Today I am reminded of the calm that is winter. While some days are filled with business, days like today provide time to reflect. That is the dichotomy of life. Winter season is both harsh and rewarding. It is a time when life appears dead and yet the time for rest has been provided.

So many times I find myself rushing to get that “big farm” I had imagined when I first dreamed the dream that I miss the calling for the lot I have been given. These are the thoughts that race back and forth in my mind; to sell this place or not to sell. These are thoughts of my own mortality and age progression yet the calling is not clear and the path is unknown.  It feels like a crossroad in my life and if I choose one direction I will go one way, yet if I go the other direction it will have great consequences and thus a stark contrast to the first option.

There are many “micro farming” things I could do at this location and potentially be profitable. I am beginning to see a larger picture for buildings and acquired skills and their relationship to one another.  I don’t have to begin right away with my team of horses or 40 acres plus, I can produce on 4 acres. The issue is am I ready to make it such for another 26 years or more? That’s how long it will take me to pay this land off. The kids will be grown and my time to raise them on a “Farm” will have passed. Is this place capable of being that “Farm” to which I want them to learn the values of hard work, grounding to the earth, and the reality of sowing and reaping?

With the days becoming longer I am finding myself with a little more daylight at night after I return home from work; time to think outdoors where my thinking is able to present me with all the options. Sometimes these options overwhelm me to the fact that this is a choice that is not easy. I can think of countless ideas to provide income here and I can think of countless reasons to leave. It’s come down to the fact that I have the same number of pros as cons and I am locked for a choice.  Ten years I have lived here and all the while I go back and forth wondering, “Is this the year I sell or not?” and “why did I move here in the first place?”

I had announced a while back we made the decision to sell and somehow the closer we come to the actual event of putting it on the market, the more I find reasons not to. Thus my dilemma, do I stick to my word and attempt to sell the almost established mini farm to remove doubt as to if I should or shouldn’t or do I choose to make a life here and raise my children to adults and change my production plans to that of a “Micro Farming” enterprise?

Well to move on, I cut down the really large tree behind the barn that I should have cut down when I built the barn but I didn’t thinking it would be better not too. But over the months of limbs falling on the roof I decided it was only a matter of time until a really large limb fell through damaging the roof. This tree also was in the way of expanding the barn out the back.

I received several 20 foot long light poles from my work, enough to build a 40×32 Building on the back of my barn. The idea was if I decided to stay, I would add on to the barn and the additional space would be the Honey Business that would contain a Certified Kitchen to extract honey and I would then be able to sell honey retail. The other areas would be for bringing in the honey for extraction because you need a large space for staging to keep the bees and other insects out of the honey. I also thought of adding a portion divided off for my blacksmithing so I could produce my blacksmithing products indoors out of the rain and cold. It would also allow me to work after my day job because I would have lights. This is a big deciding factor to whether I sell or not.

But an equally big deciding factor is the issue of our house. It has always been my goal to build my own house. I want a Timber frame home and I want to build it myself to take pride in every step! But now our county has building codes and requires building permits and many regulations to which I know nothing of nor have the time to investigate. I know how to build, I know how to plumb, I know how to wire up, I know how to do every step (for the most part) but I do not know what sort of “Got ya’s” are in the codes! This drives me to want to sell and move to the adjacent county that has no building codes.

So Pros - 1, Cons -1 where back to where we started, story of my life. I think the only way to decide this is to place it on the market for an allotted amount of time and if it sells, it’s meant to be, if it doesn’t sell, its meant to be.

The Orchard is now at 3 years old, I have hoped that I would be able to expand it so that I could produce more.  This February I plan to do some major trimming to begin to shape the trees now that they have had time to establish roots. I have two very large piles of compost that I have bought and built over the years. I plan to spread this compost in the spring over the entire area to provide a nutrient rich bed for the roots due to the fact our soil is a mix of clay rock and sand with about an inch of topsoil. Over the years I have added small amounts around the bases of the trees but this year I will expand that base to prepare for the growth spurt I am hoping for.

