Honey Dreams

Today, I am home nursing a cold. As I sit here by the fire with my hot lemon and honey, I am dreaming of a day this fall when we will extract and bottle our own raw honey. I am optimistic that each of our hives will produce 50 LBS or more. That will likely be a sticky unruly learning process, and I'm sure you'll hear all about it! Until then though, I thought I'd share a few cool tid-bits about honey with you all.
Raw honey is the bee's food. The only reason bees store honey is to survive the winter. The honey bees travel the country side collecting nectar from flowers and bringing it back to the hive. They also collect pollen and water according to the needs of the hive. The water is later extracted from the honey by the bees before the honey is capped with wax. The pollen remains in the honey and aids in filling the nutritional needs of the hive. Pollen is a source of protein, this is important since bees are the descendants of wasps which are carnivores.
Raw honey is not only a natural sweetener but is also considered a super food because it is a powerful antioxidant full of rich nutrients. Also it is a a natural antiseptic, an antibacterial and is used in many places as a healing salve for burns and wounds.  Raw honey is good for soothing sore throats and helps calm a cough, like I have today. Also raw honey contains B complex vitamins, which include riboflavin, niacin, pantothenic acid, thiamine, pyridoxine, biotin and B12. It also contains vitamins A, C, D, E and K, as well as traces of minerals like iron, calcium, copper, potassium, magnesium, phosphorus, potassium and zinc. It also contains enzymes and amino acids.Source: Livestrong.com
So why do I keep repeating raw honey and not just honey? Pasteurized honey has been heated to 140 degrees F for at least 20 minutes which kills all the living organisms in the honey, leaving mostly sugar. While you'll still get the sweet, that's about all. So make sure when you buy honey is says on the label raw or un-pasteurized.
Raw honey will never spoil, and can be kept indefinitely, as long as it is clean. Never put a dirty spoon in the honey jar! The food particles from the spoon will interact with the bacteria in raw honey and mold. I said raw honey will never spoil but it will crystallize. In fact, only raw honey will crystallize. So, if the honey in your cabinet is crystallizing, you can be sure its raw. Crystallizing is a natural process that ocures with all raw honey, and the rate of the process is determined by the type of flower nectar that created the honey. What do you do with crystallized honey? Just heat it slowly on low heat, a sauce pan half filled with water on the stove works well to put honey back into solution. As long as you don't get it over heated there is no change in the honey. Or, just eat it that way. Evidently many people prefer crystallized or whipped honey.
I have read that in her life a honey bee will produce 1/12 of one teaspoon of honey. The 60,000 or so bees in a beehive may collectively travel as much as 55,000 miles and visit more than two million flowers to gather enough nectar to make just a pound of honey! http://www.honey.com/
So enjoy honey with respect of all that went into it, the honey bee litterally worked her self to death making it! With that I'll sign off. It's time to stoke the fire and refill my mug!
Cheers. KJ

Time to Grind

With the holidays behind us and a foot of snow outside, it was a good time to turn the trimmed venison in the freezer into something usable. We butchered three deer this fall ( Blog post: filling freezer), and had fifty pounds of trim to work with, so we decided to make burger, brats and snack sticks.

Like most things, there are many ways to do this; this is just how we do it.

To start, all the trim gets run through a coarse grind. This is 100% trimmed venison.

The next step is to measure out the meat by weight and add the proper amount of fat for the product you are making. We used tallow (beef fat) because that's what we had, but more often pork fat is used for sausage. Beef fat is perfect for burger. 

If you are making burger, then all that's left is to mix the fat and the meet and put it through a fine grind. If you are making sausage, it's time to measure your seasoning and mix it into the meat and fat. To make things easier, we used packaged mixes that come with seasonings and sausage casings.

Once it's all well mixed, it goes through a fine grind and gets stuffed into the prepared casings.

Folks that are well practiced at this can do it with one or two people but for us, three worked well. One to feed the hopper, one to regulated the grinder and one to stuff and twist the casings.

Whitney turned out to be very good at making bratwursts, and stuffed these dogs right as they came out of the grinder. 

We decided to try snack sticks for the first time this year. This was different because these are done without casings. All the steps up this point are the same as the other meats, but from the grinder

we ground the meat onto a wire rack and then baked it in the oven on low heat for a couple hours.

