Buzz Blog

Ginger and Echinacea Tea

by

Echinacea Budding
…Thy Medicine

Soothing a Sore Throat or just wanting a warm healthful beverage on a cold winter day…

Echinacea Full Bloom

Ginger and Echinacea Tea

  • Hot water to fill your cup(s)
  • 1 teaspoon echinacea flowers or prepared roots
  • 1 teaspoon ginger root, finely chopped
  • 1 teaspoon honey
  • a few drops of Lemon juice, (optional)

Start with a tea kettle of hot, not boiling water. Boiling water will destroy some of the beneficial properties in your herbal blend as well as in your honey.

Prepare your herbal blend and place it in an infuser or tea steeper. If you don’t have a special infuser or steeper, you can use cheesecloth, cotton fabric wrapped and tied with a natural string. Or you can use a small kitchen strainer. I like using the all-natural materials for the pure quality of the flavors. Place your infuser into the cup and pour the hot water over the herbs. Let it “steep” for several minutes. You can stir in the honey at any time. The longer you steep your tea, the stronger the flavor will become. Note: with some herbal blends, less is more, depending on your own tastes.

Mix and match and add additional goodness from various other optional ingredients, like lemon juice, other fruit juices, etc.

At my home, I almost always have a tea kettle with warm to hot water on the stove at all times, in the winter. I never know when the urge is going to strike for a refreshing and uplifting cup of tea, especially on a cold winter day. Plus it adds moisture into the otherwise dry atmosphere from the home heating sources.

Enjoy!

Mouse Nest in Hives

by

I had recently spent some time talking with and going over some of the negatives of beekeeping with a future beekeeper. I’m an honest soul, so I let people truthfully know that it’s not always about honey and sweetness. If you’ve been a beekeeper, you know exactly what I mean when I say that there is nothing more sticky than propolis on your kitchen floor, on your gloves, or in your hair. You know what it means to pray for the rain to stop so a decent nectar flow can finally begin. You also know that ants can find any spilled drips of honey. You know that you should do a split, but before you know it, your best hive swarms and lands too high up in a tree for you to be able to capture them. You know that wearing a full suit while doing any apiary work in the summer heat, can get pretty miserable. You also, unfortunately know how devastating and discouraging it is to lose hives in the wintertime.

There’s a lot to beekeeping that isn’t always taught in beginning beekeeper’s classes. For “new-bees”, aka “new-beeks”, you should always be willing to learn, because you will, whether you want to or not. (Most new-bees we’ve met are usually receptive to learning and are just as inquisitive as we were when we first stepped into this amazing venture).

Pests are a real obstacle, and can include quite a number of species. Hive beetles, varroa mites, ants, and yes mice! Here is a photo of the remainder of a mouse nest that we pulled out from the bottom of a hive this spring. She obviously tried to over winter and rear her young inside the warmth of the hive. We have found dead mice completely mummified with propolis before and other times, just a skeleton.

Above this mouse nest were 2 frames that the bees didn’t draw any wax out or use at all. They hate mice as much as we do. After cleaning it out, we replaced the old frames with fresh new frames and we could tell almost immediately that they were happier.

Honey bees are super smart. They will chase pests into corners, sting them, carry them out and dispose of them and guard their hives with their lives against them. We, as beekeepers, work very hard to help protect the hives and offer as much assistance as we are capable to make certain that our honey bees stay healthy, happy, and strong.

No Raw Honey for Infants

by

We get asked quite often, why babies under the age of one year are not suppose to eat raw honey, so I’d like to include some important information on this subject.

First: Honey in it’s raw state is un-pasteurized and has not been dissolved of its all-natural properties. In most cases, these otherwise beneficial properties include vitamins, minerals, good carbs, and antioxidants. Not to mention it is anti-bacterial, anti-microbial, anti-fungal, and the list goes on. As we grow and develop, our bodies become more resilient or immune to certain invaders that have the potential to harm us. Infants, especially under the age of one year, do not have the ability in their digestive tracts to combat any of the hazards found in raw foods. Clostridium botulinum (C. botulinum) spores are what is found in honey.

Second: Please always do your own research on any matters pertaining to yours or your family’s health. Let your research involve your children so that they can learn as well. Make being healthy, fun!

Here are a few links for you to check out…

Mayo Clinic

Healthline

KidsHealth

Honey Harvests

by

  • Red Pollen
  • Spring Forager on Wild Cherry
  • Honey Frame

Beekeeping is about 98% fulfilling and 2%… well… not-so-much.

