The bees are here!!

 This past week was very exciting for our homesteading venture. We picked up the bees and now we having thousands of livestock living here with us!

Mara went with me to pick up our bees. We had to drive to a place about 45 minutes from here. Because we were going in the direction of the grain mill where we get our wheat and corn we went there as well. We got our grain first and then headed over to get our bees. When we got there was saw a bunch of people mostly all dressed up in bee suits and then nuc boxes all over the place. There were also a bunch of bees in the air.

  Mara and I suited up, paid for our nucs (We had to pay $75 dollars per hive- I am curious if that is similar to the prices others are paying.) and got in line to pick ours up. The bees had been brought up from Texas. We took our hives (which I had prepared but nailing the bottom board on using little pieces of boards and then filling the doorway with screening so they couldn't use it right now) out of the back of the van and a man came over with a nuc box and put the 4 frames, which where completely full of bees and eggs, into our deeps/hives. I had already removed frames at home so there would be space. I also put the feeder inside put I hadn't filled it yet.

 When the Bee guy was putting the bees in we were standing within a huge swarm of bees. I was so happy that it didn't bother Mara or I at all- we weren't afraid, just terribly excited! We didn't get any stings either- none of us have yet in our beekeeping experience of 5 days. :-)

  We had been told we would probably have a few bees lose in the van with us when we went home. I think the few was more like quite a few! We did leave our bee outfits on and had fun looking at the bees that came and sat on us. We started naming them. :-)

 The next day we suited up. Aaron got to wear Mara's outfit and Jonathan desperately wanted to help so we made some other stuff work (I need to make some more good outfits soon!).  We successfully used the smoker but then it didn't really seem like the bees actually needed it. They didn't seem at all bothered by us looking in on them.

 I filled their feeder with sugar water and the medicine that prevents Nosema (Fumagillan). I also put 1/2 of a pollen patty on the top of the frames, sprinkled medicine to prevent American Foulbrood around the edges and put in a beetle trap. I did lift a frame out to show the boys all the bees but found out later from my mentor that I shouldn't really have taken them out of the deep quite yet.

  The bees have been very "well behaved" and we are loving watching them! They are finding tons of pollen and we love seeing them come back to the hive with the bright yellow pollen on their legs.

 We have done some other homesteading projects as well.

 My Dad had a bunch of extra Garlic plants and so we planted a bunch here. My friend Irindee came over to help us several times this past busy week. She was helping to plant garlic in the picture above. (If you notice the barrettes in her hair- that is not her normal style but she had a special stylist that day- Megan.)

We also put up a fence for our bee yard.

 The kids are digging a trench for the electricity for the fence. It is needed to make sure that bears and skunks stay away.

 It was a fun week and I am looking forward to another fun one this week!



Sweet stuff at our place and I am so excited!!!

 This has been an exciting week at our "homestead". I have mentioned before on here my dream of keeping bees. I have wanted to do that for several years and I have done some reading up on it but it still continued to feel like a dream. I just didn't quite have the confidence to go into it. I could read books but in this sort of thing I do much better with hands on or visual learning and I was a little afraid to just jump in and do that.

   There was a class on bee keeping offered locally by the academy of life long learning- which is free of charge and usually attended by a bunch of retired folks but my kids and I have had fun joining them a couple of times now. It was on Tuesday morning and we went, me with notebook in hand and a plan to learn just as much as I possibly could.

   There were two beekeepers doing the talk (one of them was the guy that I actually buy our natural beef from but we had never met in person before, just talked on the phone) one has kept bees 4 years and the other 19 years and both of them love it. They brought a hive for us to see and showed us how to put it together. They showed us the equipment that we needed and told us a lot about bees and their care.  Afterwards we visited with them a lot and I told them that I would really love to raise bees and asked if they knew of any disease free used equipment for sale. They weren't sure but Les took my number. That afternoon he called me up and said he had found some. Yesterday the kids and I went and picked them up.

Our beehives!

