Fermenting with Honey

Other than Sauerkraut, I have never really messed around much with ferments. But a month or two ago I decided to try some honey ferments.

Touch wood, we haven’t had a cold for a couple years, but when we do I hate taking over the counter meds, but on the other hand, who wants to feel horrible,

Last year I was gifted two elderberry trees. They didn’t do very good in their new soil but I am hoping the soil improved and they will come back this year, I have read lots on elderberry syrup and the benefits it had to your immune system. So I will be making that once our trees start to produce.

In the past I have made mead…one gallon at a time. Some have turned out pretty good. I think the fermented product I am most proud of is the vinegar I made out of our honey four years ago.

Honey Vinegar 2020

Bochet Mead 2019

It sits in my cold room and every so often I try some and it’s so good. Like mead it takes quite a while before it’s good. So one has to bee patient.

But in the meantime I started with three simple ferments, all of which help improve the immune system along with gut health and many other things. I am no expert by any means, so starting with something easy is the way to go.

Left to right, garlic, ginger and lemon

Fermented Garlic

This stuff is incredible, not only does it helps boosts your immune system but it tastes good, the garlic gets very mild in the honey after time. If you get a cold, it’s recommended you take a clove a garlic and honey everyday. And we all know honey is good for us too.

Fermented Ginger

Oh my goodness, this stuff is so good. I love grabbing a piece of ginger right out of the jar and eating it. Ginger is known to ease a upset stomach but it is also chalked full of probiotics which helps boosts the  immune.

Fermented Lemons

Yum. This helps soothes coughs and sore throats. Also delicious in hot tea or added to hot water when sick. Equally delicious as a tangy dressing for a salad.

Until next time….cheers

It’s a new year

Welcome to 2024

It’s a new year and with every new year comes changes. Some are small changes and some are life changing.

When we retired I said I never wanted to move again. Famous last words. It wasn’t planned but I think deep down inside maybe it was. 

James and I like the quiet life. For me there is nothing better than packing a picnic lunch, jumping on the quad and heading deep into the bush. We found lately that living where we do, we craved more quiet and more privacy. But, I never wanted to move again….right?

Last year while visiting friends, we found out a incredible piece of property was for sale. It was in a area where we had tried to buy many years ago. We took a drive down to it and fell in love. Mountain views, river frontage and lots of treed area to hunt and explore in. Long story short….we bought it.

Although the house is only 17 years old, an old bachelor lived in it and it needs some loving. So it will take awhile.

First thing I did after spending our first night there was pick out a spot for the bee yard.  It will be around the same size as this one but I will lay it out better so there is more room to plant around the hives.

The red is where the bee compound will bee.  So, close to the house so I can go out and sit with them several times a day.

My girls didn’t winter over so well this year. I had a couple of hives from 2019 that started to decline in late fall. There wasn’t a ton I could do other than give them food and hope for the best. Sadly neither made it. But I am thankful for the ones who did, I can do splits and get ready for a new season. I had decided to order a couple packages in January incase my gut feelings was right. So, at least I have them coming too.

There is still close to 8” of snow in the bee yard

The days are warming up now, nights are still chilly but things are showing life again. The pussy willows are starting and the catkins on the Alders are out in full swing and I suspect that is where the girls are getting their yellow pollen from. I also noticed the catkins on the wild hazelnuts are getting bigger too, so it won’t be long.

Well, I guess that is it for now, I started this so long ago, I need it to be done.

Take care, chat soon

 September 11 2023

It’s starting to feel like fall, cool nights, but it  warms up during the day, the leaves are falling now and some of our trees are getting bare already. It’s early. But considering the Summer we had its understandable why the leaves  are coming off now. It’s is still dry  and the creeks and rivers are the lowest I have ever seen for this time of year. Our well on the other side of the road is still dry.

But considering the drought and hot temperature, the bees are doing good, we took the honey off a few weeks ago. It is now piled high in the dining room until I get around to extracting it. 

I bought two nucs this year  and although one was slow to take off it is doing well now, the other one was crazy productive, it exploded in population and even produced extra honey to take off. I have learned with these .Carpathian queens you have to keep up on what’s going on inside the hives or they will swarm. I also found they are not quite as polite as my bees but I am sure that will change with  time. For the most part I am happy with them.

