What Do Beekeepers Do in the Winter.....?

And your answer was make soap - right?

That's what I am going to do this weekend.  My sister and I are going to the John C Campbell Folk School to take a class in making lye soap.  I love spending time with my sister and I love going to classes at the Folk School, so what could be better?

I haven't taken a Folk School class in seven years, so this should be lots of fun.  It's like going to grown up camp, complete with a dining hall with community tables.  Back in 2006 when I first started beekeeping, I took a beekeeping class at John Campbell from Virginia Webb and learned about bees, pollen, and wax.

Jeff (my son-in-law who keeps bees with me) and I have already experimented with glycerin soap, but some people don't like that type of soap and the "real thing" is made with lye as they did in the old days.  So I am thrilled with the opportunity to learn an old-fashioned craft and maybe figure out how to put my beeswax into soap.

Jeff wants me to teach him so he can make his favorite soap and not have to buy it.  The soap he likes is flavored with DIRT, SMOKE, and bay rum.  I went on the Internet and would you believe, you can buy oils that are scented with earth, campfire smoke, and bay rum.  I guess he and I will try to replicate the soap he loves.

I'll take photos of what I learn and post them here when I get back.  It's pretty old-fashioned at the Folk School and I doubt I'll have Internet access for posting while I'm there.

I heard a lecture from Marcy, a member of our bee club, on how to make lye soap.  She said her jeans were now full of holes from the lye, so I am taking pants I could care less about and old shirts.  We'll see how it goes!

My first Folk School class was when Atlanta hosted the Summer Olympics.  The Olympic committee asked the Atlanta citizens to get out of town to lessen the traffic problems during the games.  So I signed up for a quilting class for a week at the Folk School and thus began my grown-up camp fun and games.

More after my adventure.  BTW this is my 2015th post on Jan 15, 2015!

Honey Contest at GBA

I decided to be brave and enter my honey in the honey contest on the state level at the Georgia Beekeeper's Association annual fall meeting. I learned from my Metro entries and had polished, polished, polished my jars.

I was so excited at the end of the contest to find that I had won:

First place blue ribbon for light honey
First place blue ribbon for chunk honey (comb in a jar of liquid honey)
First place blue ribbon for cut comb honey (square of comb in a box)
Second place red ribbon for my wax block

There were cash prizes so I also won a total of $110!

I also entered my amber honey which didn't place and I forgot to pick up the jars and left them in Rabun County. Even though it didn't win, it was delicious honey, so I hope someone enjoys it!

The wax block wasn't the one I poured 19 times. After the Metro contest, it had some knicks in it and needed to be re-poured. So I re-poured it several times. The last re-pour before I was scheduled to leave for Rabun County cracked as it cooled.

I took all of my wax stuff with me to my mountain house and actually poured the block again on Thursday night before it was due at 9 AM on Friday! The last pour (that won second) wasn't perfect. It had stuck some to the bottom of the mold so the top was marred.

While at GBA, I went to a talk by Robert Brewer, the judge of the honey show and the certified Welsh Honey judge who teaches honey judging at Young Harris (and co-founded the Young Harris Institute). He discussed the wax block and I learned (in addition to what I had learned from Keith Fielder) that the edges of the wax block at the top of the pour need to be smooth. Robert suggested taking your thumb and rubbing the edge to smooth it out. Mine had edges that needed this. He also talked about how important it is to use well filtered wax - perhaps pouring it through silk. I'll be interested to try silk as a filter next year.

The other thing I was surprised by is that Virginia Webb, a beekeeper extraordinaire, won first place for the wax block. Her block was poured into a mold with raised designs. It was a solid block but had raised designs all over it. I had no idea and thought you had to have a solid, smooth block which is what I have been trying for - so here's something for me to learn more about for the future. I took a class from Virginia at the Folk School three years ago and learned so much from her.

Honey vs. Apple Butter

On the bee forums on the Internet (Beemaster, Beesource) the general belief is that it is less messy to extract honey than to do crush and strain. Every beekeeper has a different opinion about everything beekeeping, so here's mine.

I did extracting at the Folk School in a beekeeping class I took, and it was incredibly messy. When we were finished, there were so many items to clean, not to mention the floor, table tops, etc. When I use crush and strain to harvest honey, I put cardboard under everything and the clean-up is minimal....the filters, the bucket, the pan into which I cut the comb, the pestle, the knife, and the rubber spatula. I do mop the floor but I don't experience honey everywhere.

