Honey – Meredith May

Beekeepers, Beekeeping, Bees, Honey, The Honey Bus

The Ferrari of Honey Spinners

January 31, 2019by Meredith A. May3 Comments

lega

This new machine makes my heart go pitter-pat. It’s the Italian-made Lega 28-frame radial extractor – so intelligently designed, the only honey spinner I could find that GOES IN REVERSE! The motor is underneath, so it doesn’t get sticky with honey, and the basin is convex, so it pours down through a down-spout that is actually tilted downward. I ordered it through blueskybeesupply.com

My beekeeper friends MaryEllen and Aaron came over to give it a test whirl.

uncapping

putinspinner

The honey was a bit crystalized from cold weather, so using our collective beekeeper ingenuity, we employed a chick incubator, a heating pad, and a hair dryer to warm the honeycomb overnight before we got started. Plus some blankets and Carhartt jackets for insulation. Aaron was given the honor of the first spin:

The motor was so quiet, a nice purr. We extracted two 5-gallon buckets of winter honey from our gardens in San Francisco. It was a deep brown color, with notes of toffee and marshmallow.

A 28-frame spinner is a bit big for my needs, but more room means my beekeeper friends will extract with me. We got it all done in just two spins, leaving plenty of time to drink espresso.

beehives, Beekeepers, Beekeeping, Bees, Honey, honeybee, Queen Bee, The Honey Bus

Ever Seen A Queen Lay An Egg?

September 24, 2018September 24, 2018by Meredith A. May2 Comments

The nursery is filling up in my backyard hive, thanks to this gal. Look for the bit of red paint on her back to identify the Queen Bee. Watch her deposit eggs into honeycomb cells … and the worker bees wriggle with joy.

Author, Beekeeping, Bees, Book, Environment, Gardening, Honey, honeybee, The Honey Bus

Honeybee Boogie

September 16, 2018September 16, 2018by Meredith A. MayLeave a Comment

Opened my hives today and there was a huge dance party going on. Now that Fogust is behind us and the sun finally reappeared in San Francisco, the bees are in ecstasy. I caught one bee with yellow pollen on her back legs, dancing to alert her hive mates to the source of her bounty:

Apiculture, beehives, Beekeepers, Beekeeping, Bees, Environment, Gardening, Honey, honeybee, Queen Bee

Pimp My Apiary

June 1, 2017by Meredith A. MayLeave a Comment

I have beekeeper envy of my friend Earl’s bee yard in Port Costa. He has thirty-plus hives of happy, gentle bees that have acres and acres of unmolested meadows to draw from.

Over Memorial Day Weekend, my other beekeeper pal Aaron and I helped Earl inspect his hives. First Earl schooled us on the proper way to light a smoker. Cedar slices + broken bits of tree branch + balls of green grass = a smoker that goes for an hour or more.

Then we checked his hives to make sure the bee colonies are thriving. We looked for eggs and a queen. Earl is so badass he doesn’t wear any protection.

During a snack break in his “bee trailer” (WANT), he showed us the pollen he’s collecting from just one hive.

There were yellow, purple, grey, red and orange balls of pollen, all from the different plants growing in the area.

Curious, we decided to separate and taste the different colors to see if we could tell which plants produced the pollen.

Here are our tasting notes:

RED – earthy, with a sour, bitter bite. Most likely culprit: Buckeye

YELLOW – grassy, tastes like horse saddle. Plant guess: Mustard

PURPLE – floral, sweetpea. Plant guess: Thistle

At the end of the day, Earl gave Aaron and me a split colony to take back to our garden in San Francisco. We call them “Earl’s Bees” and they are adjusting well to their urban neighbors. (hive on right)

Apiculture, beehives, Beekeepers, Beekeeping, Bees, Honey, honeybee

Sugar Shake

January 31, 2017January 31, 2017by Meredith A. MayLeave a Comment

Over winter, I leave the hive alone. The colony is smaller, the queen slows her egg-laying, and I don’t want to open the hive and break the propolis seals that help keep the hive warm in the chilly season. It’s always scary to open it back up again once the sun returns – sometimes the hive is empty, and it feels like losing the family dog.

When Aaron Yu and I opened our hive in San Francisco’s Connecticut Friendship Garden, we were overjoyed.

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Not only did we spot the queen right away, we found eggs, young larvae, pollen, honey stores and even drones. All indicators that this is going to be a banner year for honey – especially given the long California rains that will produce wildflowers with tons of nectar.

queen2017

Next we checked for mites, using the powdered sugar shake method. We put a cup of bees in a jar, tossed them gently in powdered sugar, and then saw how many mites fell off. Four. That’s an incredibly low number, indicating our hive is healthy and unlikely to succumb to mites. (But we need to check regularly because mite loads can turn in a day)

The bees are irritated, but not injured, by being doused with powdered sugar. The sugar makes the mites lose their sucker feet grip on the bees and slide off. We put the powdered bees back in the hive, and they madly beat their wings to get clean. In this slo-mo video, you can see the sugar flying.

Category: Honey