Julia Child with Wax and Oil

I had four assignments at the Southeast Organic Beekeepers Conference:

1. To do a talk for the advanced beekeepers on How to Prepare Honey and Wax for Competition.

I enjoyed doing that so much. Most of the audience had never entered a honey contest. I was so grateful that I had gone to a lecture by Robert Brewer in 2008 at the state meeting of the Georgia Beekeepers Association and had heard him talk on the subject.

Most of all I was glad that I have entered honey contests ever since I started beekeeping five years ago. I've learned a lot from every wax pour and from pouring each jar of honey. And I've won a lot of ribbons! So I covered liquid honey, chunk honey, cut comb honey and wax blocks. I learned a lot by organizing what I know into a PowerPoint presentation.

2. To talk to the beginning beekeepers about Honey Harvest from the Bee Hive to the Jar.

Most of them were, as many new beekeepers are, a little overwhelmed by how to get the honey harvested. I of course talked about the simple honey harvest that I do. I used a PowerPoint to show them how to harvest with minimal clean-up, a simple approach to the bees, and honey without extraction. This talk was only about liquid honey. I also showed my movie on harvesting honey via Crush and Strain .

3. To talk and demonstrate how to make lip balm and lotion from the wax from the hive.

I felt a little like Julia Child, essentially cooking in front of everyone. The whole conference was there - advanced and beginners....so about 60 people.



I had a burner to use to melt the ingredients on, but in the end we used the much more effective stove in the kitchen. I showed them how it is helpful to use a chopstick to stir - chopsticks are just great and I use them a lot in various aspects of beekeeping.



Here I am, thanks to my friend from Beemaster, JP, who generously took these pictures. I am using a syringe to squirt the liquid lip balm into tiny lip balm containers. I had lots of help with this project. Brendhan and Eric manned the kitchen stove and cut wax, Janel went out to buy all the ingredients and supplies, and others help cap the containers when I was done.



I also mixed up lotion for everyone, but that takes about 2 1/2 hours to cool so they went on to other activities while the lotion was in the blenders for 2 or more hours. I had brought samples of the lotion bars that I had made at home a couple of nights before, so I used ice trays that I bought at WalMart to make everyone tiny lotion bars as well.



In the end all of the participants went home with a lip balm, a jar of lotion and a lotion bar. Everyone had fun doing this, I think.

4. I was supposed to help judge the honey show.

Dr. Mikhail Kruglyakov, a Robert Brewer trained honey judge, came to judge the show and I was to be his steward. I learned so much. I own a refractometer and didn't know how to use it and he showed me. He also showed me how to examine a jar of honey from start to finish and write notes about it for the entrant. He was a lovely person and very kind and encouraging. We had very few entries into the show but tried to write good comments to help the entrants learn for the next show.

I hope that I can take the Welsh honey judge training at Young Harris in 2011 (if I get Master Beekeeper this year - otherwise I'll be taking the exam again in 2011).

Sam Comfort and Top Bar Hives

At the Southeast Organic Beekeepers Conference in West Palm Beach, FL, I had the opportunity to hear Sam Comfort talk and demonstrate his top bar hives. I want to build one - looks easy enough for a construction-challenged person. I'll bet I can do it - I'm certainly going to try this season.

He doesn't build stands, but keeps them on cinder blocks or those plastic crates that people use in offices. He worked the bees calmly and with no protection. It was a joy to watch him.


His top bar hive is quite simple. He points out that the bees just need a hollow place - no specific dimensions are called for, but he does make his top bar hives wide enough to accommodate a Langstroth frame - which makes conversion possible.


Below is a frame that includes a Langstroth frame attached to a top bar. Sam said that he can take a frame from a hive box and cut the comb at a slant to accommodate the sides of the top bar hive. Then he attaches the Langstroth frame to the bottom of the top bar and there you have it!

I've wondered how to begin with bees in a top bar hive without having to order a package. So I think there are about three ways one can do this:

• install a package in the hive,
  
• install a captured swarm in a hive,
  
• make a split with a Langstroth hive and convert the frames as Sam has done here. Well, I can't wait to experiment.

As the hive grows, Sam adds more top bars and moves the divider that marks the beginning and end of the hive further down the box.



He tops the hive with a simple board weighed down by bricks. He places two pieces of wood above the top bars to provide the bees with some ventilation.

You can see the top bars for raising the top of the hive under the hive top toward the right.

Top bar hives have the advantage of not having to lift boxes to get into the hives. They have the disadvantage of being probably too heavy to move once the bees are really up and going. Many top bar hives are about a foot longer than the 3 foot long ones that Sam builds - now those would have one foot more of space for the bees to fill and to weigh the hive down.

Sam told me at dinner on Friday night that he had made top bar hives from reeds and mud and had never moved them because not only was the interior of the hive heavy, but the reed/mud mix was extremely heavy.

Overall the conference was a nice mix of working the bees in outdoor settings and being indoors for talks about different topics.

Preparing for the Southeast Organic Beekeepers Conference

On Saturday and Sunday I will be presenting three workshops at the Southeast Organic Beekeepers Conference in West Palm Beach, Florida. I'm very excited to be invited. I am talking about

1. Preparing honey and wax for competition,
   
2. Harvesting honey from bee hive to jar, and
   
3. I'm doing a hands-on workshop making lip balm and lotion.
   

We'll be able to make lip balm in the time allotted for the workshop, but the lotion will just get started. It takes about 2 1/2 hours to cool after it is made before you can put it in the jars. I wanted the participants to get the sense of homemade lotion even though we won't finish ours in the workshop so last night I made hand cream (in the white round-top jars in photos below) and tonight I made lotion bars.

