Category Archives: How-To

Getting Started in Beekeeping, Part II

This week’s blog was written by Dave Lenweaver. It’s the second part to last week’s blog, Why Now is the Perfect Time to Start Beekeeping.

How expensive is beekeeping?

You can get your start in beekeeping with equipment for about $200-$250, the bees will be another $120-$150 depending on your area and if you buy nucs or packages.

New beekeepers should start out as early in the spring as one can obtain bees. This gives the bees a chance to build up and be ready for nectar and pollen season, at least in the norther parts of the country. Southern parts of the country have longer nectar and pollen seasons and you may be able to start later.

If the colonies are weak going into winter you stand a good chance of losing them to cold or starvation. Hive loss can be as great as 60% of an apiary without the challenge of a weak colony so be prepared with good strong bees.

In addition, you will want to have at least two additional supers per colony ready to add when the nectar is flowing or the bees want to swarm. Beekeeping is no fun when you are scrambling to find equipment to add to a packed colony.

None of these costs include an extractor, which can cost as little as $150 or as much as $1,000 and up.

Is beekeeping time consuming?

Yes and no. For the most part you will install your bees and walk away with occasional checks on the colony for pests and overall health of the colony. you should check your bees every week to two weeks, which as you become more experienced will take as little as 10 minutes per hive to as long as 30 minutes if you are nosy. As you progress you’ll soon realize that the less you poke about the better off the bees are.

When your bees have made enough honey for you to harvest your time investment will increase. Count on at least an afternoon if you have only one colony, longer if you have more.

You’ll also find you are thinking about the bees way more than you would have imagined.

Wrap up

With beekeeping it’s a guarantee you will learn patience. When you are checking the hives you need to move deliberately, slowly, and with purpose. The bees can sense when you are pushing it. You’ll also learn more about the natural world around you such as when trees blossom and their names and characteristics as well. Through beekeeping your interest in other insects will be heightened as you see other bugs in the garden or apiary.

You’ll come to better appreciate the seasons as well. You’ll long for the cherries to blossom and know that the apples, dandelions, and locust trees are coming into bloom soon.

As you can see there are many variables to beekeeping. It can be an exciting hobby while being frustrating at the same time. You’ll jump for joy when you see the queen or evidence she is laying eggs and experience sadness when the colony you nursed through summer dies in the winter. This is the natural world and it isn’t always what we want.

Beekeeping is not difficult, nor is it easy. Especially when things start to go wrong. However, it can be a great teaching experience for children and adults helping to bring families closer together.

Recommendations

Read, read, read, and read. When you are tired of reading watch Youtube beekeeper videos. One needs to be as fully informed as possible going into this hobby. We waited six years before starting our apiary so we would be positive we knew what to expect.

Start with two colonies. Nucs from a local supplier would be my preference. They are accustomed to your local climate and have a better chance of surviving cold or inclement weather. Package bees from Florida or California would have a more difficult time making it through a harsh winter. Two colonies gives you something to compare against as well. If one is strong and one is weak find out why.

Have extra equipment on hand. When the nectar starts flowing or the bees look eager to swarm is no time to go online and order new supers and frames. Have them ready.

Learn to use your judgement and intuition with the bees. You can learn from others’ good ideas and from things that seem real dumb as well. Let someone else do the dumb thing while your bees stay safe and you learn from it. Be aware.

Enjoy the bees. Relax. Grab your tea or coffee, take a chair out to the apiary and watch the bees as they go about their daily activity. Your presence is of no concern to them as you sit to watch them come and go. The big lesson from observation is the bees are fine without our intervention. We are there to assist them when needed and learn of the natural world around them when not. Be silent and enjoy their humming, sniff the air to smell the blossoms and the odor of the hive. Look at the ground to see what new insect you find.

Nature is an amazing teacher and beekeeping can be a portal to a better understanding of the world around us. Enjoy.

Why now is the perfect time to start beekeeping

This week’s blog is a guest blog written by Dave Lenweaver from Clean Slate Farm. Grab a cold drink before you visit Dave and Joanne’s website. There’s so much interesting information there you’ll want to stay a while.

