bee-prepared-to-save-the-bees

BEE free to ask any bee related questions and I'll respond as soon as I can

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Hey all you bee lovers.  Happy Earth Day! My hive is currently doing really good and they managed to survive the winter and are producing a lot of honey and brood for the new season! Earth Day is a great day to appreciate all of the nature that is surrounding us and to try and make it better by recycling and making sure that we are not leaving any trash wherever we go outside.  If you want to learn some fun bee facts, the Google logo today has a fun bee game to play. Bee Happy!

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Happy Earth Day!! Make sure you go out side and enjoy nature today! The planet is a wonderful and beautiful place! It is a beautiful and warm day where I am. For all of those beekeepers out there, don’t forget to check your hives! I actually was in my hive earlier and all of my bees are doing great! I did some maintenance and cleaning up stray comb and such. The bees seem to be celebrating Earth Day too because they are all buzzing happily around! 🐝

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So something that I discovered that is easy to make and good for the environment is wax wraps. To make them you have to take clean cotton cloth and cut it to whatever shape you want. For mine I did a square and a circle. Then you take a bar of beeswax and shred it. You take those shredding and spread them evenly to the cloth all the way to the edges on a tinfoil covered sheet pan. After it’s all set you put it in a 300°F oven for either 3 minutes or until it all melts. Once it’s melted you take it out and instantly hang it with clothespins on a string for it to dry. Make sure that you have something on the floor under it to catch the wax drippings. As soon as it’s dry you can take it down and then you have your finished wax wrap! This can be used to hold all sorts of foods. You can use it instead of plastic wrap and you can reuse it all the time!

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Here in New Jersey it’s been getting warmer and I’ve noticed that once it reaches 50°F the bees start to come out. It seems like that is the magic temperature for the bees to come out to warm up! It’s always nice to see the bees buzzing around.

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I was just asked if there were any other methods of extracting honey. There are two other methods that I could think of but they aren’t used a lot. The first was to crush the honey comb and strain it. This is actually the method that the first beekeepers used when they were first taking honey from wild bees. The problem with this is that it wastes a lot of the comb and honey. It takes a lot of time to crush the comb and to get the honey out and to strain it. The second is to uncap the honey (using either the uncapping fork or the hot knife) and to let the honey drip out. This method is not using the extractor but just letting it drip out. The problem with this method is that is takes too long and the honey only drips out while it’s hot. The method that I talked about with uncapping the honey and using the extractor is the preferred method of almost all beekeepers because it is much easier and you get more honey out of it.

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One of my favorite things to do during the fall season is to bake. One of my favorite recipes is this Honey Snickerdoodle recipe. I originally got this recipe from the 4-H Garden and Bee Club! I use my own honey whenever I make these cookies and they always come out delicious!

Honey Snickerdoodles

1. Preheat oven 375oF

2. Whisk flour (1 ¾ cups), baking powder (1 ½ tsp), baking soda (1 tsp), salt (1/8 tsp), cinnamon (1/4 tsp) and set aside

3. Beat together butter (1/2 cup) and sugar (1 cup) until fluffy. Add egg (1), honey (3 tbsp), vanilla (1 ¼ tsp) Slowly beat in flour mixture; form 1” balls of dough

4. In small bowl mix sugar (3 tbsp) and cinnamon (1/2 tsp). Roll 1” balls of dough into mixture and put 2” apart on greased cookie sheet

5. Bake for 10 min or golden brown

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Hap-BEE Halloween to all you buzzy buddies! Have sweet and safe Halloween!

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Honey bottling day! I just bottled up my honey and I ended up getting 18 pounds of honey and I filled 35 jars! The honey from this extraction came out to be a darker and clearer honey than my honey extraction from this spring! The reason for this is because the plants that are blooming in fall are different than those in the spring time. The jar on the left in the picture is from my fall extraction and the one on the right is from my spring extraction. The spring honey has a very floral background taste. The fall honey has a very earthy sweetness taste to it.

