Farm Updates - Spring 2019 Edition

The cabin door got fancied up! Kiera picked the door color which we love. She may or may not have picked it solely on the name..."spun honey."To finish the look off,  Dave installed a new door knob and a keyless "smart" lock and I found this durable metal wreath at Hobby Lobby. 

 This spring, we planned to get two new hives, to bring our total up to four. However, one of our hives didn't survive the winter so we now have three hives. Here's the queen bee, before she gets added to the hive. 

 The Kette Combs (Thanks for the punny name, Emily!)

 We finally found recliners for the cabin! It took some time to find just the right ones, as the space is so small. The recliners maybe small, but they are comfy.

Blue pillow or yellow pillow? We couldn't decide so we ended up

layering the pillows, the yellow in the back, the blue up front (not pictured).

The ramps are just budding out

 New rug from Costco. I don't love the way the pattern
looks in the cabin (I wish it was more natural looking) but
the rug is soooo soft and supple that we're keeping it!

Honey

We've had a honey bee hive at the farm for two years now, but this is

the first year we harvested the honey. We are total novices, but we are

learning and loving the process...and the honey! 

The bees at the base of the hive before we began

the harvest...little did they know what was about to happen!

We have five super/bee boxes. The queen stays in the

bottom two boxes and the honey is made and stored 

in the top three. You can see we added additional boxes

as they are not all uniform. The new box wasn't painted 

either. This helps to keep them from deteriorating and 

turning yellow. 

We filled the smoker with pine needles to 

confuse/calm the bees so they wouldn't be so 

spunky (read: ready to sting) during the process.

 Each box holds ten frames, though we only extracted

honey from six, as the other frames weren't full. 

Using a bee brush to gently move the bees off the frame

Taking the frame to the golf cart to take back

to the cabin for extraction

Sneaking a taste!

Our new extractor

Putting two frames (one at a time) into the 

extractor. Before you put them in, you heat up 

a special knife to scrape of the beeswax.

Liquid gold!

Every one took a turn spinning the extractor

and posing for a picture!

Next step, straining the honey from the 

honeycomb/beeswax 

Then we brought everything home so we could 

fill the honey jars

Kiera picked the bears out! 

Using a funnel to fill the honey bears

Our first "jar" of honey!

Kiera took this to her teacher, Mrs. Sauto along

with pictures of the honey extracting process. She

was able to share the pictures with her class, but not

the honey, as her school doesn't allow food to be 

brought in to share.

We have plenty of honey to share...If we didn't give you any yet, 

just wait!

Our First Beehive!

We got bees at the farm! We're starting off slow, with one

hive. So far, so good! We successfully picked up the bees and

put them into their new home.

Kiera proudly carrying our new bees from Simpson's Bee Supply

in Danville.

They made it safely to the farm. We could hear them buzzing in 

the bed of the truck from inside the truck!

First up, all three Kette girls painted the box.

While we painted the box and Dave moved two pieces of

barn stone for the base of the hive, the bees stayed in the cabin.

This little guy, whom Kiera named "Mr. Buzz" escaped, then

spent all of his time trying to get back into the box to be by the queen.

Kiera's first camo shirt...Thanks, grandpa!

Just as we were about to put the bees in the hive, it started to drizzle.

We put on our rain gear and got to work. First up, spritzing the bees

with sugar water (or in our case pouring since the sprayer broke!)

so their wings get sticky and temporarily can't fly, so they move away

from the queen, so you're able to take the queen out. 

Getting to the queen bee

A food packet to tide them over until more flowers are out

The queen bee is in this little box

So the other bees cannot get to her during transport,  there is a cork 

at the end of the queen box. When it's time to put her in the hive, you

replace the cork with a marshmallow so the worker bees can "eat" her

free. Once she's out of the box, you remove it. 

Rather than smoking and shaking the bees out of the temporary box,

we put the box into the hive and removed it a few days later.

The bees are in, now to add another layer...

The hive is temporary topped off with a sugar water mix, again 

to feed the bees until more spring blossoms are out.

Proud Bee Keepers!

The bee box is resting on barn stone. It's located in a grove 

of trees that nestled right between our garden and the blueberry

bushes. 

In other exciting news, here's our septic tank!