Bee wax and nectar

If life gives you bees then collect the honey !

These is a darker comb with some capped honey and some nectar

We pressed the comb and collected nectar and honey 

Then the reminder of the comb was mixed with water and heated

Here you can see the wax floating on top of the mixture 

Here is the harden wax that was later melted and mixed with orange oil and olive oil to make a lip balm

Bees at Ladeau Road

The package has arrived. The queen, the workers and the drones are here. They came from Georgia and we think they are italians.

They came in a package with sugar water and with a queen trapped in a little box with candy at one end and a cork/string at the other end.  The cork by the candy, was removed before setting the queen inside the hive and fter setting all the bees inside the hive..

The queen box is placed on one of the bars of the hive and the rest of the bars are placed to close the hive.  The bees have access to the sugar water thru a separator that has a hole to another compartment inside the hive.

The holes for the entrance and exit of the bees are located in the bar hive so that they are facing south.

Now, we just have to wait and have our bees get settled in their new home

Mother's day projects and bee hive

These are the last few days before The Shires Marathon in Bennington, VT.  I feel ready and I am excited that I finally trained for it. I hope to finish it between 4 and 5 hours. In the past weeks, I have seen a bat during one of my runs and a broad-wing hawk carrying some prey (I think it was a frog) in the wetland near the road we live on the other day. 

This past weekend was really exciting, since Saturday was Green Up Day and Sunday was Mother's Day. Also, Saturday was the first outdoor farmers market of the season and we missed it because I decided to volunteer us for Green Up in Springfield. A small student group showed up to clean around the school.  We picked bicycle tires, diapers, bottles, cigarette butts, candy and food wrappers and even shows and clothes.  Later in the morning, we had a picnic.  I brought almond butter and apple cider jelly for sandwiches.  Some kids tried it and liked the combination. A student brought a huge fruit salad! Overall, it was nice to share time with the students outside of the classroom setting.

On Sunday, Lindo's parents came up to visit and help us around our house. The various projects included gardening and woodshed work. The boys took care of the woodshed by cleaning all the old bark and mulch that was and has been at the bottom of the wood pile for years.  They also organized and split more wood for kindling and stacked wood and logs from the yard.  It was a huge project and now the space looks neat and free of wood.

The girls set out to work on transplanting pansies from various locations around the garden to a permanent bed by the front of the house.  They are blooming and some even started out from seed, which is really exciting because I hope to always have pansies in spring.  Also, the strawberry bed by the rock wall got was weeded! The plants are growing very nicely and hope to see flowers on them soon.  The wild strawberry crop promises to be huge this year.  The plants are growing everywhere and when they are done producing I will just tilled them over in the beds and grow other crops there.

While in the yard, I noticed that phoebes are nesting underneath the alcove in our cabin. We hope this time they don't have any trouble raising their young.  Last year they attempted to nest 3 times in different places around our cabin with no luck. 

Lindo has started to build a Top Bar Hive design used in Kenya. The design is simple and the bees do all the work.