We have a couple changes in plans for the gardens this year. We are going small again to make other work we are doing easier. We have two main plots and had a plot where we grew green beans. I am changing how I grow them. I will be going from a woven wire fence method to an arched hog panel method. In this way the bean vines can grow up and over the arch allow us to reach up from underneath and pick the beans.

I have been doing more blacksmithing lately and at my day job a friend of mine and I are putting together a little group or organization if you want to call it, for blacksmithing in our area. It’s called www.boogercountyblacksmiths.com and we have discovered there is an interested in the group which is another reason for the addition to the barn to hold “hammer-in’s ” inside which facilitates the mission of the this farm.

All these things and more have been transpiring but I must leave you at this before I write a book.

Happy farming to all of you.

Much change has happened since the last post in many different areas of our life here at Myerstown Family Farm, most notably a setback with my band having lost both members within a short period of time. But I press on with hopes that the Creator will provide the people I need to make the old-time string band a reality yet again.

On my Facebook page I will be documenting the construction of an Old-time banjo that I hope to be able to finish by next summer. If I do not, it will be finished eventually. I do the work on the instrument after work when I am available.

I also have been teaching fiddle to 2 classes of 5 students and now have picked up another class, possibly two, so my weeknights are filling up quickly.

Again the age old question we have had on whether to sell our place in the spring has again come up. We are pretty set this time to place it on the market for the price we need to sell and if it sells we’ll start anew somewhere both closer to work and on land that is cheaper and debt free. If we do not sell, we will continue as we have, to plant, cultivate, harvest, store, and begin again. The goal of self-sustainability does not end with the sale, but would begin a new saga of cultivation both of the mind and of the earth.

The children are growing quickly and becoming feisty as every child their age does. We are enjoying the little things that are discovered every day. Brandy and myself have enjoyed having a friend close by to give us time to nourish our marriage such is what every marriage needs…to give time to ourselves and remember why we married each other. Thanks to our friends watching the girls, we have been able to take date nights ever so often

The family is why I farm. The family is why I labor to protect our food, our resources, our land through safe the safe practice of raising food without the use of chemicals or hormones, and why I study to find natural ways to keep bees or raise fruit trees. The family is too important to leave to a system that is broken. No matter who the culprit is that one considers to be the reason, mankind can overcome it by simply simplifying their life and returning to where God created mankind in the first place…in the garden. It is the work in the garden that completes a man.

The Ozarks Mountaineer is the only Ozarks-wide magazine in all 50 states, and a few foreign countries as well. The magazine offers histories of people and places, folklore, out-of-the-way places to see and visit, arts, crafts, pioneer skills, folk music and much, much more. In addition to articles, there are columns featuring cookery, poetry, humor, events, gardening, then and now, folk music, reviews of recordings and reviews of books.

Below is an excerpt of the article. Please take a look at the whole article on the Ozarks Mountaineer’s website and consider subscribing to this one of a kind magazine.

McClurg: Old Timers, New Timers, and First-Timers Keep the Music Alive

The screen door slams closed revealing the shapes of musical instruments cut into the hardwood door frame. The first bounce of the screen door startles most people, causing a glance at the commotion. The second bounce reveals timeseasoned hands holding a crock pot of beef stew in a savory marinade of broth along with carrots and potatoes. It is their arrival that is greeted by an excitement not only for what was made but for the maker, as well.

A passerby would hear from the old concrete porch the rumble of voices inside the old McClurg Mobil gas station, the clanks of silverware, and an occasional impatient pluck on an instrument before eating. A visitor would be rewarded with the smell and taste of fried chicken, lasagna, and of cooked sausage that the musicians and their spouses brought for the potluck.

Walking in, one gains a sense of nostalgia at the sight of the shelves still supporting inventory that was sold at the time of the gas station’s closing, though now a bit cluttered by 10 plus years of “put it wherever.” Looking to the right of the one-room open floor plan, the student of history would see images of the giants of the past hanging just above the couches spanning the wall: images of those musicians who had once been regulars at the store and some who to this day are still there. The pictures, taken and framed by local Ozarks Music Folklorist Gordon McCann, are a step down the “halls of history.” READ MORE…

The Harvest

In the first four articles, I outlined the methods I am using or plan to use for our self sustainable farm. Though this farm is not fully self sustainable yet, we hope to continue to work towards greater sustainability and to make this micro farm the most productive farm that it can be while I am still working a regular job. 