Why now is the perfect time to start beekeeping

beekeeping, honey beeOkay, that’s a little misleading but very good advice. With all the news about honey bees dying and Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) it seems everyone wants to start beekeeping. But before you jump in here’s some advice from a second year beekeeper.

Take your time and learn as much as you can before getting bees. Being surrounded by thousands of apparently angry, buzzing bees while checking the hive is not the time you want to learn the basics.

beekeeping, honey beeStart with reading everything you can get your hands on about beekeeping. Some good books to begin with are:

Beekeeping for Dummies, The Backyard Beekeeper by Kim Flottum, The Practical Beekeeper by Michael Bush, and my favorite, Natural Beekeeping by Ross Conrad.

Beekeeping is a hobby of constant learning, and the most important thing you will learn is patience. Which is why you should start reading at least a year in advance of beginning your journey into beekeeping. Any of the above books will give you ample advice and you’ll will find much of it consistent.

There are also many excellent Facebook and Google+ groups dedicated to beekeeping. The moderators of these groups, and many of the participants, are knowledgeable and willing to offer advice on starting up your apiary. Don’t be afraid to ask questions and expect many different opinions. As is so often said in beekeeping circles, ask ten beekeepers a question and you’ll get twenty opinions.

Youtube is an excellent resource as well. You will see many interesting, insightful, and strange practices. Watching Youtube videos is one of the best ways to see what beekeeping is all about and how it is done. Do a search for any aspect of beekeeping and you’ll be informed on how to perform that task. You’ll also find many amusing videos of what not to do.

What you’ll learn from all this reading

All of this information may seem confusing but it’s helping you determine what kind of beekeeper you want to be and will be. In this period of time you’ll learn what makes sense to you and more importantly, what doesn’t.

However, there are some basics no one can dispute. You need at least one beehive and some bees to put in it. A hive is the equipment which houses the bees, a colony is the bees that inhabit the hive. A hive consists of the following:

  •  bottom board
  •  brood chamber
  •  honey super
  •  inner cover
  •  telescoping outer cover

In addition you’ll need:

  • a bee jacket or suit
  • bee gloves, which you may stop using at some time
  • hive tool
  • smoker

Let’s discuss the hive parts in more detail, but not too much. That’s why you’re going to be reading a lot!

The bottom board comes in two configurations; solid and screened. Most hobbyist beekeepers use screened bottom boards for two reasons. The first is for pest management of the varroa destructor mite. A screened board allows you to see any mites which have fallen off the bees and land on a panel below the board. If you see a lot of mites on the panel it may indicate treatment is necessary. This type of board also allows for ventilation of the hive.

The brood chamber and the honey super are the same thing. A wooden box, or body, full of wax foundation where the bees live and make more bees. What it’s called depends on what is happening inside. If the queen is inside laying eggs, it’s the brood chamber; if the bees are building comb and filling it with nectar its the honey super.

These boxes come in three different depths; deep (9 9/16” tall), medium (6 5/8”), and shallow (5 3/4” tall). Some beekeepers use all deep bodies, some all medium bodies, and some use a combination of all sizes. Northern beekeepers may use all deeps to assist in overwintering the colonies. Some beekeepers use all mediums due to weight. A medium body full of honey weighs less and is easier on the back. Then again some beekeepers use deeps for brood and mediums or shallows for honey.

As if to confuse the issue further, bodies can accommodate 10 frames or 8 frames. The choice is up to the beekeeper. Again, this is primarily a weight consideration. A 10 frame deep can weigh 90 pounds when full while a 10 frame medium will weigh in at about 60 pounds.

An inner cover is placed on top of the last super. It may seem like an extraneous piece of equipment but it does serve a purpose. Bees like to seal off cracks and crevices with propolis, a sticky, gummy substance. They do this to seal out light and drafts. Without an inner cover the bees would seal the telescoping outer cover. Propolis is indeed sticky and If the outer cover were to be sealed to the hive it would be difficult at best to remove it without disturbing the bees.

Should I get a nuc or a package of bees?

This is also a subject that causes a lot of debate in beekeeping circles. A nuc, short for nucleus hive and pronounced nuke, is a box of bees with 5 frames of comb, a mated queen, brood in chambers, with workers and foragers all ready to go.

A package of bees contains about 10,000 bees in a screened in box with no frames of comb ready for the bees to begin collection of pollen and nectar.