 The bees are also ordered (Beekeepers in our area order through Les and we all go to get our bees at one time) and we will be picking them up the first week of May. The bee hives are currently stacked in our garage as I need to get a good foundation made and put up an electric fence. My Dad had extra fencing so that was a huge blessing. I had hoped not to fence ( for aesthetic reasons )but it is pretty important in our area for keeping bears and skunks away from the hives.

  This whole experience is pretty unreal to me as this went from being a dream to reality in just a few short days. I am learning so much right now too. There is a whole new set of words that go with bee keeping and I am trying to learn them. Such as a hive/frames being "drawn out". The frames that I got area which will give the bees a huge head start. That means that they already have the beeswax cells on them. (See picture below)

 I also feel so very blessed because both of the beekeepers (older gentlemen) that taught the class have just taken me and my kids under their wing and are very gracious to help and answer any questions I might have. We got to go and explore Les' beekeeping shed and even saw a few hives that he already has going this year. My Dad has also been very helpful with fencing, a smoker he had on hand and other ideas.

 Other sweet stuff around here has included canning Maple syrup. I have 16 jars all sealed up and ready for using on our pancakes and waffles this year. It looks like our season might be pretty much over. The nights have been staying too warm. We had hoped we might get a bit more than we did but we will be thankful for what we do have!!

  My parents have also been getting a bunch of milk which they have shared with us. This week I made yogurt and quick and easy cheese.

Have you ever kept bees? I would really truly love to hear your thoughts on bees or any of the other things I mentioned in this post!

I will be linking this to:

@ Homestead Revival

Also... Don't miss out on a giveaway of 2 Imagination Station books! (I will post the winner on Monday)

A swarm of bees, getting the garden in and other homesteading adventures

  This time of year seems to always keep us busy in the homesteading arena. This past week was no exception.

 

  Our most exciting homesteading activity (if you consider the amount adrenaline that coursed through my body) was dealing with our bees when they decided to swarm. The bees have been stretching me a bit this year as first they dealt with chalk brood (we had quite a lot of cool, rainy days and I didn't feed them as much sugar water as I guess I should have - I had given them frames of honey that had been leftover from the beehives that I tried to overwinter - but I guess that didn't really work) and then because the one hive seemed to be struggling with the chalk brood I didn't give them a 2nd box as soon as I should have and so Saturday they decided to swarm. 

 

   I was out working in the garden on Saturday morning when Jonathan (who had elected to work in the kitchen rather than in the garden) came running out saying that the bees were swarming. I have had false alarms from him before on a hot day when the bees like to hang out on the front of their hive so I tried not to get to excited. However when I went up to check it out sure enough the bees had indeed swarmed and were hanging out on a nearby tree.

 

 For those that don't know what swarming means: Swarming happens when a bee colony decides that they don't have enough space for everybody so they start working to produce a new queen and then the old queen and approximately half of the workers all take off to look for a new place to live. They leave the hive and then find someplace to hang out for a bit while they send scouts out to look for their new home. The picture above shows them hanging out on a branch. They cluster together to keep the queen safe and warm.

 

  I didn't know exactly how I should deal with the situation though I had read about it at other times so I had a bit of an idea. I decided the best plan would be to call an experienced bee keeper that I know to see what his recommendation would be. After I described the situation he suggested that I put down a newspaper across the top of the brood box that they had just left and spray it with sugar water and then put a new box on top of that. He said to take out some of the middle frames and then to cut of the branch they were hanging on and carry it over to the hive and brush them inside the hive and then replace the middle frames and put the lid on and leave them alone for 4 days.

 

   The newspaper would help them to be near the other bees that had stayed behind but not right with them. Since they had decided to separate and were rearing another queen if I would have put them in directly with them they might have started hurting each other or just left again. With the newspaper they are temporarily trapped up in the upper box until they chew through and hopefully be the time they chew through they will be amiable again and realize they now have plenty of room and stay happily (and they will probably get rid of the queen cell that they were caring for). I am hoping and praying that it works!!