In this article, I want to outline my plans for harvest of the honey. The work involved in keeping the bees alive and healthy throughout the spring, summer and fall is all but over, now it’s time to prepare for the Harvest of that Golden Nectar.

The first year I was able to extract was last year, of which I had one super of 6 ¼ frames to extract. So it was not that big of an issue to extract in my little two frame extractor. I got the extractor for a really good buy back when I first started keeping bees, long before I would need it.  With ten frames of honey it took me 5 runs to do one Super of honey.

This year, thanks to a friend of mine giving me the heads up, I found a great buy on a 30 frame extractor.  This will allow me to extract three Supers per run rather than the 5 runs per Super!

Towards the end of summer I finished up my Honey house and as fast as I could afford it, I set out to establish the extraction facility.

The system I setup is designed to be “pumpless” so I have as little electrical usage as possible. The honey house currently is being powered by three extension cords, one for light, one for extractor, and one for uncapping plane. I’ll explain these in a minute. So the design is part of the larger design of the farm. My hope is to make the honey house completely “Off Grid” which most would assume easy. Yes, with the money flowing in, that would be easy, however, I do not have that luxury so I set the system up to use as little power as possible. The layout is simple, the uncapping tub is at the right height to uncap from the floor level, then that tub is piped in a food grade tubing to the holding tank which is at a slope but the holding tank is a sufficient height to get a bucket with a filter underneath the honey gate. The extractor is above the holding tank so that the honey runs down into the tank to be filtered into buckets.

When the bees put the honey into the comb, they leave the honey open until the right water to honey ratio is met. If the water content is below 18% the bees will cap the honey comb with a layer of wax. This wax is to protect the honey until the bees need it. The bees just know when it is the right time to cap the honey.  So as a beekeeper extracting your honey you must cut off that capping. The industry has come up with very simple machines that automate all of this for you. These machines are very expensive. So I searched around for the “Low tech” way to do a larger number of hives. Most of the small hobby beekeepers uncap using an uncapping knife. This knife is long and is drug sideways across the top of the comb, cutting the cappings. Well after time, your hand becomes very sore from the sideways motion, even if the knife was heated. So I found an alternative.  It is an Uncapping Plane. This rather than being drug sideways is pulled downward in a natural motion for the hand. It is estimated a person can do 10 to 100 hives using this tool.

This uncapping plane is heated and there is some debate over the effect to the label “Natural” when honey is uncapped. It is my opinion that the honey is not heated sufficiently to constitute it being “pasteurized” and thus not raw or “Natural”. So I will use the heated element on the uncapping plane. The wax is extremely hard to uncap if heat is not applied, and the majority of beekeepers use heat to uncap the wax.

Once the wax is uncapped, the frame is placed into the honey extractor. The extractor I have is an older model created before the Stainless steel regulation was enacted thus the reason for being able to get the extractor cheaper. But due to the large number of extractors existing, the workaround for these was to coat the inside of the extractor and all the inside parts with a food grade epoxy paint that can be purchased at beekeeping supplies and other food related suppliers. I purchased this epoxy resin and coated all parts of the extractor as required.

The extractor of this size must be loaded symmetrically. This means that if you put a frame in on the south side, you must balance the spindle by placing the next frame on the north side and so on. Once all the frames that can be loaded are loaded, the extractor is closed up and turned on. There are usually two directions on the extractors. It is a good idea to run the extractor forward and backwards so that every last bit of honey is extricated from the comb. Once the run is finished, place empty comb back in frames and set outside to allow the bees to rob out the remaining honey. They will clean the comb well. Just make sure there is no chance for rain, you don’t want to get your comb wet then store it and have mold for you in the spring.

Then the honey is filtered. I am using a bucket filter system that works well for a smaller setup. Some day I will get a better filtration system setup. I do not filter too much as I want to retain some of the pollen for allergy sufferers.

