Mistakes from the beekeeper

Have you ever heard of an Alarm Pheromone? Well, it exists and it closely resembles the smell of Banana. For breakfast I had a smoothie which contained banana. This may sound foolish but I actually had a goal to never be stung as a bee keeper. That is probably just like a truck driver having a goal that his truck will never experience a flat tire or a milk man never spilling milk. Well, today it happened! My record was smashed! OUCH! So I thought it would be nice to list my mistakes so that I can learn better what I did wrong.


In A Hurry = Bad Idea #1
I made the family hive quite upset today. Have you ever heard of an Angry BEE?

Well, they were very upset. I probably had 200 out of the hive covering me and my gloves and my arms and just MAD MAD MAD. I don't really blame them though because they were doing what they were supposed to be doing. PROTECTING THE HIVE. And my banana breath did not help. I was going a little faster than I should and BAM!! I got it right in my thumb. One of them stung me right through my glove. It hurt and itched but not as bad as I thought.





SLACKS = Bad Idea #2
I went to the hives right from work and I was in my work clothes. Slacks are not good for bees if they wanted they could easily sting right through them. I will remember to bring a change of clothes next time.



Exposing your legs = Bad Idea #3
I have really never had to tuck in my pants into my socks. I did the very first time I hived a package of bees but I have never worried about it. I actually had one get up my pant leg and sting me in my calf. That was not fun. So I had to walk back to the car and tuck in my pants. The sting continued to bother me the entire time I was out there and I was ready to be done.



This is a picture of a Stinger.
You can see the barb connected to the venom sac. The venom sac has a muscle attached to it that continues to pulsate and pump venom into you after the bee has stung you. Nice isn't it? That is why when you get stung by a bee that you need to scrape the stinger off instead of pulling it out or hitting it.

I will mention a few things I am grateful for even with the stinging.

-Not allergic to bee stings. I have never really known but I know now that I am not.
-All three hives still doing very well.
-Honey Harvest is almost to an end and we can get the hives ready for winter.
-learning. Beekeeping is a continual learning experience. And I have more to learn.

Do you like sticky feet?

I would like to pass on this little bit of information. It does not matter where you harvest your honey everything will get sticky - even your feet.



Everything you touch, the floor, the handles, the sink, the floor, the table, the knife, the floor, parts of the ceiling, the grass, the hose, kids, wife, watch, hands, forehead, hair, you name it... especially the floor.








I found a picture that helps explain the way your loving wife will feel if you intentionally turn her kitchen into what they loving call the "Honey House".

The honey house stores your extractor, the frames needing extraction, wax cappings and sticky sticky honey. I failed to mention bees. We had 3 supers and only 2 bees. They were so stuffed with honey that they could barely move. I was going to kill them but I was instructed by the wife to just release them outside.

It was a slow going process until we cleaned the filter. We are up around 8 1/2 gallons. That is about 102 Lbs already harvested. I would be willing to guess that we are not quite half way done but Monday will tell. We still have to get more supers off the hives. Sticky feet here we come!

out at the hives

Hello i am Mister Bee Keepers assistant I finely got a chance to go out to the bees yea!!! But as I was their I was just working with them and I heard a very close buzzing by my ear but I thought nothing of it then I looked down in my suite well I saw a bee in my suite that was pretty scary course that had never happened before and Mister Bee keeper smashed it in side my suite WOW then when we got home we found the Bees stinger in my shirt stuck their but it had not got me YEA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Why should you eat honey?

Well, I will tell you. There are some amazing things about honey that many people are not aware of.
Did you know that Honey (if stored properly) will never spoil? It may harden and cyrstalize but all you have to do is warm it up and it will be good to go. They have found honey in some of the tombs in Egypt and it was still good!
Honey is the ONLY food that contains all the substances to sustain life including water. Here are a few more amazing things about HONEY!



1. Honey is the only non man-made sweetener which also is considered to have healing effects.

2. Honey has a pH level around 3-4 and consists of roughly 18% water. Because of this honey is a very stable substance and can last hundreds of years if properly stored.

3. Honey can reduce fat deposits found in our cardiovascular system.

4. Honey will not ferment in your stomach like refined table sugar or sucrose does. Because of this it does not subject you to a risk of bacterial infection.

