Bees!

It's been a while since I've wrote about our bees, mostly because we've just been letting them bee their busy self. Since strawberries are winding down (sad face) and raspberries aren't too high maintenance yet, it was high time we checked in on them.

A few weeks ago, James noticed one of our hives in need of more space.

(This is noticeable because the bees don't fit inside of the nuc, so they huddle on the outside of it at night)

Like so:

As a good bee-keeper would, James gave them more space by giving them another nuc. Unfortunately, he didn't have enough frames to fill it, just three to be exact. So...as good normal bees would, they built their own comb to fill with honey.

Like So:

Now, you'd probably think this is a good thing, but as we found out, it's not that convenient to harvest. We were hoping and planning to just take the nuc off and replace it with another one with frame. But...nothing could bee that easy, could it?

James lifted the box like so:

And we discovered that the comb was not going to be lifted with the nuc, rather stay right where it was.

It does look neat though, does it?:
We even had a visitor join us for this bee-experience, see?:

It's Mandee

It's been an interesting bee-experience, and of course we harvested some honey out of it all! We tried selling a quarter of a pound of it at the farmers market on Monday, but since we only had one container, it didn't quite fit in and mostly got overlooked. Soon enough ,we'll have more to put on the table for sale and that will hopefully draw some attention to it!

Now...I was once asked, by my curious mom, about honeycomb and why it's purchase. As long I am on the bee subject I figure I'll take the time to answer it here, since maybe the rest of you are curious as well.

Honeycomb consists of the bee-made wax and the honey.

Looks like so: This is about 1/4 of a pound
Sells for roughly $2.25

With this, one who is purchasing it, might just eat the whole works. Wax and Honey both, because it is consumable and digestible (well for the most part - it IS safe to eat for the amount of wax that is consumed). James even likes to make HoneyComb Sandwiches, I for one don't like to swallow the wax. The texture is a bit much for my liking.

One might also just smash/squeeze the honey out of the comb to do whatever they like with. Bake, Drizzle on cereal or in their tea. One might also put it in their oatmeal or on toast. Whatever anyone would do with honey, one could do by separating it from the comb.

Now say one wouldn't want eat the wax, they could chew out the honey and spit out the wax. This is what I prefer to do. I do not throw out the wax, however, as one might think. Instead, I intend to make candles with it, once I have accumulated enough to do so. Maybe I will have a post about candle making someday, who knows?! : )

I hope this answers your question, mom, and anyone else who was curious about this whole honeycomb business.

Numbers 4 The Day

6 - number of pints of raspberries I picked this morning (that includes Red and Black raspberries)

25 - number of pints that were picked by everyone (Mandee, Jacob, James, Ann Elyse, and myself)

25 - number of pints sold today

3.5 - number of pieces of pizza I ate

0 - number of articles of clothing on my floor

1 - number of times my phone rang (from text or call)

0 - number of quarts of strawberries I picked today

21 - number of quarts picked by Edward

21 - number of quarts of strawberries sold today

50 - number of miles I road in a car today

1 - number of VENTI Carmel Frappuccinos I thoroughly enjoyed today!

67 - number of record customer sold to, besides farmers markets

3 - number of people I paid for working today (Becki, Mandee, and Jacob)

78 - number of degrees it was today

3 - number of restaurants we've sold to (The Crystal, Shorty's, and Savory Cafe)

1 - number of containers of Honey Comb that we tried to sell

...and..

2,142 - number of recorded strawberries sold! (approximately...one can never be too sure)

1 - number of pictures taken of me today:

Me at the farmers market
(at the Cornell Extension Office)
...after all 21 quarts of strawberries were sold.
Then what's for sale, you ask?
Maple Syrup
Red Raspberries
Black Raspberries
Honey Comb
Rhubarb