With nuc your bees are off to a head start and won’t be wasting time getting up to speed by having to build comb. A package of bees has to start from scratch and it will take from two to three weeks for them to build comb for the queen to lay eggs and for workers to begin foraging.

Nucs are generally local bees of one breed or another while package bees can be ordered in different breeds. In the northern part of the country a nuc may be your better choice because of the head start they have on the nectar flow.

Russian, Carniolan, Italian, oh my!

You’ll soon learn that all bees are not created equal. There are Russian, Italian, Carniolan (car-nee-oh-lahn) and other breeds each with their own temperament and production characteristics. The choice is up to you as the beekeeper, mostly. Sometimes your choice is dictated by what is available. As you read you’ll learn more about each breed to help you make your decision.

Sprouting Wheat Berries

Sprouting Wheat Berries

Thanks to Ida Walker from The Enabling Cook for guest blogging with us this week! Ida is sprouting wheat berries and leads us through the process, step by step.

For many of us who bake our own breads, the next logical step is to grind our wheat into flour. And once we start grinding our own, it’s on to sprouting. Many of us sprout pea shoots, mung beans, radish greens and the like, but we may not have thought about sprouting wheat berries for our flour. Though I have to confess my motivation for trying many things do not revolve around health benefits. But if I can get some benefits, why not? Nutrients, like vitamin C, are added when wheat berries are sprouted. Some people who have difficulty with wheat find products made with sprouted grains more tolerable. According to some experts, whole wheat or partial whole wheat bread is fluffier when made with sprouted grains than all regular, whole wheat flour.

whole wheat berries, sprouting wheat berries

Turkey Hard Red Winter wheat berries in their overnight soak

sprouting wheat berries

You’ll want hard red or white wheat for bread.

sprouter, sprouting wheat berries

Our four tray sprouter is economical and handy.

Rinse the berries well, and put them in your sprouting container of choice. No metal, please. You can buy special equipment called sprouters. Since I’m a canner, I always have wide-mouth jars on hand. So I bought a sprouting lid that fits most such jars. You don’t need a special lid, though. You can always cover the opening with a clean piece of nylon stocking or cheesecloth. Add the jar ring, and you’re set. If you don’t have canning jars, you can put the seeds in a colander set in a bowl. Be sure to cover it with a clean towel or cheesecloth. sprouting wheat berries

Once you have your container, add the wheat berries. Make sure to leave space for expansion. I filled the quart jar about 1/3 of the way. Then cover with filtered or spring water. The next day, drain your berries and fill the jar with clean water, to the shoulders of the jar (if using). Because the water will be draining, you don’t need to use filtered water. Unless your tap water is suspect, it’ll do just fine. sprouting wheat berries

Drain the berries and rinse. If you’re using a colander, cover the berries and set over the bowl. If you’re using a jar, pour enough water into the jar to cover the berries by about 2 inches. Put on a lid and slosh (technical term) back and forth a couple of times. Set up the jar so it’s at an angle, which will let the water drain. I usually set mine in the sink, but since it was otherwise occupied, I put it in a large bowl. You’ll need to shake the jar a bit so more of the berries are exposed. Make sure they don’t block lid. Drain and refill 3 or 4 times each day; if you’re using a colander, you may need to do so more often. Your goal is to prevent the berries from drying out and to expose as much surface area as possible. sprouting wheat berries

sprouting, wheat berries

Sprouting complete

So when are they ready? They’re ready when the tails are still short, about 1/8 of an inch. If you’re using them for salads, etc., they can be longer. But if you’re planning on using the seeds for flour, keep them short. You’ll get more flour if you do not let the tails grow longer. How long does it take? It depends. This time it only took a couple days. In the winter, it takes longer, but then I have a really cold kitchen. sprouting wheat berries

If you’re going to use these sprouted berries for flour, the next step is drying. This can be done in a 150-degree oven or in a dehydrator. I used the latter at 95 degrees. It took about 2 hours at that temp, and I had the trays full of berries. sprouting wheat berries

sprouting, wheat berries, sprout flour

Sprouting wheat berries, then making flour!