Storage is important. If you don’t store your comb well, it will be destroyed by wax moths. Many beekeepers place the empty frames back on the hives so that the bees will keep the moths off. You can store the Supers on a pallet off the ground and place a solid board with no gaps around stack your boxes then place a board at the top and to keep moths out. Be sure there are no cracks between the boxes where the moth can get in.  

I have a holding tank that all the freshly extracted honey goes into. This will contain wax and bee parts as well. I have a 5 gallon buck filter system. This allows me to place the filter on top of the bucket and open the holding tank gate and filter just the right amount of honey. Then my bucket has a gate that allows me to fill the bottles or jars for using or selling.

I hope you enjoyed this series on beekeeping and I also hope you learned a lot as well. So until next time, God bless you and yours.

Population Management:

When I first began to keep bees I was offered three different requirements to the needed size of the brood chamber. I first read in a book that said 3 hive body boxes (deep boxes for brood chambers) were the required number. Then, at the outset of my new adventure I began to work for a commercial beekeeper that had close to 1000 hives. He said in his opinion only one hive body was needed to survive the winter. So being the type to go with experience over book learning, I left one deep box on the hive for the winter in my first year and as a result, as any experience beekeeper could tell you ahead of time, I lost both my hives that first year. What happened? Well, for so many of us, we hear the wonderful words of wisdom but fail to understand the process that led to those words being formed in the first place. Truth is this should be a lesson to everyone to play it safe until you have a full understanding of what is going on. There was one hive body alright but in addition, a medium honey super was placed on top as well. The seasoned beekeeper, used to how he operated, knew that it needed to be there but failed to tell me most likely because he probably didn’t think of how green I was.

That first year was painful and I never want to repeat that but it taught me a vital lesson; error on the side of caution. If I had the three hive bodies the first year, sure there would have been a lot of wasted space as they barely filled up two in the first season, but I still would have two hives more to my apiary. As a result I have now come to the opinion that the number of boxes you use should be dependent on the general location you live. In Alabama for example, the winters are not as harsh and if you’re tight on equipment go do one hive body with a super of honey. Here in my area of southern Missouri, one needs to provide two hive bodies for overwintering (no super). For my friends up north I’d suggest being sure to have three hive bodies available. These are just my suggestions but I feel confident in their accuracy.

As part of the Fall routine, and you should have a general checklist that you use to prepare your hive for winter. My list now only resides in my mind but in the beginning I wrote them down to follow.

Mites, when they first began to come to beekeeping, had a destructive effect on the hive strength and overwintering ability. For those wondering why I have not covered Tracheal mites, I feel that through my research, natural selection is the best means of treatment. Bees are fairly resistant to the tracheal mites and using aids will only select hives that will become weaker to the tracheal mites.

Over the years, the bees have grown resistant to much of Varroa Destructor’s affects. Though it can still cause shrunken wings and affect the bees’ health, the honeybees’ ability to adapt has grown stronger. Most often a hive will keep the Varroa mite under control but it still is not something you want to ignore. As I stated in a previous post, I use the powdered sugar method to control Varroa Mites. Though there are traps and other methods available, I find this method to be working for me. This requires a screened bottom board and a flour sifter. The best sifters are the wind-able type. The hand squeeze type are very labor-some and will wear your hand out. As part of the fall routine place a screened bottom board under the hive (if it’s not already there) and open each layer of the hive and sift the powdered sugar on top of the frames and through the frames.

How this method works is that the little white ghosts (bees with sugar on them) flying around begin to groom other bees to get the sweet sugar off and in doing so remove the Varroa mites which are attached most times to the back of the abdomen. When the mite is removed the screened bottom board provides a place for the mite to fall through and out of the hive. Many beekeepers keep a pan of canola oil or sunflower oil under the hive for the mites to fall into and drown (avoid vegetable oil as it goes rancid quick). And admittedly, the success rate is higher because it prevents the mite from crawling back inside however this does require special grooved bottom boards with a pan that is the same size. Unless it is purchased, it is a bit hard to find a pan the size of a beehive bottom board. This adds extra expense. One other way is to use a flat plywood type material and purchase a sticky paper (applied after applying the sugar) that is sold in most beekeeper catalogs. Be sure the bees do not have any access to this paper or you will kill bees. There is a great site online to get plans for building your own bottom board. It’s at beesource.com and you can also find many other hive items you can build yourself.

