added by the particular strain of yeast used to ferment the must (mixture).

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Left. The empty fermentation bucket after two weeks of fermentation. You can see how mudy the must looks from the yeast.

Meads will taste different if different types of honey are used. A wild flower honey will impart a different flavor to the mead than say a cranberry or orange blossom honey. A champagne yeast will have a different flavor than a merlot yeast.

There are hundreds if not thousands of recipes for mead. Choosing one is difficult.

Back in 1978 I made my first batch of mead. It was just a simple honey, water, yeast mixture. It fermented, bottled, and aged. At just the right moment a bottle was opened and tasted.

Reminded me of kerosene!...... Others liked it.

This year I created my own recipe, actually a combination of two that seamed interesting. I would be using honey from our hives of course. Cape Cod Wild Flower Honey to be exact. I wanted a spiced fruity mead. More of a Metheglin I would say.

I started with orange and lemon zest, and juice, a touch of chamomile, cinnamon, ginger, cloves, yeast nutrient, and tannin in a muslin bag. Boiled in water for 15 minutes, and then rested the must for 15 minute. The must was added to a sterilized fermentation bucket along with 12 pounds of honey. Once the must was cool the specific gravity of the must was taken and champagne yeast was added and fermentation started within hours.

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Right: The "must" is "racked" into a secondary fermentation container fitted with an air lock. The air lock protects the mead from wild yeasts or other thinks that could ruin the mead.

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Why check the specific gravity you ask?

By taking a specific gravity reading prior to fermentation, and comparing it to a reading after fermentation is complete allows us to calculate how much alcohol was produced in the mead. An alcohol content between 12% and 13% will preserve the mead and keep it from turning bad. The bees would not be happy if all that honey went to waste now would they!

The alcohol, being produced, is a byproduct of the fermentation process. Yeast is a living organism that consumes sugar and nutrients from the must, and produces alcohol and carbon dioxide as waste. The carbon dioxide comes out of the must as bubbles (gas).

Its fun to watch the mead bubble away. Especially knowing that for every tiny bubble of carbon dioxide, an equal amount of alcohol is produced.

Eventually the yeast runs out of sugar (food) to eat, and the fermentation process is complete.

Now we will have to wait for the mead to “clear” which means all the yeast settles to the bottom of the container and a clear drinkable liquid can be bottled. Mead takes a couple of months to clear.

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Left: You can see the bubbles created by the yeast. Toasted oak chips have been added to give the mead an oak cask flavor.

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Once bottled, the mead will have to age for a year or so before it will taste good enough to drink.

I don’t think I will be able to wait that long though!

Good Mead web pages:

The Joy Of Mead:

http://www.stormthecastle.com/mead/index.htm

Eckraus:

http://www.eckraus.com/wine-making-mead-honey.html

The wine making home page:

http://winemaking.jackkeller.net/reques28.asp