Curry Honey Mustard Wings

Years ago while attending Culinary School, I was given this recipe from a fellow student who had become a friend. This recipe can never be said to lack flavor. If you love honey mustard anything....and love curry, you are going to love this recipe. I use wings but you can also use drum sticks or thighs. Hope you enjoy them!

2 to3 pounds of chicken wings

1/4 cup of yellow mustard

3/4 cup of Riverside Apiary Honey (any honey will work. heheheh)

1 tsp salt

1 Tbsp curry (or you can use more if you like them hotter)

Preheat oven to 375

Baste wings and put on cookie sheet that's lined with foil. Bake 1 hour and baste every 15 minutes.

Save some of the sauce for dipping while eating.

Dandelions and Honey

While working with the bees this summer, I suddenly remembered  I was given a Golden Dandelion Jelly recipe years ago. I had good intentions at the time to make it, but like a lot of things...it never happened. This was going to be the year I finally make it.  I decided I would make it with some of our very own honey instead of sugar.
I could hardly wait to go home and pick the last of the dandelions and try a batch. I dug out my recipe box and after some time finally found the tattered old card. It required a quart of dandelion flowers. After picking them I sat down and researched if I could substitute honey for sugar in canning. From everything I read I could but it was recommended that I could replace about half the sugar with honey. So that's what I did.
Although a lot of work, it was well worth it. It has a beautiful golden color and the taste...well its quite incredible. When you first put it in your mouth, you can definitely taste the honey, then you can taste citrus and right at the end, a nice grassy note.
Below is the recipe.

Golden Dandelion Honey Jelly

Snip off the stems and green collars of the flowers. Rinse one quart of blossoms in cold water. Put one quart of water and the rinsed blossoms in a pot and boil for 3 minutes. Let cool. When cool, strain and press pedals with fingers to extract 3 cups of juice.

Add 2 tablespoon of lemon juice, and a box of pectin (1 3/4 oz).  Bring to boil in a jelly kettle. Add   2 3/4 cups of sugar and 2 3/4 cups of honey. Stir well and let boil for 3 minutes. Pour into sterilized jars and seal.

Although the bees that made the honey for this recipe are now gone, we can now enjoy the fruits of their labor all winter..

Winter Ramblings...part 1

I knew I couldn't go very long without finding something to chat about. Winter can last a while in Northern BC and that's a very long time to go without chatting about my bees.
Well since its official and winter has set in now, the bees are tucked inside their warm hives and only wander out briefly. So there is nothing much to report.
Below is a picture of what winter looks like this time of year here in the Robson Valley

Winter at the Motel

Fraser River

First snow in the bee yard

Next time, I will be sharing a recipe of mine, using Dandelions and Honey.

Its suppose to be winter

Well here it is November 9th and the past two days have been rather balmy. So balmy in fact, the bees decided it was nice enough to come outside during the afternoon. Yesterday was warmer than today but both days brought sunshine and warm temperatures.
I shot this little video to record the bees activity during this unusually warm days.

You can really tell we are still newbees, yesterday James found a bee sitting on his truck, it was later in the afternoon and it had started to cool down some, so he picked it up and carried it back to the bee yard. This morning we rescued one that fell in our little ditch full of water...we are a sappy couple when it comes to the bees.

I have decided that during the winter I will be posting recipes, using our honey and maybe even talk about bee books I have been checking out.

Until then...cheers

Its out of my hands now.

October 14th
We finally finished putting the bees to bed for the winter. Its out of my hands now. You kinda feel helpless. You do all you can do to help them survive the winter but in the end its out of your hands.
You can only hope the moisture level doesn't get too high, or the winter isn't tooo long that they run out of food or the mites you treated for, all died.

Below is the wrappings we did on the outside of the hives. It certainly wont win any award for the best curb appeal, but it works.     This year since we had 4 hives, I decided to wrap two hives together.