Most beekeepers I know have a valid concern about the hive making it through the winter. If a hive is strong going into the winter, then there are only two things that one needs to think about when preparing for winter, food and warmth. With the issue of warmth, the bees have mastered how to conserve energy. They create a “Cluster” that vibrates and oscillates as a whole. As a bee becomes cold on the outside of the cluster, she will move to the inside where she and others’ vigorously vibrate their wings that will create a friction heat. As soon as she is warm she is pushed out by other bees going inside the cluster and so the cluster continues. At times the temperature becomes so cold that the bees will be unable to move much at all, during these times it is food that becomes the concern. Assuming you left plenty of honey in the fall, your bees should be fine going into winter but if for some reason the honey is not placed correctly in relation to the cluster they can starve only an inch away from honey. This happened to me my first year. I left plenty of honey (in fact I didn’t rob the hive at all) and the bees all died inside the hive. They used up the honey that was by the cluster (the cluster was well defined with bees still inside cells) and just an inch away, honey could be found. The lesson I took from that was I needed to adjust the frames inside the hive to make honey placed in the center of the hive. As part of my late fall list, I move the good honey frames (full frames) to the center creating a place for the cluster to have honey all around it. This has helped remove my hive losses due to starvation.

Now some might say that I am enabling the bees to make the mistake of bad placement of honey. Meaning, if you help the bees by moving frames closer to the cluster, you will in effect be selecting bee’s traits that are not sustainable. And, overtime the traits you will be selecting for is poor placement of honey in the hive. I see that as a valid concern and that is why I maintain two hive bodies throughout the year and in effect gives the bees the opportunity at correctly place honey before the year is up. What this means is that you the beekeeper only rob once (for mid and northern locations) and that one time should be early enough in the year for the bees to rebuild their honey supply. I never take the honey in the brood boxes and only remove honey from the supers (which have a queen excluder under them). There almost always is sufficient honey in the top brood box to support the hive through the winter.

Once the honey supers have been removed for the year and the brood boxes coated with powdered sugar, your hive needs to be left alone so they can rebuild their stores with what little nectar remains (a few late season blossoms remain here in southern Missouri) and re-establish the propolis seal around the hive joints to help insulate the hive from wind.

The final post in this series will be our Method of Honey Extraction. This year I have a new 30 frame extractor and will need to make a few repairs (that’s how I could afford it) and I am also going to have to finish my building to house the extractor (due to the fact I can’t get the extractor into the house through the standard doors) and so the last post my come later than the usual “Post a Month” that I have been maintaining.

Housing and Feeding:

Second to the pests and disease issues are the issues of housing and feeding. Just search the internet and you will find a myriad of different types of hives. I will continue to use the industry standard as these materials are cheaper and readily available. In my opinion right now, the type of housing is not as important as the type of management. This includes feeding. In most cases feeding honeybees should be limited. When you provide sugar water, the bees think that it is the same as nectar, but you end up with a lesser quality food than the natural nectar. Thus the bees now have a link broken to naturally keep them healthy. It’s no secret to us humans that if we eat right, we are healthier. The same thing is true for honeybees. Sugar doesn’t contain proteins or specific trace minerals bees use. 

There is a purpose for feeding sugar. When you find a bee tree, catch a swarm, or have a very weak hive due to damage to the hive, feeding sugar can overcome a hump to get them going. If the hive is weak for no reason, it is better in the long run to let nature run its course to weed out inferior hives thus providing a method for selecting good breeding. Feeding sugar can interfere with their foraging habits and as a result you end up with lazy bees. So the way I look at it feed the 1:1 sugar:water mixture only when absolutely necessary and at no time interfere with natures natural selection which produces better genetic stock in bees.

Sometimes in the winter we will get a day above 50 degrees where we live and we use this time to take a quick glance at our hives (quick glance= tack top off and look between frame without disturbing them) and see whether the hive looks good or bad for the particular time of year. Only experience will teach this. If I open up the top and see the expected number of bees but I don’t see any honey there is a great problem. The only way to solve this problem at this time of year is to place a sheet of newspaper on top of the hives and dump sugar directly on the paper on top of the bars of the hive. As long as there is a water source around, the bees can liquefy that sugar and place it where needed or just eat it outright.

