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Iowa Honey Producers Association |
The Buzz Newsletter January 2007 |
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The Beeyard Report It’s over. The bees are in bed for the winter. I finished up on Nov 27th. Some are light. Some have too many mites. Some have both problems. We have done everything we can do. The warm days in November were a gift. We finally got the bees to take syrup. It’s hard to say what we will have alive in the spring. Two years ago, even the ones I left for dead came through the winter. Last year we lost 15% to 20% but the ones we had left all had bees boiling out of them. We were able to make increase and still had bees to sell. We are going into winter this year with slightly more colonies but losses are going to be much higher. I don’t think I have ever looked at colonies at the end of November before. When it gets this late, it’s normally cold. We just wrap them up and hope we aren’t wrapping a lot of dead ones. Every colony I took a frame out of had brood. Some of the big colonies had a full frame. Even the lame little colonies with two or three frames of bees had a patch of brood. Bees were bringing in something that looked like pollen all through November. Most of it was a light yellow with a gray cast but there was also some orange stuff. I saw some gardens in Montezuma that still had broccoli blooming in November. One of the gardeners told me he had seen bees on it. I am having a hard time believing what I saw was actually pollen. I’m wondering if it came out of a feed bunk or somewhere they were grinding grain. Has anybody else seen this? We are taking somewhere around 525 colonies into winter. I had thought that we had around 750 at the end of May. Then I found out we had counted three yards twice. We were closer to 675. That means we averaged about 120#/colony. I picked up around 70 colonies in the fall that had crashed from mites. The others we lost to queen failure. The loss would be greater but we made up part of it with the bees from our mating yard. That yard started out with four breeder colonies and 25 mating nucs with a frame of bees in each of them. By the time we were done consolidating it at the end of the year, we had 18 doubles, four singles and 18 nucs. I think the nucs will probably go as a sacrifice to the gods of winter. The last set of queens came way too late. The age distribution of the bees on the nucs wasn’t right. I can allow myself to be tired now. As I was coming home from finishing the last yard, it started to rain. It seemed like a symbolic finish. It felt really good. From the middle of December to the middle of January, I have some down time. All I have to do is take care of is my delivery route and think about bringing order to the chaos that develops around the place during the year . After the first of the year, we will start to make some financial projections and plan for the new season. HAPPY HOLIDAYS!!!!!
Surprise Cupcakes 1 Package chocolate (or any flavor) cake
mix Prepare cake mix according to directions on the package. Fill paper-lined cup cake pans with cake batter—1/2 full. Beat together cream cheese honey and egg. Stir in chocolate chips. Drop a teaspoon full of mixture on top of each cupcake. Sprinkle with chopped nuts. Bake at 350o for 20-25 minutes. Recipe from Donna Brahms Salted Nut Roll Bars 1 Yellow cake mix Mix cake mix, egg and 1/3 cup butter together. Pat into a greased 9x13 inch pan. Bake at 350o for 15 minutes. Top with marshmallows; bake until puffy and lightly browned, 5-10 minutes. Melt honey, butter and chips in microwave. Stir together cereal, peanuts and melted mixture. Evenly spoon over the marshmallow layer. When cool, cut into bars. Recipe from Donna Brahms
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