5. Honey is the simplest possible molecular form of sugar, which cannot be broken down any further. This allows it to travel directly from the small intestine to the blood stream while not causing any problems to the digestive system like sucrose.

6. Honey is a top choice as fuel for burning body fat during sleep since it has an equal ratio of fructose to glucose.

7. Honey is the best substance to use to treat burns. Honey can effectively subdue pain while quickly healing a wound without scarring.

8. Vitamins as well as antioxidants are found in honey. One special antioxidant known as ‘pinocembrin’ is found only in honey.

9. Honey is known to be a very effective and safe solution to children’s coughs, even more so than over-the-counter medicines.

10. Some recent studies have shown that athletes who consumed honey before and after physical activity have recovered faster than those athletes who did not consume any honey at all.

Given your new found knowledge of honey, now hopefully you can use it’s health benefits to your advantage. Keep in mind, the more natural the honey, the better. The honey found at your local fast-food chain is not going to give you the same health benefits as fresh natural honey straight from the bees nest. Start adding small amounts of natural honey to your meals to enjoy the health benefits it can offer you.

1-10 by: Matt Boraz

Sneaky Sneaky

I think those bees underestimated my sneakiness.... [insert evil laugh here]
I don't know how many of you have seen Mr. Deeds but it reminds me of this:
(click on play)





We ventured out into the great farmland of West Layton once again to get more of the golden goodness. They have been doing quite well bless their little bee hearts! I am surprised how much time it takes to get a super off. I planned for about an hour to get at least two or three supers off and we only were able to pull about 14 frames or so.



Here is a before picutre that I took back in the spring. This is just after the nucs were installed into the hives. My assistant has her hand on her hive.




And here is an after photo. This photo really shows how well the hives did this season. For those of you with less than a green thumb. That is wheat in the backgound. It starts off a lush green and then when it is ready to harvest it is tall and yellow. It has already been harvested in the After Photo. I think I would purchase nucs again. They seem to do really well for their first season. Installing them with 5 frames of drawn comb really gave them a jumpstart. We could have done slightly better with two really strong nucs but I think we did quite well. The nucs had to work slightly harder than the family hive because they had to comb most of their frames being that they were all new. Next year will be crazy becuase we will have many frames all combed out and ready to go. It takes quite a bit of nectar to make wax. I will keep you posted on how much honey we get when we harvest it.

Daffy Duck and the Golden Goodness

I have to admit I felt a little like Daffy Duck the other day when he said, "It's mine, you understand? Mine! All mine!" You may or may not recall the famous cartoon called ALI BABA so I will post it if you need a refresher...







Here is The Queen uncapper doing her best. You have to watch those fingers and hold the knife just right. After the bees fill the cells with honey they cap the cells with a thin layer of wax called capping's. These capping's need to be removed before extraction. Both sides of each frame are uncapped with a hot knife and then added to the extractor while we continue to control our saliva glands.





The frames are added to the extractor and then the spinning begins. My arm actually started to hurt so eventually we are going to want a larger extractor. I think a 6 frame extractor would be quite nice.





We had a small glass brownie dish to catch all of the capping's. Here you can see a beautiful frame of fresh honey ready to extracted. Things tend to get quite sticky around harvest day. But it is all worth it!





Here is the honey team. (not pictured was my main assistant who took the photos) Working together really saved time. When extracting you want your "honey house" to be hot so the honey runs out of the frames better. My son was quite hot so he removed his shirt while he was assisting us. He would hold the frames while they waited to be extracted.





I wanted to throw this picture in because it gives you an idea of just how heavy the frames are. Mr. Frame Holder here is making a face because he was plum tuckered out of holding and balancing the frames before they were placed in the extractor. I just love his worried expression. He was so tired and was worried that he would drop one of the frames and ruin them.





Aromatic waves of fresh honey fill the room while our work continues. Just seeing the honey run from the extractor into the filter made me drool. You can see the honey running from the extractor into the filter here. The honey is then stored in a 5 gallon bucket.


It was good hard work but well worth the payoff! The bees worked hard to collect all of this honey and we should be grateful for their efforts. Out of the one super we collected 2.5 gallons. We probably have 3-4 more supers to go but they are not all the same size so I will keep a running total for our 2010 season.