If however, during the summer, you look in your hive and find little honey, I would not feed then. The reason to provide sugar in the winter and not in the summer is because during the fall you must make a call to leave honey in the hives. However, if you fail to leave enough honey in the hive that would be a result of the beekeepers and not a result of lazy bees or poor genetics. So I would provide during the roughest part of the year (if needed only) and leave nature to nature during the plenty periods of the year unless they were just acted on by outside forces such as a tree limb falling on the hive opening it up. If the bees cannot provide what they need during the good time of year, they will be a crutch you have to take care of all the time and you will perpetuate those genes through drones and splits throughout the years.

Next: Population Management methods.

Diseases and Pests:

The most urgent issue of beekeeping right now is in the pests and disease that have been inflicting large casualties on the industry. Because our Apiary (the place where the bee hives are kept and the beehives themselves) is still small, the only real threats we have faced so far are Varroa Mites, hive beetles, and Wax Moths.  With that being said, we still look for American Foul Brood, Symptoms of Tracheal mites, and any other issues to which need attention.  One big difference in our methods compared to others is we do not treat our hives with any chemicals. I operate on a “Live and let die” methodology. If something is not broke don’t fix it and sometimes even if it’s broke, don’t fix it. The key to a quality pest management plan is to maintain healthy hives. Healthy hives can fend for themselves most of the time and as a result become stronger. Overtime, Healthy hives can develop a resistance to maladies that affect the hive.  The more hygienic the bees are the more likely they are to resists pests such as Varroa or wax moths.

Some pest troubles like Varroa Mites can be the normal everyday occurrence and the bees can fend off the mites and keep them under control. The hives that need help we use the Drone Comb method currently, in which you place a frame with foundation with cells sized for drone brood. The queen lays drone brood in these cells and because Varroa likes drone larvae more than worker larvae they search out the drone larvae first and lay eggs. Once the workers have capped the cells we take out the frame of drone out of the hive and place it in the freezer for 24 hours killing the brood and the mites. Then we take the frame out and use a scratcher to open the caps back up and expose the dead larvae and then place the frame back in the hive for the bees to clean out and start over.  In the future I am thinking of testing out another type of trap to which larvae are not sacrificed.

 Also twice a year, I use powdered sugar in a flour sifter and sift the sugar on top of the hive bodies to coat the honey bees in powdered sugar. As a result, you will see little white ghost bees flying around. When the bees return to the hive the workers clean each other to get the sweet sugar off and as a result pull off the Varroa Mites that are usually attached to the back of the abdomen.  Now this only works well if you have a screened bottom board with a pan of oil beneath it or else the mite gets knocked off and falls down only to climb back on later. The oil pan prevents this. They fall through the screen to the oil below.

Wax Moths can be extremely destructive, but when present in a healthy hive, the bees can keep Wax Moths at bay. One method I use to control the moths is that I use only Plastic foundation.  With the plastic foundation, if they do get carried away and destroy the wax comb, they cannot destroy the foundation and thus the foundation can be cleaned up by scraping off (a good winter chore) and reinserted to the hive for reuse. I prefer “all plastic” frames because when the moths begin to lay their cocoons on the wood part of a frame they damage the wood as well as the foundation. With plastic frames your foundation is plastic also and if the wax moths do destroy the comb, it is easy to just use the hive too and scrap the webbing and frass off the frames.

With Hive Beetles I typically kill all the adults I can by smashing them with the hive tool when I first open the lid of the hive. Each adult beetle can lay 300 eggs a day so each one killed goes a long way to reducing the population. A healthy hive can coexist with hive beetles but there are still reasons you don’t want to allow them to roam about the hive. They tend to bore through the comb in search of food. The larva eats the honey leaving behind larval feces by which the honey begins to ferment.