Once the berries are dry, there are 2 options. You can put them in an airtight container and freeze them for later grinding. Or, if you’re like me and figure you’ve waited long enough, grind away! Use your grinding implement of choice. If you’re using an electric mill or blender, the berries will get heated in the process. Many, including me, put the berries in the freezer for a while before grinding.

How much flour will you get from your berries? The amount of flour your berries will provide depends on how finely you grind them. From 606 grams of berries, I got 600 grams of flour. Not a bad return! Store any newly milled flour in a bag or airtight container in the freezer. I use a vacuum sealer. sprouting wheat berries

This process was fun. Seriously. The hardest part was waiting for the seeds to sprout. It’s worth the wait, however, as I have organic sprouted flour for my bread.

Thank you again, Ida! Please be sure to visit Ida at The Enabling Cook. You’ll love her website, recipes and tips.

Hunting Small Game

Hunting Small Game

We’re going to talk about hunting small game this week. We asked followers on Facebook what they’d like to read and/or learn about a while back and hunting small game was one of the suggested topics. Hunting was a given decades ago. If homesteaders wanted meat on the table they hunted because they didn’t have livestock to move with them when they settled on their land.

Hunting small game can provide meat on the table and it’s a means of keeping the pest population in check. Pests can do a lot of damage to a garden. Eliminating a pest, minimizing damage and providing meat is a win-win-win situation. Have you ever considered woodchuck stew? It’s been said that they taste best when they’ve been eating your best vegetable plants.

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hunting small game, hunting game birds, game birds, upland game birds

Red squirrel

Small game is generally considered to be small mammals and birds such as:

  • Squirrel
  • Hare
  • Rabbit
  • Woodchuck
  • Prairie dog
  • Grouse (partridge)
  • Chukar
  • Quail
  • Pheasant
  • Woodcock
  • Dove

Laws vary between states. It’s important to become familiar with your state’s laws to keep yourself out of trouble, keep yourself and others safe, and for the benefit of the animals you’re hunting.

What weapons are you allowed to use? Most hunters use firearms for small mammals. A .22 caliber rifle is large enough to do the job. It’s a small, light weight rifle with little “kick” and fairly quiet. It’s suitable for everyone learning to hunt and young hunters. A .177 air rifle might do the job for small squirrels though it can be tricky. You absolutely must hit your target precisely otherwise you’ll only hurt the animal. Winter is hard time to use a small rifle like the .177. Even when the air pressure is high, the pellet might hit a non-lethal area of the body, bounce off and roll away.

There are exceptions but birds are hunted with shotguns as a general rule. The smallest shotgun we use for bird hunting is the .410. It has a short range and is useful for small birds like dove, partridge and woodcock. It’s a great starter shotgun but will probably be outgrown quickly.

Next up is the .20 gauge shotgun for small birds. For partridge and larger birds we use .12 and .10 gauge. Large birds such as turkey and goose require heavier loads and longer shells to bring the birds down humanely.

You might choose a shotgun for small game. If I’m partridge hunting with a .20 or .12 gauge and happen to have a good shot at a snowshoe hare I’ll take the shot. I wouldn’t hesitate to shoot a squirrel with a .410 as long as I weren’t too close to the squirrel. Place your shots well.

Tip  Read boxes just like you read a food label for ingredients. The box should tell you the gauge, length, FPS (feet per second, or how fast the shot travels), oz (ounce) shot, and shot on shotgun shell boxes.

Tip Bullet boxes for rifles are labeled similarly. Many manufacturers clearly label their boxes with the game the bullet is suited to. Study up. Start with .22 for hunting small game.

 

Homestead Planning – Will you want a garden?

Homestead Planning – Will you want a garden?

Gardening seems like a given on a homestead, but it isn’t. Not everyone likes to garden, or knows how to garden. None of us were born with everything we need to know about growing food. Don’t let that stop you!

If you’re starting from scratch I suggest you call your county’s Cooperative Extension and ask to speak to a Master Gardener. The local garden club and neighbors are also helpful. In the meantime, here are some things to think about when you’re considering a garden.

