Tucking the bees in for the winter

November 3, 2011

A strangely gorgeous day for November...17 degrees and sunny.

It is time to put the bees to bed for the winter...not that they go to sleep but the hives need to be prepared.  We put burlap on the lattice wall to the west of the hives to protect them from the north wind that whistles up our property.  They have a shed behind them and a wooden fence on the other side so I think they are good to go.  Their entrances face south so when there is a bit of sun in the winter they can come out and do some cleansing flights.  I also had to take the top supers off each hive to make them a bit smaller.  That way the bees will not spread out too much and get chilled.  Each hive was four boxes high and I wanted them to be only three boxes high.

I opened up Hippolyta first, and yes, I was completely protected in my bee suit and I had a lit smoker, in case you are concerned. The bees were all at the top of this hive.  To look at the frames, I had to brush tons of bees off each frame or shake them off.  The air was full of bees.  They weren't terribly angry but they did bump me a bit.  I emptied the box of frames.  There were two fully capped frames of honey and the rest were about half full.

I then went to Queen Elizabeth I.  All her bees were at the bottom so I didn't have as much work to clear the frames.  So strange how different the two hives are from one another.  The bees ignored me completely.  There were five fully capped frames of honey in the top box.  I took all the fully capped frames into the house for extracting and saved the rest for the bees.  I will give the frames back to the hives in the spring.  I left about 75 pounds of honey in each hive for them to eat over the winter.  That is more than I extracted over the summer!  I don't want to have to feed them any sugar syrup in the spring so I am hoping that I left enough.  Everything I read tells me that honey is better for them than sugar syrup.

Bill made reducers for the top entrances of the hives to keep the bees cosy and as soon as it gets colder I will shut down the bottom entrances completely.  So as not to confuse the bees, I will do it at night time and then place a branch in front of each hive.  The bees will come out and notice that all is not what it once was and re-orient themselves.  This means they will fly out, turn around and look back at the hive, re-adjust their internal gps, to know where the new entrance is.  If they just fly out without noticing the change, they will come back to the old entrance and flail about wondering what happened...like absent minded professors!

It is so warm right now that the bees are still bringing pollen home.  This is great since pollen is their protein and they need protein to raise the brood in the spring. I am close to leaving them to their own devices.  I have decided that I will not give my bees any chemicals and/or antibiotics.  This means that if they get mites of any sort or viruses, they are on their own.  I would rather lose the bees than have chemicals stored in the wax which is where the honey is stored.  They will have to become tough bees on their own.  I am pretty sure that I have tough bees...especially with that new black queen with the white stripe.  She looks like a fighter to me!

I extracted the honey from the seven frames.  It is a darker, rich honey with a slightly bitter after-taste...probably the golden rod.  So that's the last honey until next season.  It has been a sticky, sweet adventure.

Here are the last bits of colour in the garden as we move towards winter.

Red blaze maple

Rosehips with Japanese anemone in background

Backlit birch leaves

One last coreopsis bloom

Monkshood bloom

And on another, slightly dorkier note!  The Ontario Beekeepers Association had a photo contest for a

picture for the month of July in their 2012 calendar.  I had taken a picture of a just extracted comb of honey on my iPhone and decided to send it in for the contest...and I won!  My great prize is a copy of the calendar but I am happy to tell people that I am Miss July!

Award winning photo of honey comb

So wish me and the girls good luck for the winter.

Tour at Munro's Honey

Oct 29, 2011

The Elgin Middlesex Beekeeper's Association organized a tour of the Munro Honey and Mead operation in Alviston, Ontario...just west of Strathroy.  This is a real honey operation.  They run 3,000 hives and have them placed in the countryside...some as far north as Clinton.  They also send hives to New Brunswick to pollinate the blueberry crops.  This business has been a family business since 1914 started by the Munro's and was bought by one of the workers in the 1950's.

We were taken through the extraction room, the processing stations and where the mead is made.  What an operation!  The scale of everything is amazing.  The extractor holds 120 frames at a time.  The system of moving the frames is motorized.  They have a special room that is chilled to keep the supers full of extracted frames.  Chilling them keeps the wax moths at bay but doesn't freeze the frames so they can be given right back to the bees in the spring.  The honey is heated to 90 degrees to let it run more easily through the machinery.  Honey is pasteurized at 140 degrees so Munro's honey is still sold as unpasteurized.  They also collect the wax and sell it for candle making etc.  The wax is collected in plastic basins and the pile of wax was truly humbling.  To put this in perspective, I have been moulding the little wax that I have collected in egg cups and custard bowls!

Extracted frames in supers stored in chilled room

Basins of collected wax

Piles of wax ready to ship

All the gear in the honey room is made of stainless steel and is sparkling clean.  The extractor was the first one the company made in stainless steel at the request of Munro's.

Extractor that  handles 120 frames

Barrels of honey

The honey room

After we toured the facilities, we were treated to various meads (honey wine) and creamed flavoured honey butters.  Yummy!  Some of the meads were very sweet and some dry.  The honeys were flavoured with jalapeno peppers, cinnamons and fruits.  Good for glazing meats or just as a dip on salted pretzels.

Mead tasting 

Honey butter tasting

It was a glorious fall day and perfect for a drive into the country.  The tour was so interesting for me even though this operation is so much bigger than my little beeyard.  On the ride back we stopped to take some pictures of a very cool tree on the side of the road.  I will leave you with this image.

On the way back to London from Alviston