One of the best ways to limit the amount of disease and pests, are to avoid Migratory Beekeeping. The practice of moving bees in the spring to one location to take advantage of one crop, then moving them in the fall to a different location to take advantage of another crop can be very stressful on the bees. Some have even hinted that this may be one of the main causes of Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD). The more you move the bees, the more they are subject to pests from other neighboring hives. I keep two locations that I use to split hives. The second location is more than two miles away which allows me to make a split and take it to the new location and not loose bees back into the original donor colony. The second location is in an area that has few beekeepers. There may be wild colonies (swarms off domestic stock) but the outside factors are significantly reduced. I do not move the hives back to the original location because diverse locations will increase your chances of survival if a nectar source fails in one location versus another. Also bees can be managed in rural locations to keep them from as much pesticides as possible. Our area is predominantly wooded. Except for the occasional rancher who puts herbicide along his fence so he doesn’t have to trim or someone’s “7 Dust” on their small tomato patch, there are very little locations of pesticide or herbicide use.

The more you can isolate your colonies the better chance you have of developing a colony that can withstand a lot of the assaults the honeybee is attacked with. The less you interfere with the natural cycles, the greater opportunity you will have of developing a strain of honeybee that is stronger than its predecessors’.

Next: I will cover Housing and Feeding.

Introduction:

I have been asked several times already in my short span of beekeeping to explain how we are keeping our bees and what we do to manage against the various maladies that affect the Honey Bee. There are a few books on the subject. One in particular, goes by the title “Natural Beekeeping” by Ross Conrad and does a good job covering many issues of the Natural beekeeping business but I will attempt to cover our methods as best as possible without going into the Political or Social implications.

 So long as everyone understands, our beekeeping experience began in 2007 when we bought two Nucleuses (nucs- 4-5 frame starter hives with accepted queen) and began to attempt to keep bees.  In that first season we learned some hard lessons about placement of the hives and as a result, we lost both of our hives in that first winter and subsequent spring. We then purchased two more Nucs and placed the hives in a better location (more sunlight) and have since weathered two winters, made hive splits and captured Bee-tree Bees to make hives.

While the current methods are sure to change later as we gain more experience, I thought it good to share what we are currently doing with our bees and how we see the ideal management style being in this early stage of development.

The style of management we use begins first with a philosophy of Natural Order. I must first clarify I am not a hippie, but I hold nothing against people who have that persuasion; they have the right to their beliefs also. The Natural Order I refer to is one that I believe is put into motion by our Creator, God.

This order is evident in seasons, sunrise, and sunsets it also includes a survival of the fittest of sorts. Many people (of conservative background) point to the Survival of the Fittest as being an Evolutionary process and thus it must be incorrect. But the problem begins with definition. Survival of the fittest exists and is called MICRO-evolution- that is change within a species. An example of micro-evolution would be one human taller than another human. The type of evolution I do not agree with is MACRO-evolution- that is one species producing, throughout time, another species. An example of macro-evolution would be a chimp producing a human. This cannot happen for several reasons namely the Law that all matter is in a perpetual state of decay and thus you cannot evolve into a higher complexity organism-namely a Chimp into a Human through your progeny.

How you view the above processes will shape your management style. You will either see life as a fragile gift that God gave to us to be stewards and that he gave all the mechanisms for the species to survive attacks from outside, or you will view Life as a something you must take control over and make it do or subject it to whatever you choose. Either way, both will work but only one will work long term or Self-Sustainably.

NEXT:  Pests and Diseases and how to Manage

Hannah Grace a few minutes old

Now, as of March 3 at 4:40pm, the circle of inclusion widens as we welcome our new baby Girl. Hannah Grace Myers was born 7 pounds and 4 ounces and measured 19 inches long. So far as I can tell, well, I cannot tell who she looks like but she is healthy and she has an insatiable appetite for moms milk and that is also good.

When we are older and we return to the responsibility of two, we will have a life to remember. A life that says, we have something in common and something we can relate to.

Family, it is the most important institution God has created. The family is that building which the members build on a foundation of Truth and God enlarges the house as he sees fit. When the winds and rain beat upon that house, when they have finished, the foundation of the house will prove whether the house remains or is blown away by disaster.