Yesterday I made apple butter - 16 pints, but one broke in the water bath. I do this every year from the delicious apples I buy in the N Georgia mountains. I have never had such a messy experience. Apple butter is everywhere in my kitchen. And I've washed pots and pans, wiped the counters, cleaned the stovetop. What a mess and this morning I still have to clean the stovetop yet again because I was too tired to do it before I went to bed!

The apple butter is delicious, but so, so, so much messier a process than any day of harvesting honey.

The Honey Harvest Begins!

I had an extra deep super so to get the honey filled frames from the hives I decided to use the method I learned at the Folk School . We took one frame of honey at a time, brushed and shook off the bees and placed the frame in an empty super.

I also wanted to create space that was bee-free so I set the empty super on a single bed sheet, and prepared to gather up the frames.

I opened the Destin hive and selected the super that appeared to have the most frames completely filled with honey and capped. I lifted out a frame, stood at the front of the hive, as recommended in Hive Management by Richard Bonney, and shook the bees off of the frame. The bees who remained I brushed off gently with my bee brush.

[Bad news: I also brushed off a ton of hive beetles and squashed as many as I could. Destin had many more small hive beetles than Bermuda.]



When the frame was free of bees I placed it in the empty super.


I quickly covered the whole project with the other end of the sheet. When 10 frames were in the previously empty super, I grabbed the hand holds through the sheet and carried the whole thing in and set it on my kitchen counter.

I came back out and did the same procedure with the Bermuda hive.

One great advantage of this is that in each hive at the edge of the super there was one frame that wasn't completely ready. I was able to substitute a full frame from the super below that was ready.

Maypole and Morris dancers at the Folk School

While we were there, since it was the first weekend in May, they had a Maypole and a demo by Morris dancers . We took a break from candle making and honey extracting and watched them.

The Morris dancers were male and female and had blue face make-up. They dance with broomstick-like sticks which are clanked together with the stick of another dancer. They were accompanied by a funny group of instrumentalists playing a recorder, a bent tuba, and a drum decorated with a red feather boa!

Final display at the Folk School

At the end of the weekend we had visited beehives both at the Folk School and at one of our teacher's nearby bee yards. We had taken apart hives, cleaned equipment, extracted honey and made candles and other items from beeswax.

On the table you can see the candles we made, the bags of pollen we collected, the honey we extracted. We also made some beeswax ornaments and a couple of wax bowls. Mine is the large one on on top of the miniature hive.

The honey extraction was quite an adventure. First we used a hot knife to cut the capping off of the honey. We put the frames of honey two at a time in the extractor and spun it around and around, slinging honey out of the frames via centrifugal force. Then we filtered the honey through two fine mesh filters into a plastic container with a spigot on it. Finally we filled the honey jars.

Kelly, another class member, and I then squeezed the cappings in our hands to extract the last of the honey - that was a messy job, but when we were finished, we got to taste the honey on our fingers!

On Sunday morning the people staying at the Folk School all had French toast with our extracted honey for their breakfast!

Folk School Pollen collection

I just got home from a weekend beekeeper workshop at the John C Campbell Folk School. These are pictures of our pollen collection.

Our teacher was Virginia Webb whose sourwood honey won best honey in the world at the world honey contest.

Virginia had pollen traps on two of the Folk School beehives. These pictures are of Virginia removing the pollen. We poured the pollen into a measuring cup. Then we winnowed the pollen.

Added Medium super to Bermuda and Destin

April 28, 2006: Built and painted medium supers. Built foundation frames for one of them (Destin) Will install tomorrow. Better build shallow supers before I leave for the Folk School – they may need them sooner than later.

April 29, 2006: Took FOREVER to light smoker – must get cedar chips. Thought dryer lint might work as well. We used to use that at Girl Scouts.

When I lit smoker and opened Destin, they had built comb above the inner cover. Also saw 3 small hive beetles – or some kind of beetle on the inner cover. Brushed them off but couldn’t find them to kill them. Destin has drawn out the comb on 8 of the 10 combs and is starting on the outer edge – perfect candidate for the new medium. I put it on with great relief.

I looked at Bermuda but it isn’t built out as much – about 6 frames are fully drawn. They haven’t touched 1 or 10 but have begun expanding wax on 8 and 2. I still think I’ll go ahead and add the super just for consistency and because I’ll be at the Folk School for a beekeeper class next weekend and won’t be able to work with the bees.

Early afternoon built frames for the super on Bermuda.

Waited until the end of the day to put on the super. Much easier to light the smoker this afternoon. Must get some chips. They are still busy bees in Bermuda but not as crowded or vigorous as Destin.