This could have been done with a smoker too, if you have one. This is the first round fresh from the oven.

Finally, all that's left is to bag up the meats for the freezer. Again there are many ways to do this, but for the burger, we've had really good luck using these common ground meat bags. Filled right off the grinder, it makes the process of bagging really easy and clean.  

For the brats and snack sticks, food saver bags work perfect. Here is the first load all bagged, dated and ready for the freezer. Makes me want to BBQ just looking at it! A big thanks to Alyssa and Mac for all the help getting this done, and thanks to everybody else for stopping by.

Until next time,

KJ 

Snow Day

I'm happy to report that I am much more optimistic about the bees this morning than I was in my last post (two steps forward and one step back). I've confirmed that both colonies are still alive and despite the lost lid incident, appear to be doing okay.

Last week I attended a beginning beekeeping class put on by a veteran beekeeper in Missoula. The chance to talk to somebody who had lots of experience was really great. I left feeling good about what I needed to do and how to do it.

Since the last post I have added the wind break on the west side and reduced the entrance to the smallest size (about 1/2" x 3/8"). I also placed some small pieces of wood between the inner and outer lids, so that there is a gap for ventilation but not so much space that they are losing a lot of heat. Finally I placed slate rocks on the tops of hive to be sure I don't have another lid blow off.

 With that I felt good that I had prepared the bees for bad weather, and taken good precautions for proper ventilation. Some beekeepers like to wrap their hives or add insulated lids. The advice I learned in "Bee School" was that these actions will close up the hive too much and you will not have adequate airflow to prevent disease. The beekeeping instructor who has kept bees in Montana for 17 years and as many as 200 hives at a time, suggested only making certain the bees have plenty to eat, good air flow, and mostly leaving them be (pun intended!). Messing with the bees in the winter will cause them to burn more energy and consume more food when they don't need to. So after making sure they were still alive, fed and vented, the bees were all set for the long winter.  

Just in time it turns out, because not long after that it started snowing and didn't stop for days. The chickens, like the bees have plenty to eat and are more than happy to stay inside where it's warm and dry.

After lots of shoveling and a failed attempt at clearing the drive with a 4 wheeler, we had to call for help. Luckily a friendly neighbor with a backhoe was more than happy to come dig us out. Now I know what I want for Christmas next year! ;-) 

That's my kinda snow shovel!

Hope your are all doing well and having fun.

Until next time, thanks for stoping by.

KJ

Two steps forward and one step back

The week has been a little bumpy around here, just when things seemed to be going really well we've had some unfortunate set backs.
In the coop, our hens have been doing great. Since the winter has been mild thus far, they are super active and are getting lots of sunny winter afternoons foraging in the dormant garden. We are gathering a dozen eggs a day regularly and have developed a great group of friends and neighbors who gladly purchase or trade for our eggs every week. The egg money has been covering the cost of feed and things seemed to be just grand.
In the hives, things seemed to be going well also. Both of the colonies are still alive despite my lack of knowledge and the many opportunities to fail. The bees have been making use of the sugar I provided (blog post: mid-december part-2: emergency feeding) and and appear to be wintering well.

Then came the setbacks. We were hit with a nasty wind storm one night which blew the top off one of the bee hives. In hindsight, it's obvious that I should have had rocks on the lids, and I had also mentioned building a windbreak which had not gotten done. I was at work when Whit called to tell me the hive was open, so more than likely it was that way most of the night and all the morning. Bees cluster to keep the queen 92 degrees f. and death from exposure is very common in cold climates like ours. That's why experienced beekeepers never open their hives when it's below 50 f. (the temp when bees can no longer fly). That night it was in the teens and it was in the low 30's when I got home. The other major concern in the winter is moisture. High humidity in a hive is a bad thing and can lead to a bacterial disease called Nosema. When a hive gets Nosema the likely hood is the hive will die without an aggressive treatment with chemicals. So needless to say, the cold wet condition I found my hive in that day was very concerning. I rushed to put the lid back on, and fashioned a lamp in the hive for the afternoon to try and warm/dry things a bit. When I removed the lamp that evening, there were bees were moving about, but there were also many dead bodies scattered on the top of the frames. Since then I've seen bees moving about by peeking in the cracks but have not had a good day to look in and check on them. From what I've read, a shock like that is not always a death blow, but certainly didn't help anything. Of course now there are rocks on the lids and a straw bale wind break in place... learning is hard sometimes.  