2010-11 Winter at the Farm

In January we had some of the coldest weather we’ve seen in years. This is not too much different than the rest of the country. While they were stuck under snow (although we had our share of snow), we were fighting subzero temperatures. It has been a truly rough winter this year. Between frozen house pipes and driving on ice, I am pretty much ecstatic about warmer temperatures. This is veering away from my normal state of mind which thinks in terms of “I can always put more clothes on but I can only take so many off before getting in trouble”.

Brandy in 2011 at 38 weeks

Brandy is ready to have the Baby any moment now.The due date is March 3^rd but it’s highly possible the baby could come earlier. The sooner the baby comes, the better! Brandy is barely able to walk. As we did with Abby, we did also with this baby and that is not to find out the sex of the baby. We will be surprised.

Early into the winter we lost one bee hive and knew about it right away. I went out on one day right after a 17 degree night; the temperature had risen to almost 40 degrees so I went out and knocked on the hives to hear the comforting hum of the bee busy with minding their own bees wax.  But on one hive I didn’t hear that sound. I opened it and sure enough, there was honey, some pollen, and maybe 5 dead bees stuck in cells. No clue as to where the rest of them went. They were not dead on the floor…they were just gone. I had seen them there about 2 weeks earlier in the late fall (early November).

My Homemade Bee Trap

I have one bee trap set and have 2 more made and ready to hang. I planned on making more later on so that I can hang in various places with hopes of catching a swarm this spring. The trap is simple, a bucket with a painted outer covering with bark, grass, and leaves stuck into the paint. This was to provide a place to land for the bees and have traction. In the bottom of the bucket is a hole about ½ inch in diameter off center of the bucket. I took an old dark comb wooden frame and cut it to length and drilled two screws from outside the lid to the end of the frame. So I just take the lid with the dark comb frame attached and put it on the bucket.  Before closing the lid completely, take and add some queen pheromone in the hive on a rag (you pay money for it or just get some Lemon scented pledge). When I hung the bucket, I placed it about 10 feet in the air and mounted two pieces of metal that had bent hooks on the end. The bucket handle slips into that hook so that when it’s full of bees you can easily remove bucket without disturbing the bees too much. Think about how to close the hole after it’s full but before you take it down. I figured on using Duct tape or just taking a rag and filling the hole up before moving trap. If I had been thinking I would have looked for plugs, then cut the holes to the size of the plug.

Recently, we cleared the gardens of the old crop plants and cages, we dug up the potatoes still hibernating and we burned the vines on one of the garden plots to provide pot ash for the soil.  The other plot we spread the wood ashes from our woodstove on all winter. We have about a 3×60 foot row covered with ashes. So in a few days we’ll till in that newspaper and hay, that cattle manure from last year and a new spreading of manure from this year. The soil should be ripe for a good crop. There are lots of organisms in the soil because we protected it all winter with newspaper and hay; the soil has a much higher content of fiber which helps it to retain moisture that is so vital in preventing mold and keeping the plants watered.  The nutrient content is up from the manure and from the compost of plants that have deep penetrating roots that bring up usable nutrients deeper than the till level.

The first major snow of the year

The rest of the Farm sets in wait, in wait of birth, in wait of warmth, and in wait of my time to accomplish my tasks. The primary job this summer will be the barn and its completion. I have to finish the storage shed first to move all of the valuables into the shed first then the barn will be free of clutter so I can finish it. The storage shed began as a project to have an outdoor cooker but quickly changed when I discovered that I would be unable to finish the barn without a place to put all the items that are now cluttering up the floor and the upper level.

Bees are continuing to be a priority as is music.

I hope to have at least one more hive to add to my yard from a fallen bee tree I go to pickup Saturday, February 19^th. Lord willing, hopefully that hive will survive to spring.

This is a split from 2010. I have it over at a friends place.

I have already announced my Band “Southern Missouri Stringband” in a different post, and we are accepting any bookings that are available and we have a small charge per person.

I also have an additional business thought I am keeping to myself for now, but suffice to say, if I go for it, it could have the potential to provide a good income while I still hold down my full time job which pays for the improvements. Brandy would be able to implement the new business venture as manager and I would direct its course and be able to do my part on nights and weekends. It would be something I would grow into slowly! I repeat slowly!

Thank you for your time in reading this article. God Bless!