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When I took the 6 frames off of the top box of my hive I immediately extracted the honey. I learned that it’s best to harvest the honey right after taking the frames off of the hive because the honey is still warm from the bees and it comes out the easiest. This time when I extracted the honey I didn’t use the uncapping knife and I opted to use just the uncapping fork. Its just my preference to just use the fork. After I uncapped the frames I spun them in the extractor and I filtered the honey into a bucket. With the beeswax cappings I am in the process of draining the left over honey from them and cleaning them.

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Its time for another honey extraction! Today I went into my hive and I went through a full inspection from top to bottom. I took apart the hive and I went though all of the frames. I saw a lot of honey in the deep super as well as a fair amount of brood. Seeing brood is good because it is evidence that the queen is still healthy and alive. While I was in the hive I put in the mite stripes in both of the deeps and in one of the honey supers. These mite strips treat the hive and the bees for mites. Once I reassembled the hive I took 6 frames from the top honey super for honey extraction.

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Lately in New Jersey, we have been going through a heat wave.  During these heat waves the bees tend to become really hot in the hive and they have been coming out.  They are clustered outside of the front of the hive.  This is called “bearding”, or called “coming out on the front porch” by other beekeepers.  The bees usually tend to do this when the don’t have enough room in the hive or they get too hot.  In this case its because the bees are too hot.  They come outside of the hive to cool themselves off and also to cool the inside of the hive.  By exiting the hive, the bees are letting the cooler air enter the hive and lower the temperature.  

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I was wondering if you thought it would be a good idea if I kept a small hive in my school’s garden? Do you think it would be safe for passing students?

When I was starting my hive I also had the thought to put a hive at my school. But I was met with resistance in trying to get the project approved by the school because they were concerned for students with bee allergies. You could always give it a try at your own school. Good luck and let me know what happens.

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Today is bottling day! I bottled 39 jars of honey! In total I got about 21 lbs of honey and I only took off about 7 frames from the honey super! The honey has such a beautiful golden color to it and it was so clear!

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I finally got around to extracting my honey!!! It is not good to take honey the first year because the bees need the honey for themselves. So I took the honey from my top honey super. All the frames in the super were full!! To extract, you need a lot of new tools. To remove the wax capping on the honey cells you need a uncapping knife and uncapping fork. I dipped mine in hot water to help remove the capping easier. After you uncap the cells you put the frames in the extractor (first two pictures) which spins the honey out of the comb cells and leaves empty cells. These empty frames are then put back into the hive so the bees could refill them with even more honey. The honey collects at the bottom of the extractor and pours out of a spout on the bottom, through two screens, and into another smaller bucket. From this smaller bucket you can pour it right into the jars.

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I did a full inspection of my hive with my beekeeper friend and my hive was full with honey!! There was honey dripping from each frame! Pretty soon I would be able to extract some honey from my top honey super! This time of year is the honey flow for the bees and my bees sure are taking advantage of it. I did see some brood in the bottom super so my queen is active. My hive is thriving with healthy happy bees!

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You never know what doors the bees will open for you. Recently my high school lit teacher was doing a lesson about the Secret Life Of Bees and she asked me to give a presentation to her students about bees and beekeeping! It was such a great opportunity to teach more people about bees and I enjoyed doing it! Cant wait to do it again!

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I was in my hive for the first time since the winter a couple of weeks ago and I took off the spacer and I noticed that the bees had built comb on the top cover (first picture) they did this because they ran out of room to build comb. So I had to add on another honey super to my hive to that the bees would have more room. It seems to have solved the problem of lack of space. Other than that little problem all of my bees seemed to be doing absolutely fine. I removed the varroa mite strips that I had in the hive over the winter and when I was inspecting the frames in the supers I saw that there was a good amount of brood and honey, which is a great sine that the bees and the queen are both doing great. They are happy bees!