Mara and I ready to capture the swarm - my photographers failed to take pictures when we were actually doing it. :-)

 When I started to saw the branch off it wiggled the branch so that some of the cluster of bees fell off. I decided that wasn't really going to work. So I decided to bring the brood box over to were they were instead. I put a piece of cardboard under it as a temporary bottom and then I held it up underneath the swarm while Mara brushed them in. Then we put it on the other hive box with the newspaper in between as planned. Both Mara and I went into this operation a bit hesitantly as we realized we were going to get quite up close and personal with a lot of bees that might be agitated and realized that even with our protection we run the risk of getting stung. And we were close - I was holding the box at face level while Mara brushed them down at the box and me. But it seems that when they have swarmed they are so preoccupied with that and I guess because they don't have a home which they need to guard they didn't really seem interested in us at all. We were very thankful! I also felt very blessed that they chose to go on a branch only around 5 feet up rather than somewhere up high.

 

  We realized we missed some of the bees in the operation so I put another hive box over by where the bees had gone and later that day I went over and got that (which did now have quite a few bees in it) and also brushed a tiny little cluster that had developed into it and then added that on top of the other boxes. I am sure I made mistakes in this whole ordeal but I surely am hoping that everything will work out!

 

Saturday we finally got most of our garden planted (previously we only had peas, lettuce, spinach, radishes and some onions planted) and basically all the seedlings that I had started in. We had a really long winter this year and some pretty cool temperatures this spring. I am hoping it will get going and do good now!

 

 I am sporting a new gardening hat this year. My friend Becky who over the course of our friendship (that started when we were children) has given me many funny hats and other creative gifts sent me a new one for my birthday in December. It is a pretty fun hat because it folds up neatly so that it is flat but then pops out to the lovely bell shape. It is quite unique and gives us a good laugh.

We are using quite a bit of black tarp (we got it free from the lumberyard - it is black on one side and white with printing on the other) in our garden to help keep weeds down and keep the soil from drying out. It is pretty nice!

All the kids helped with the gardening though after a bit Jonathan requested that he be able to go do dishes and clean up the kitchen instead as he prefers that. I was willing as I like to have a clean kitchen. Megan did a lot of the watering of our little transplants.

Mara helped in many ways. In this picture she was planted beans. We are trying out some cool dry beans called Calypso this year. They are black and white and look like the yin-yang symbol.

 

 Beyond gardening we area also still working on our chicken coop and run. They arrive next week so we are going to have to get it done soon.

  We have also managed to eat something we have harvested from our property (on that day) every day this month so far. It has been a fun challenge and I hope to keep it up.

 One day this month we were able to harvest and eat a tomato that ripened on one of our indoor plants. Yeah! We have some others that are close to turning now.

 Some of the days we haven't eaten that much for our property - one day at least it was only the addition of chives to our meal but other days it was more.

 On Saturday evening the boys cooked supper over the fire outside. It ended up being quite the adventure with hot pads getting burned not to mention our fried potatoes getting rather black too. But experience is always good and you learn from it.

 That evening I picked some nettles to add to our supper. We boiled them over the fire, drained them (I drank that juice as it is supposed to be very good for you) and added butter and lemon juice and it was pretty good.

Here are what the nettles look like growing.

So that is some of our weeks adventures. What have you been doing?

 

Things are really hopping on our homestead!

 Wow! God has certainly blessed us with good food. Our bees are staying incredibly busy and productive and our garden is having probably its best year ever. Thanks to the strength that God provides we have been working hard to take care of everything and put it away to use the rest of the year.

  As far as the bees are concerned, during a very busy first week of August I discovered that they had filled up my very last honey supers. When I bought the hives I got a total of 10 supers thinking that 5 for each hive would probably be plenty. This summer I had one really active hive of bees and then one that was a bit slow. So it had ended up that over the summer I had put 7 supers on the busy hive and the other one had just 3. Well come August both hives were getting what they had filled up. I didn't have an extractor yet and I didn't have any more supers but I also didn't want them to swarm as I knew they had a month of honey production left. I had just had a very busy summer and was not prepared to have such busy bees.