First things first. Be sure you are allowed to have a garden. As silly as that sounds, some home owners associations and subdivisions don’t allow vegetable gardening. Or, they might limit the garden to the back yard behind a fence. It’s considerate to ask a neighbor about their preferences to how close you garden to the shared property line. It’s possible that your town has a zoning law regarding how close you are allowed to be to the property line and sidewalk.

butternut squash, planning a garden, garden planning, gardening, homesteading

Butternut Squash

Is there room for a garden? You might be surprised at how little space it takes to grow a respectful amount of food. One tomato plant in a five gallon bucket may produce upwards of 20 pounds of tomatoes. That’s about $60 worth of tomatoes in exchange for a few dollars in the plant and soil. You can reuse the bucket from year to year. From container gardens to lining the sidewalk with vegetables to a full acre out back, you have options.

Are there large trees or buildings casting shade on the spot you’d have to use for a garden? The trees can probably be felled but moving a building probably won’t happen. You can use some shade to your advantage but there’s only so much you can do.

Is the garden spot convenient? We like to think we’ll be so excited about the garden that we’ll be there with bells on no matter where it is but let’s be honest – that’s not usually true. When it’s inconvenient we probably won’t make the time to walk the extra distance (let’s say a few hundred yards) to pull weeds for ten minutes. I don’t want to walk a few hundred yards for a cucumber.

How about water? Is it available? And convenient? You can run a hose just about anywhere if you have an outside faucet. The hose has to be moved out of the way to mow the lawn. It’s really not a big deal until it’s 90 degrees and you’ve had a long day.

Will you need to fence in the garden to keep out the pests? Deer and other large animals can do a lot of damage in a few minutes. Groundhogs and rabbits dig under fencing, deer jump over, squirrels squeeze through. If you’re going to need fencing I suggest having it ready to go sooner than later. You don’t want to lose your hard work to marauding bunnies over night.

Don’t be discouraged. Plan for the problem so it doesn’t become a problem! The taste of a warm, juicy, really ripe tomato from your garden makes it all worth it.

firewood

Homestead Planning – Cooking & Heat

Homestead Planning – Cooking & Heat

A young couple asked me the other day what we thought about in our homestead planning. I had to admit we hadn’t done enough homestead planning because we didn’t know what we were in for. It wasn’t long after we moved out here to the woods that an ice storm hit. We were fortunate to lose our power for only 12 hours while parts of the state were down for three weeks. We quickly learned that life is a lot easier when you have a way to cook a hot meal,  make coffee or heat water for tea and hot chocolate, and have water.

You’ll want to be able to stay warm. Electric heat is useless when the power goes out. We have a propane furnace (similar to natural gas) for backup if we’re away but it doesn’t work without electricity to start it. Our heat source is a wood stove. The power can go out all winter and we’ll still be warm.

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If you’re going to burn wood you’ll need a solid supply of firewood. As a general rule of thumb a well managed woodlot in the northeast will provide a cord of firewood per acre per year without over harvesting. That doesn’t mean you’ll cut one cord on each acre. Overall the amount will work out to that amount. If you don’t have a woodlot or don’t have time to put up your own wood you’ll need to secure it some other way. You might find deals on Craig’s List or local barter boards. Tree length wood in my area this year was $185 a cord in tree length. Wood that was cut and split and ready to stack was as high as $240 per cord. And advantage of wood stoves is their flat top. You can heat water and cook if necessary.

Starting a new homestead, firewood
Propane and natural gas heaters are popular. They are convenient and do a good job of heating a home if you an appropriate sized heater. Unlike firewood, they are clean. Pellet stoves provide the nice, warm, cozy heat of a wood fire without the mess and extra work. You might need a battery to run the blower on a pellet stove while the power is out.

We’re warm and have water now. A hot meal is a wonderful thing during a storm. One of our favorite meals during short outages is grilled cheese sandwiches cooked on the woodstove. If you need a good meal after shoveling snow, removing trees that have blown over or just plain want a good meal during a storm, you need to be able to cook properly. A propane or natural gas stove and oven will keep you well fed. Modern stoves and ovens usually light with an electric spark. You can light the burners with a match but the oven would have to be lit every time the temperature dropped. If you can’t or don’t want to do without an oven you should buy a stove with pilot lights, small flames that burn from the fuel source and ignite the oven and burners.

There are plenty of other things you need on a new homestead. These things will help you be less dependent on the grid and more comfortable when the lights go out. Losing our water was an eye opener and we spent the rest of the winter tightening up our homestead planning.