The Styrofoam is wrapped around the hives and tuck taped together, then this year I put a strap around the whole thing, just to hold it together.
The very last thing I did was drill a hole thru the insulation and the top box. This hole is in the attic box, it serves as a top vent to help get rid of excess moisture. Plus its also handy as I discovered last year....during the winter I could stick my finger in the hole and if I could feel warm air, I knew the bees were still alive.
So as far as anymore chores to do during the winter, there isn't much to do.

There are a couple things I do, one is go out and make sure their door way is clear of snow or dead bees. I have a long skinny piece of bamboo I use to poke in the opening and kinda sweep any dead bees out of the entrance area. Its normal to find dead bees during the winter and its very important not to let them pile up and block the entrance so there is no air circulation.

So  that's about it for the bee season. This winter, I will make plans for next spring. read lots and learn as much as I can about these interesting little creatures. And hopefully next year all our hives survive the winter and I will hopefully have learnt more about being a better beekeeper. I might find the odd thing to write about during the winter, but if not........Have a great winter.

Getting ready for winter

October 10th
Well I finally started winterizing the bees. It began a few days ago when we tarped the north/east sides of the bee yard. We get a lot of winds here in McBride so its nice to block them during the winter. Then yesterday I started insulating the attic boxes.
What I do is take a regular honey super and remove all the frames. I first lay the inside cover directly on top of second box which houses the winter food. I staple metal window  screen over the opening in the inside cover. Then I take the empty super and place it on top of the inside cover. I then take a old pillow case and place fiberglass insulation in it then place it in the empty super. This is my insulated attic box.
So yesterday I tackled all but the big hive. So it felt good to get that done. Today armed with smoke and all the tools I needed  to remove the top box which had some leftover frames of honey, I set out. To my surprise there were only a very small handful of bees in the top box so it was pretty easy and no smoke required. And best of all we got 2 frames of honey, which I decided to save for the bees in the spring.
At supper tonight we were watching the news and seen that the temperatures are suppose to drop down to -10C. So I decided we are going to start wrapping the hives tomorrow. But before we do that, we need to move 2 hives together on one pallet so we can wrap two hives together. Hive #3 and #4 are already on the same pallet so its just a case of lining them up and wrapping them. The difficult one is of course the Big Hive. I had this brilliant idea this spring to set it on this plastic pallet we got but during the hot summer months and the heavy honey flow...the plastic pallet started to collapse. So while james tipped the hive I placed little pieces of wood under it to prevent the hive from tipping over. You can see it in the photo below.

So now we will have to lift it up and carry it over to the pallet next to it. How fun is that going to be.

Anyways we will get her done. And I will post photos of us doing it and how we go about wrapping them for the winter. That's it for now.

Sticky Business

Well here it is Sept 4th and I am finally getting around to extracting honey. We got all but 4 frames of honey out of the hives, I decided to leave those frames there as it was still uncapped. If we were to take uncapped honey, it would ferment, so the plan is to leave it in the top super which will become the attic box when we put the bees to bed for the winter. The bees will cap it once the humidity level is just right, then I will latch on to it and maybe save it for spring for them or take it for us. More than likely I will keep it for the bees.

I learnt a ton of stuff today. I learnt that if your house is cool, the honey will be thick like molasses. I also learnt when you spin honey in the kitchen and the machine has no lid.....need I say more. Its going to take me a good week to clean up once I am done.

So we began with uncapping the frames of honey and placing two the frames in the extractor.

                                                              Uncapping the honey

Placing the 2 frames in the extractor

                                                    Spinning the honey out of the frames

Then we spun the frames for about a minute on both sides. Once all the frames are done, then you begin the very sticky business of running the honey through 2 sizes of sieves. Sounds quick and easy but for a couple newbees....it took almost 2 partial days to complete the whole job. I am still wiping up sticky door knobs, countertops, dishes, floor, dogs heads and chairs. The only thing left other than putting the honey in jars and containers, was to clean beeswax. This is one of my favorite things to do. Like the honey....the end result is so rewarding.

                                                    The end product, beeswax and honey