As I was still kicking my self over the hive incident, Whit came home one afternoon and found a dead hen. One of our araucanas we called "Grousie" (because she looked like a ruffed grouse as a chick) was laying dead on the coop floor. We looked her over but could not find any marks or anything out of place at all. The coop and run had not been broken into and there was no blood. She looked for all the world like she was laying on the floor asleep. After a sad good bye, we started looking into why this could have happened. There are actually a number of ways a chicken can die unexpectedly from heart attack to calcium over douse. Since we believe little Grousie was a new layer and her vent appeared swollen, Whitney suspects an impaction of the oviduct, a birthing complication you could say. Chicken reproduction is really fascinating, check out this great blog: http://eggcartonlabels.blogspot.com/ how hens makes eggs  if your interested. This is our best guess, but for now the death remains an un-solved mystery.

Grousie is the furthest rear hen in the above photo, we'll miss her around the coop.

We remain positive of course, speed bumps like these are all apart of the journey.

I hope my next post brings better news. Until next time.

KJ

Happy New Year's!

Happy 2012! 

Our biggest news around here is the addition of a new-to-us truck! 

1999(.5) F250 7.3l diesel 6 speed Lariat 4x4

I've been wanting a truck like this for a very long time, and as luck would have it we found one for a very reasonable price over Christmas. The mileage was low and the truck in good condition so we made the decision to bring it home. I am super excited about it, and pleased it averaged over 19 mpg on the trip back even with 75 concrete building blocks in the back that we got free, more raised beds! (That's why the back looks a little low).

Here is my other exciting news. The other day, on a pretty warm afternoon I took a chance and peeked in the bee hives to see if the bees were making use of the I sugar I gave them (Post: mid-december part 2 emergency feeding). The larger colony was active but did not seem to be using the sugar. That made we wonder if they were snubbing my attempts to help them. I have read that if the conditions are not right, the bees will take the sugar out of the hive and dump it in a house cleaning effort. Then I opened the smaller colony.

Pictured is the smaller colony, eating the sugar. This made we very happy because it showed they are making use of the sugar and are very active. I am convinced without this help they would be starving now. I am hoping  that the larger colony is still using their honey stores and will use the sugar when they need it.

Also, I signed up for a beekeeping course at the Life Long Learning Center in Missoula this January, so I'm looking forward to that. This is my first attempt at any organized beekeeping education, so I'll keep you posted on the good stuff I pick up.  

That's all my news. Hope everybody has a great New Years and the coming year is even better than the last!

KJ

Mid December - Part 2: Emergency feeding

As promised, here is my mid December update on the honey bees.

Like I mentioned in the last post: Mid December part 1, I was looking into my options for feeding the bees to keep them from starving. Both of our colonies came from swarms this summer ( Blog post: A Bee Adventure ) one being vacuumed out of the ceiling and the other captured from a neighbor's fence post. Which meant we had very little time for them to build up their honey stores for this winter. Since then I have fed them sugar syrup to help them get this far, but now that it's winter the time for syrup has passed. I  learned about two emergency feeding options: sugar cakes and dry sugar. I was leaning towards the dry sugar option because it sounded easier and I liked the notion that the sugar would help absorb the condensation in the hive. So armed with my 25# bag of sugar, some newspaper and hive tools I headed out today to check the hives.    

What I found was that both hives are alive but in need of help. This (above) is the stronger of the two colonies, what you are looking at is the top of the ball of bees that makes up the colony in the frames of comb. The weather on this day was cloudy, about 30 degrees F. and calm. The bees were active but not flying.

Honey bees can't survive long when exposed to the direct cold so I tried to work quickly. I removed the old syrup feeders since they aren't able to make use of them any more (the bees can't move far enough away from the colony to get at it).  I also took off the upper deep boxes and replaced them with medium boxes. It would have been even better to use shallow boxes, but I don't have any.  Then I placed newspaper over the frames and piled on the sugar.

This is what it looked like after I piled on as much sugar as I could without it dumping over the edges. Like I mentioned, the moisture in the hive will get absorbed by the sugar creating a large cake that the bees can eat for months. The idea is that the sugar is close enough to the colony that the bees can get at it without getting too cold.