We had a field day here a few weeks ago with our bee club. Barry, our bee inspector, came out and did an educational talk and inspected one of our hives, we had a great turn out and nice weather. It was a fun day.

October 2023

My friend and I took a girls road trip down to Abbotsford to the BC Honey Producers conference. It was such a great weekend, full of educational workshops and speakers. It was fantastic and I learnt lots.

In late October we got the hives all wrapped for winter and when leaving the beeyard and walking home we noticed summer wasn’t letting go yet.

Saw one bee bringing in yellow pollen, new leaves on the apple tree and flowers still blooming.

Yarrow, Tansy and Calendula

November 20

We have a little snow but it’s been so mild. It’s an  El Niño this year so “they” say, mild temperatures and less snow. I am hoping for lots of snow to help with the low water situations in our area.

I’m excited for another year of keeping bees. There are things we want to change next year, new things to build and hopefully expanding our colonies.

But the most exciting thing coming is…..well, I can’t tell you that yet. You will just have to follow along for a while longer.

Chat again in December 🐝

One of the hives wrapped and ready for winter

The Weather 2023

Us northerners love talking about the weather. Matter a fact our lives revolve, for the most part, around the weather.

But this year…..wow it’s been crazy. It started last fall. The fall that never happened. It was warm and very dry right into October. Then…..winter came. No September rains. No October rains….nothing. We went into winter basically in a drought.

Fast forward to May of this year. Hot and very dry. Then June came and went without giving us much moisture.

Living inside a inland rainforest our grass and trees are normally green and lush all summer. But not this year. If you drive to Prince George there is miles of cedars red from the stress of no water. Leaf trees are dropping some of their leaves and the wild flowers have all been early.

We have been tolerating weeks of smoked filled air and only once in a while we get to see our mountains. The other day I checked the map of fires in BC and was shocked at the amount of fires through out the province.

But through out the long hot dry spell, the bees are hanging in there. Their honey supers are filling up quickly. 

To help keep them cool during the last few months, I added extra boxes on top to help scrub out some of the heat. I also fill their water bowls everyday, sometimes twice a day. They are doing good so far. 

I haven’t pulled any honey yet but really need to get in them and do it. My big hive is five deeps high, which isn’t ideal, so I need to do that one first.

Smokey sunrise

My concern is, the nectar flow started probably two weeks early this year….which means it may end two weeks early. Which means, we may be feeding them for quite a while before they settle in for winter. I best stock up on fondant and sugar soon.

Fireweed 

Anyways, I don’t have a ton of news, I will write more once I start pulling honey off the hives. I hope everyone stays safe during this hot dry spell and no fires come near you.

Cheers

Is it summer already?

 May has come and gone now. It was extremely hot and dry. Lots of forest fires sprung up in BC and in Alberta. We had one close to us in McBride, about 90km away. So needless to say on top of the dry and heat we then had smoke. Thankfully the fire was brought under control quickly and people returned to their homes.

We had our first nectar flow when the dandelions started blooming around May 16th, the bees were happy not only to get more pollen but to also get their first food of the season. The sad thing was, that the heat was so great that the dandelions  were closing their flowers around noon most days. The edges of some of the flowers looked as though they were burnt. It seemed dandelion season was short lived probably due to the heat and no rain.

The poor dandelions struggling from the heat and dry conditions 

We will be heading into Prince George on Sunday June 4th to pic up our nucs. I ordered two this year from our friends Christine and Tavis from Rushing Apiary in Terrace. I  am very excited to introduce new blood into our Apiary. They ordered Carpathian Queens from the Ukraine. So it will be great to see how they are. From what I understand, the bees are original from  the Carpathian Mountains which covers 7 counties including the Ukraine. They are quite hardy and are known to be calm . 

Here we are picking up 16 boxes of bees for us and our club members

I had just finished installing our new bees.
I think I might of been saying good night to them here

June 5

I was so surprised when we opened the lids of the nuc boxes, there wasn’t a huge outburst of bees as you would expect. Nope…..they were all busy inside the box and weren’t concerned at all. So needless to say, it took only minutes to transfer them out of their nuc boxes and into their hives. Within minutes they were fanning on the front of the bottom boards, telling their mates this is home. When I went over the next day they were already bringing in pollen and cleaning up their frames I had given them. So, they had settle in.

.