  My Dad and brother Peter came to the rescue and made me an extractor. I had been searching around for ideas on how to do that as to buy one costs upwards of $300 and the ones at the low end my beekeeping mentor did not advise getting. He advised a radial extractor opposed to the cheaper ones where you have to flip the frames mid process to avoid them blowing apart on you. Anyway my Dad and Brother where able to make an extractor using things that my Dad had on hand and less than $20 worth of stuff that I picked up at Menards.

I had first intended to buy a large trash can to use as the base but the ones I found didn't end up having a large enough radius. Dad remembered that he had this barrel around his place (which had originally come from the beekeeping supplier not that far from here) and so I scrubbed it up good and we used that.

 The plans that I had found showed making a wooden radial frame to hold the honey frames in. Dad and Peter with their expertise in welding and metal work decided that a metal frame would work better. Dad went to his scrap pile and they found some perfect light metal to use for that. The only way I was able to help was by scrubbing up again. :-)

Peter trying out the new extractor

Dad had an old ice auger that they used for the long metal piece to go through the middle. Originally they used the ice auger handle as well (as pictured above) that handle didn't work so well so now Dad has replaced it with a short one that works tons better. We are still considering putting gears or a motor on it but the short handle (which just for interests sake I will mention came off of an old dump truck that was parked on Dad's property).

  For draining I found a PVC ball valve at Menards that they were able to screw into a hole that they made on the side of the bottom. Below is a picture that shows Mara using that valve and filling a bottle.

I had never taken frames out of the hive before and I wasn't sure how easy it would be without getting a bunch of bees too and without using a fume board.  It wasn't bad at all though I sure did get the bees buzzing all over! I simply took a frame out and brushed the bees off of it using the bee brush. Then I backed up a few steps and brushed off the ones that returned and then I quickly put it in a covered tote. Using that process I did get a few bees in the tote but not many and since they were busy gorging themselves once I got the tote inside they didn't pose any problem and I quickly got rid of them.

Working on this first batch of honey made me realize how much better I could be organized and how much I have to learn. I was thankful I wasn't getting tested on how unsticky I could stay during the process or anything like that. I was a pretty sticky mess once it was all over and everything I touched was sticky too! I was also pretty tired. Lifting honey supers around especially when some of them are above your head is hard work and cranking an extractor isn't easy either. I should have strong arm muscles (and the kids will too!) by the time honey harvesting is over.

The end result of lots of honey to use is certainly very fun! We are loving having our own honey. It is so much fun to eat, learn to bake with and to share with others.

Our first day's harvest.

Beyond bees and honey we have also been busy with other homesteading activities. This past week was our county fair. We always enjoy entering things in the open class and then going and seeing and getting ideas from what others enter as well. The fair is a very neat way to learn homesteading ideas and be encouraged to try new things out. Here are some pictures from the fair:

Some of the canned goods. I entered green beans and tomatoes in this section.

 I love looking at all the handwork and we also love entering in this section. In the picture above you can see Mara's grey and blue crocheted ski hat (First place!) and below that my striped baby set.

All of the kids entered quite a few things and everybody won some prizes so we had a fun time.

Another activity of last week was making pesto. Last year I made pesto for the first time and loved it so I wanted to make it again. My basil is growing well so I had quite a bit available for use. The pesto was yummy and I hope to make more soon.

This week the garden is still growing busily with cucumbers being one of the top crops. Here is a picture from Monday's harvest: 

 Oh I do love fresh veggies! I have made it my goal to eat garden fresh veggies every night with supper this month and except for when we were out of town I think we have done that so far. The harvests are just getting better too. We will be eating corn soon and I am excited!

 I have also been canning stuff for the winter and be sure to come back to visit here soon as I will be hosting a review and giveaway soon for Tattler canning lids. They are reusable year after year and they are pretty cool!

  Is your homestead a hopping place too? What do you have going on?