The lotion bars are just luscious. I ordered a mold in November when ordered a number of little things from Brushy Mountain. I've never made a lotion bar, and now that I've done it, I want to make them all the time.


These are made from a recipe I found online: 1/3 cocoa butter, 1/3 beeswax, 1/3 avocado oil and some drops of Vitamin E. Oh, my, what a treat. You pick up the bar and rub it between your hands and the most cocoa-delicious smell, the most soft and smooth feel on your skin, an overall nurturing experience in general occurs.

I made two batches and made the second batch with half cocoa butter/half shea butter in that 1/3 part of the recipe. It doesn't have such a strong cocoa smell and I think I like it better.

It's not cheap with those ingredients. Avocado oil was $9.99 for an 8 oz bottle. Cocoa butter was $4.99 for a one ounce stick. The beeswax was free from my bees. I think it costs about $2 a bar to make without buying wholesale ingredients, but I see lotion bars sold on the Internet for around $10 a bar for a slightly thicker bar than these....of course I am not including a cost for container. So maybe $10 is about a 100% markup over cost.

Here is the poured mold about 10 minutes after pouring.


Here are finished bars packaged in sandwich ziplocs.



Here is the last mold (each recipe I did made three bars - one ounce/one ounce/one ounce of ingredients).



And the beautiful (you should smell them) unwrapped bars with little bees on them. Oh, the limits of the Internet - I wish you could scratch and smell or slide your finger over the screen and sample.

The MOST Fabulous Present

On Thursday it was my friend George's birthday. He and I have known each other as professional colleagues for years. We refer back and forth and consult with each other, but beyond the professional contact, I consider George a dear friend. Well, on his birthday, he brought me a present!

I couldn't believe it - this adorable honey bee honey holder. And it's anatomically correct - all six legs are attached to the thorax (can you tell I'm studying for Master Beekeeper?).

Anyway, I came straight home and filled it with honey. I took these pictures without flash because I love how golden and glowing the bee looks, with honey in her abdomen, ready to share it with you (or anyone who comes by!)



Isn't she lovely? You lift up her wings and the stick coming out of her back is a silver scoop for delivering honey to the biscuit or whatever confection you plan to eat with honey.

Thank you, George. What a perfect and perfectly lovely gift! I feel so privileged to be remembered on George's birthday!

Metro Atlanta Short Course in Beekeeping

Last weekend was the Metro Atlanta Short Course. We had 120 participants! There is such an increased interest in beekeeping in our country. I hope some of the 120 will actually buy bees and get started.

My job was to put together a table to show slide shows of hive inspections. So I showed up with two laptops, two different slide shows (one of the slide shows is available on this blog for you to watch), and a honeybee table cloth that my daughter gave me and a scarf, used here as table decoration that a dear friend made for me.



We had many well-qualified speakers and the participants went home with a CD of the PowerPoints of the presenters (but it didn't include my slide show on how to do a hive inspection - just a handout).

One of our best speakers (because he is such a good teacher) is Dr. Jamie Ellis. Jamie got his PhD at the University of Georgia but is now at the University of Florida. He shared many interesting bee facts with the participants. Here he is talking about how larvae occupy the cells.



At a break our participants were treated to honey ice cream. One of our members takes 6 pounds of honey to Greenwood Ice Cream which is here in Atlanta and has them create honey ice cream just for this event. It is absolutely gourmet and delicious.


In all the short course was a success.

I think our bee club still needs to work on a few things - we are a little starry eyed by the fabulous speakers we can invite, and in that way, have lost sight of a few important things.

A beekeeper leaving our course should feel confident about how to install their bees and how to open the hives for the first time, and those things are barely addressed (if at all) in our short course. But 2011 is another year and maybe we can focus on the basics for the next course.

How to do a Basic Hive Inspection

I ran a table at the short course yesterday in Atlanta and had this slide show running as a continuous loop. Many participants wanted to know if they had access to this after the course, so I searched to find a way to upload PowerPoint slides.

I hope all of you will find this useful. Note: I've not uploaded PowerPoint before and embedded them on this blog. This website (www.scribd.com) changed the color of the presentation and lost a couple of titles, but it seems the best view I've found on the web so far.

A Basic Hive Inspection

Science Night at Montgomery Elementary

Tonight was Science and Technology night at Montgomery Elementary School in Atlanta. I was asked to be the beekeeper and talk about the bees. Somehow I managed to get away without a photo of my display - I took a blue nuc box, frames of wax in process and completely drawn, honey to taste, lip balm, beeswax, candles, children's books about bees and a slide show loop about inspecting a bee hive that I put together for the short course this Saturday.

I did get some cute pictures of the kids who tried on my grandson's bee veil - they thought it was just the bees knees to get to try it on (and one mother). Actually several of the parents wanted to try on the veil and asked great questions. The kids mostly wanted to taste the honey!

I had a great time. Enjoy the adorable kid pictures below.

Bees are Flying on my Deck and at the Bee Trees!

Today I had a break at work so I went home to see about the bees. Bees were flying at all three hives and I wanted to celebrate. So far, so good, as they say. I am concerned that we will have yet another hard freeze before winter is over and that I won't be so lucky the next time.


To add to my worry, I checked with the Farmers Almanac 2010 and found that they are predicting another hard freeze from February 8 - 11, with the freezing weather again extending all the way down to Florida.


I also stopped by Eddie's Odd Job Tree Service to check on the bee trees. Lo and behold, both trees had bees flying in and out. I was so excited, but disappointed that I didn't have my camera.

This means that both trees had viable queens going into the winter and that they at least had enough stores to make it this far. I'll stop by with baggie feeders early next week.