The beautiful Carpathian Queen
Photo taken by Monica Z 

June 10

After weeks of no rain, we were so relieved to get some late this afternoon. Hopefully more flowers will open and supply some nectar for the honey bees and native bees. We might actually get a day off watering the garden too.

Tomorrow, as long as it’s not raining, I will be doing my first inspection of the two new hives. I’m excited to see how they are doing. Stay tuned for pictures and an update next time .

Well that’s all for now. Take care.

 

 

Spring time in an inland rainforest

 May 2 2023 

9:15 PM.

 It was another hot day, I am enjoying the night air on the front porch. It’s almost dark but it’s one of my favourite times to sit out here. In the dark, you are forced to use one of your other senses to enjoy what’s going on. I can hear Robins and a few other birds still singing but the best are the sounds of the toads. Near the end of our driveway we have what I like to call our wetland. This time of year when the toads emerge they make a sound that almost sound like ducks quacking. I love it.

Cleaning up the bee yard

Now that the snow is pretty well gone, things are coming alive. The other day we had a bear grazing in the yard. The buds in the cottonwoods are bursting open with this hot weather. The brown dead  grass is greening up and the fruit trees are showing life once again.

The weather we have been having for the last week, is very uncommon for this time of year. Records have been broken all over the area for highs temperatures. It’s been +25C. We are not used to it yet.

Today I decided to remove the bees winter wraps and air things out a bit. I also removed their entrance reducers during the day. I haven’t  done inspections of the hives yet but all going well if the weather holds, I will get it done soon.  They are still bringing in pollen from the Pussy Willows, but on the weekend I noticed the catkins are starting to develop on the wild hazelnut trees. So it won’t be long for those.

We also tore apart the old strawberry beds and built new ones. Tomorrow I will fill them with dirt and get them p,anted. We also added two grape plants today. Most of the fruit trees and bushes survived the winteri, so we were pretty happy for that. However one cherry tree doesn’t look very good but we will leave it for now and see if it comes around.

Another cool project we got done last week was to build a water tower, we don’t have electricity or running water on the property where our bees are. So we decided to build a tower and have gravity feed water to make it easier to water the forest garden/orchard. 

New water tower

It’s such a beautiful time of the year…..crazy busy, but still beautiful. Cheers my friends. Until next time

Is this Spring

 March 17 2023

Although it was still -12C over night and we still have a good 30+ inches of snow, there is something in the air that says Spring.

We are seeing different birds visiting our feeder and we notice the odd insect flying. The days are warming up as high as +7C some days. The days are also longer now, which lifts your spirits as well.

This is the time that things start to happen. The grow lights are set up and slowly seeds are being started for the garden. 

 

The one thing I don’t like to see this time of year is….all the dead bees that come out of their hives for a cleansing flight and get cold and crash in the snow. I try to save them all but can’t. As much as flying bees means life bees it also means a certain percentage of them won’t make it back to their hives,

It won’t be long until the bees will be finding pollen. I believe willow is the first pollen they normally bring in. All going well, it should start happening within a couple weeks.

Last week it was a nice day so we went over and checked the hives and even though it was too chilly to check on their food stores, I was able to pop off the top and put in a bottle feeder to give them food if they needed it. Instead of 100% sugar syrup, I treated them to some honey mixed in with it. I figured since they pulled through the winter, up to this point….they deserved it.

March 22, 2023

Such a beautiful day today. We decided to sit out on the front porch and have a cuppa. Within a few minutes of sitting there a bee showed up. I swear they hear us talking and come over to see us.

One of the rescued girls out of the snow

Look who came for a visit

April 7 

The past two nights we haven’t had freezing temps overnight. Which means, the melt has started to happen. We went from30” of snow down to 12” over the past three days. Today it got up to a very balmy 16C. 

      

Two days ago I mixed up more honey syrup and grabbed a few pollen patties to take over for the bees. I opened the lids to find they were still doing good. Within minutes they were coming out and flying and landing on my arms and and fingers to greet me. Each hive got more syrup and a full piece of pollen

A fresh bottle of syrup and a pollen patty

I’m excited to start a new year of keeping bees. I have two nucs to add to the apiary this year. My three hives were the New Zealand packages I bought in 2019. The two new ones are coming from Terrace. It will be nice to have some new bloodlines in the bee yard.

Well that’s it for now. See you when the snow goes,