A Bee Baby Shower- Using What I Had in My Hand

 This past Saturday my sister Keren and I hosted a baby shower for the two newest arrivals in our congregation. We held it at the church building (because we wanted to make it wheel-chair friendly). The two little guys who's births we were celebrating are named Buirlen and Brody and so we decided to have a "Bee" ("B") themed party. It was a lot of fun to prepare for. I love hosting parties and decorating for them. I really especially love see how we can make it cool using things we already have on hand. So I didn't buy anything for this shower (not even the gifts or prizes) but I was able to use things that I already had on hand and had great fun doing that. This post is a little bit picture heavy but I hope you find it fun! :-)

Making a last minute welcome banner.

An old burlap potato sack became a banner. Decorated with silk flowers that were laying around, bees we made from felt, felt letters and fabric scraps.

The "B's" were our guestbook  as well as decoration. In their former life they were boxes, curtains, pillowcases and cards. The & chalkboard was borrowed from my house for the event. I had made it earlier from a log slice and chalkboard paint.

 For the "B's" we had each guest put a thumbprint on a little circle of cardstock (what I had cut out of old cards and such) and then add details to make it into a bee and also write their name on it. Then they pinned it on the B. At the welcome table they did that as well as guessing how many M & M's were in a jar and how many bees spent their whole lifetime working to produce that jar of honey. We also had a sheet of paper to fill out for the babies about what we wished for them.

Some of the prizes that I brought (to give out for winners of the games) were jars of honey,

This bag that I had been given at a bridal show and I decorated for the occasion,

This hand mirror that I had in my stash and also decorated for the occasion using bottoms that I rescued from an old jumper.

 We had fun with centerpieces. Keren brought in this geranium. I added bees that Megan and I had made from felt and cellophane that had come wrapped around flowers. I mounted all the bees on curly wires that had been saved from old calendars. The wood slice and watering can I had on hand.

 My old Winnie the Pooh (from my babyhood) and another jar of honey got put into use for another table.

 Megan and I made a few skeps for other decorations. In their former lives these skeps were old yogurt containers, newspaper, a partly done macrame project (that had been given to us) and then the calendar wire, felt and a flower wrapping.

 Another centerpiece made from things I had on hand and the bees we made buzzing out of it.

A close-up of the bee and it's cellophane wings.

We stuck bees in some of the containers of flowers that were already at the church building too.

 We had fun making the invitations. We were a little corny on it saying: "Two little Honey Bees have arrived and we're buzzing with excitement!" But we had fun. I am glad that I already had a set of bee stamps to use. We also used these stamps to decorate napkins and the paper for the games we played. I did re-purpose brown packing paper for making the invitations and the envelopes.

 We were able to use some silk flowers that were already at the church building for decorations. The chalkboard vase was one I made a while back from an old olive oil jar. The Chalkboard is another of mine from home (It is a slate tile that I bought for very little at the Restore). I stopped by the side of the road to pick pussy willows and other branches.

Megan and I made pins for the mommys. I re-purposed old political pins and more of the party finished macrame project.

 Keren made the lovely cake complete with M & M bees on top and a delicious filling! I made Lemon bars, Honey and Ginger cookies (that were supposed to look like skeps) and popcorn. Keren also brought lemonade and peanuts and I brought Mint Tea and honey.

For the gifts I had fun using some yarn I had on hand and making sweaters and hats (which they will grow out of very soon - unfortunately!). I also made Brody a blanket and Buirlen (and his mom) a nursing cover. I had started working on Brody's sweater a while back (and I actually made the blanket last year) but was planning on a making a very colorful sweater for Buirlen as his Momma loves colors but when we decided to have a bee theme I knew that I needed to make a bee sweater. I was happy that I did find black and yellow yarn in my stash.

   Buirlen slept through much of his shower. Brody didn't - when I held him he just stared and stared at me but when we tried to take the picture he thought it was a pretty bad idea and complained quite heartily.

Another friend gave Buirlen his yellow boots. This cute little guy is also my nephew. His daddy is my younger brother.

 We were trying to figure out a good pose for our little bee.

 That is one of the fun ways I was able to use things that I had on hand. How about you - how have you had fun using things that you already had lately?