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Iowa Honey Producers Association |
The Buzz Newsletter September 2011 |
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THE BEEYARD REPORTI have a lot to talk about but not much time to do it. This is going to come off the top of my head. I hope it is coherent. Our crop is decent but not what I had hoped. I thought we had a shot at 100 barrels but our yards to the south made only about 30#. Having seven yards like that really shoots down the average. Our first three barrels were 20% moisture. I broke the first high moisture barrel up in to several other barrels and got the moisture content down. I was too late for the other two. They had already started to ferment. I tried putting 4" or 5" of the fermented honey into other barrels but the taste was still off even with that small amount. After the first 15 barrels, the moisture content got down into the reasonable area. We are on barrel 58 at this writing. We did produce a record amount of comb honey. It will be somewhere north of 3000 squares. I had agreed to buy a load of honey from Roger Bailey but he called and said his first five loads had gone out at 20%. I can't handle honey that wet. I need a different provider.
I realized recently that I am in a state of transition. I am hiring people to do the work I used to do. I am a very poor delegator. My first thought is always that I will do it myself. The transition will be a work in progress. Larry was tied up for a couple of weeks so I got two Vande Krol brothers from Lynnville to help with extracting. They were great. I think they can run the system better than I can. For sure, they got better blocks of wax. The energy of youth may have had something to do with this. They kept everything current so we have not had any hive beetle trouble. The only glich was one day when both extractors broke down. They are back in college now so it is time for another adjustment. So far, our mite load has been very low--somewhere in the two to three percent area. Our loads are usually much higher than that by this time of year. Bear in mind, however, that the load can jump dramatically in the fall because up to 90% of the mites can be in the brood. . It is usually not that bad but I have seen it happen. Be vigilant!!!!! Alex set up a test yard with three different mite treatments. I was hopeful that MiteAway Quik Strips were going to be a good thing. I had talked to Dale Fields about them a couple of times. He had trouble with them. Alex put out Quick Strips on six colonies, Hopguard on six and Apiguard on six. All the colonies had screened bottoms and sticky boards. Daytime highs were in the low to mid 80's and night time lows near 60. We went back after 48 hours to pull the sticky boards. The mite count on the sticky boards was similar for all three treatments--150 to 200 mites per board. Bear in mind that these were colonies where 3% was the highest mite load in the yard. The colonies with Api and Hopguard treatments were suffering no ill effects. The MQS colonies were a different story. There was a lot of damage to the capped brood. The caps had a yellow look to them where they had been burned by the acid. Even in places where the caps looked okay, there were a lot of bees that never emerged. The caps were eaten off but the bees were still in the cells. I have over $1000 invested in QuikStrips but I think it would be suicide to use them. They are too potent. Stay on top of things. It is a critical time of year. Submitted by Phil Ebert
HONEY, CORN, WHEAT BREADPrinted from COOKS.COM 4 cups stone ground whole wheat We use a Kitchen-Aid mixer set on 2. Bake at 375 for approximately 28 minutes or until golden brown.
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