That's my hope anyway, because opening the hive is stressful on the bees so I don't plan on opening them again for quite a while. While I was scooping the sugar in, one bee took the opportunity for a "cleansing flight". She flew up in the air to pee/poop and returned to the hive. I was reminded of the amazing ability of the honey bee to hold their waste for months at a time.    

This is what our hives look like now. The bees are living totally in the bottom brood boxes, the medium boxes on top are there only to make room for the sugar (we painted the boxes with left over paint from the chicken coop, but I kind of like the color scheme). The entrance reducers have been on in the middle position for a while now. I may have reduced them to the smallest opening today, but the reducers were swelled by moisture and frozen firmly in place. The only other winter prep I have been considering is a wind break, but haven't gotten to it. Luckily we've had a mild winter and no big wind storms so far.

I read in one of my bee books that the first step to successful beekeeping is keeping the bees. So with that in mind, I am doing my best to not be a bee looser. I just hope my best is enough.

I'll leave you with a view of the lower Clark Fork Valley and Plains, that I took today while hiking with our dogs. This was after I accidentally spooked a herd of Bighorn Sheep. Some days I am in awe of the beauty surrounding us.

Merry Christmas and Happy new Year!

KJ

Mid December- Part 1: An Egg update

So what's going on around here the week before Christmas?

After adjusting to the newness of snow, the chickens are doing really well and enjoy getting out in the yard every chance they get. One of us goes out every morning around sun-up to check the girls and open the coop, and by that time they are very ready to be up and about. The cold doesn't seem to bother them a bit, only the really windy days keep them cooped up. We've opened up the chicken run to the garden and they really like pecking and scratching around and in the garden beds.

The coop is a much calmer place since we removed the two other roosters, these days it's downright pleasant. The hens are laying about a dozen eggs a day thanks to the heat lamp which keeps them warm and lighted despite the cold short days. Some people say that the hens need a break in the winter, but we've yet to read a good reason for that and ours seem to be doing fine. We did notice that there were very few hens using the upper boxes, so we added a perch to give them a place to climb in. That seems to have fixed the problem for the most part.

We collect eggs once or twice a day, often reaching under the hens to get them. The hens are generally agreeable to this, although at times one will let you know she's not happy with a sharp peck.

Selling the eggs is going very well too.  Thank you very much to everybody that has bought eggs from us! Lately we've been able to buy chicken feed and scratch using the egg money which was a goal of ours. 

 As near as I can tell, the honey bees are wintering well also. I check them every few days by putting my ear to the box and giving it a quick tap. The bees buzz in response and then go back to their business. What is their business? Keeping the queen warm! The colony forms a tight ball and everybody works together to make heat. The ball moves gradually as the bees consume honey for energy and cycle from the inside to the outside of the ball. Both colonies have access to sugar syrup, but the consumption has gone way down since the fall. Since it's hard for the bees to move far this time of year, I need to switch from the syrup to sugar cakes or dry sugar feeding for the winter. I need to check on them, but hesitate to open the hives because exposure to the cold can kill them. In a well established hive there is enough honey that you don't need to feed, but mine are not that well prepared since we got a late start. 

 Feeding sugar cakes involves making hard sugar rich patties and placing them in the hive, while feeding dry sugar can be done by placing newspaper on the frames and pouring a few pounds of sugar on newspaper. The humidity in the hive will cause the sugar to harden and form a cake.

 I found a very good beekeeping blog with lots of pictures and how to's at http://mudsongs.org/. These guys keep a very neat blog devoted to beekeeping in St. John's, Newfoundland. I am encouraged by reading about their success in a climate worse than mine. Last year they made and fed sugar cakes and I may need to do the same. Mudsongs.org/making-candy-cakes.

Also, http://www.beesource.com/ has a good (lengthy) USDA text explanation of winter feeding at http://www.beesource.com/resources/usda/supplemental-feeding-of-honey-bee-colonies/

I'll keep you posted on my bee's progress and what I decide to do about feeding.

Update: Mid December - Part 2: Emergency feeding 

Until then, Happy Holidays to everybody, Merry Christmas, keep warm and stay safe. 

KJ