2% are those 100 degree days when it’s your ONLY day off and you have to inspect or harvest because it may be another week or a month until you have another chance. Soak a bandana for your neck & have all your tools ready before suiting up. Have plenty of drinking water nearby and like most things in life, once you get started and you find that because you’re amongst your beloved honey bees, it’s really not so bad.

Tim & I have developed a system that works well for us. He usually pulls the frames and brushes off most of the bees. I take the frame and finish clearing the bees and then put the frames into an empty super and cover it with a cloth. The empty super is on the back of the truck so the height is comfortable for me. Once that super is full, I can push it back & start filling another, stacking the boxes as needed. We do all this methodically until we’ve gone through each hive. Once we’ve closed the hives back up, we can drive the truck to the extracting room where they can sit until we are ready to extract.

TIP: Always check your partner’s back for any stowaway bees before entering the house!

TOOLS: The tools we use for extracting are pretty simple… maybe even primitive. 1. A large tote with a thin board attached and across the top edge with a screw facing up driven through the center of it. The screw is for resting a honey frame on while removing the wax capping. 2. A very long thin knife for skimming off the wax. An uncapping scratcher, (this can be a fork). 3. Empty bee boxes (with an inverted lid underneath to catch drips), to put the extracted frames back into.4. The extractor; ours is a hand crank, two-frame extractor that our generous kids gave to us for Christmas. Prior to that, we borrowed our local club extractor and prior to that was a home-made bucket extractor that required an electric drill to spin. 5. Lots of clean lint-free dish cloths, and washing water. 5. Rubber gloves. 6. A strainer. 7. Empty food grade buckets with lids. 8. A refractometer to measure the moisture content in the honey. You want it to read below 18% so there’s no potential for fermentation.

Once the honey has been extracted from the super frames, we take those frames away from any high foot-traffic areas and leave them for the bees to clean. They will clean every drop of honey from the frames as well as from the extractor or anything else that may have gotten sticky honey on. This makes the bees very happy for a few days.

We usually strain the majority of wax chunks and debris before letting the honey rest and settle before we bottle it. We call it lightly filtered as it may still have bee debris, wax and pollen. It’s certainly All-Natural and that is what our customers expect.

Last, but not least (for now), I save a sample bottle each time we extract and through the years have a collection of all the varieties that our Beeautiful Friends Hill Apiary Honey Bees have produced! The bottles are SO pretty!

What is a Honey Bee Swarm?

by

A honey bee swarm is both a noun and a verb.

A swarm of honey bees is a large group or mass, clumped together outside of a hive.

When honey bees swarm, they are moving from one location to another.

So when a queen decides that it’s time to split her colony into two separate colonies because she either wants to expand her lineage or possibly because the hive is becoming just too crowded, she will communicate her intent to her workers. Naturally, some of the workers secrete a rich substance called royal jelly to place into several cells. This royal jelly is a highly nutritious cream and they know when and how to produce the perfect amount to insure that a select amount of eggs needed, will hatch into healthy larvae and pupae worthy of becoming the colony’s new queen. Once these queen cells are developing and capped, arrangements have already begun for a swarm journey.

Usually about 3 days before the new queen is due to hatch, the queen and about half of the honey bees will begin “humming” and gathering out in front of the existing hive. They will begin flying in large circles. Eventually flying up and away from the hive, they are swarming. Usually they will land fairly close, in a tree or on a fence post or on whatever object they choose. This spot just becomes their resting place. While the queen and most of the bees are resting, she stays deep within the mass of honey bees to keep warm and protected. A handful of scout bees will venture out to look for a potential new hive location and then fly back to the swarm to communicate where that location is. Once a consensus is made that the new hive location will become the new home the resting period will end and the swarm will move to the new location and they will begin building their new colony.

Please do not harm these swarms.

There are plenty of Beekeepers who will safely remove honey bee swarms from your property. Most states and counties have Beekeepers nearby who can be contacted through local organizations, please do your best to contact someone that will relocate them to a safe location. Honey bees are some of the most prolific pollinators on earth. We depend immensely on all pollinators for the foods we eat and they deserve protection and care.

For swarms in the Quincy, Illinois and surrounding areas you may call:

Friends Hill Apiary at 217/257+2704 or 217/257+5061