Bee Chronicles

July 10, 2018

We can back up to 1 June: The "Farmers' Market Sourwood Tree" is in full color. Should be ready to bloom in a week. I could have copied this sentence from last year. Except, last year I said, "10 June, it was in color bud".

Sourwood is one week ahead of last year except the weather is much more conducive to the production and harvesting of nectar. Last year it was rainy. This year is exactly right. A few tenths of an inch of rain every 3-4 days, with cool sun in between. That allows the nectar to build up and not be cooked out of the blossoms in the afternoon. The sunny times allows the bees to fly all day long. I have seen the bees flying in between the rain showers.

Now that we are past the 3 week dearth (hot and too dry), what impact did it have on the colonies. There should have been little affect on bee population growth, as the eggs that were maturing into capped brood were laid before, or early in the dearth. If the queen slowed down egg laying any it will show up now (16 days later) in less capped brood. The big impact is the bees ate a significant amount of stored honey to raise the brood during the dearth. The first amount of nectar collected during Sourwood flow will go as replacement for that eaten honey. This will impact your total sourwood honey in the honey supers. We will hope for a 4+ week of sourwood season.

18 June: I will be hiking to my nearest sourwood grove today. Along the county road 300 yards away my sourwoods are slow. This might be good. ¾ mile away as the bee flies. The sourwoods are starting to open at county road level. On the hill side across the valley I see sourwoods 500' up in altitude with white color. Now will my bees fly that far? They are supposed to. My bee populations are generally small. When you figure the round trip time of flight for each bee, I will collect less than the optimal amount of nectar (honey). This is where the slow blooming of the sourwood trees near me becomes more important as that will stretch out my nectar flow season.

I have already seen one sourwood tree in the forest dropping pretty little bell flowers. There has not been any significant wind or rain. I am blaming the dryness.

A "normal" sourwood season should produce 2 shallow supers of honey (60 lbs). A medium super will produce 45 lbs. and deep super will produce 60 lbs. up to 80 lbs. Do you have enough buckets available to extract your honey? A gallon of honey weighs 12 lbs. Should you use 5 or 3 gallon buckets? First, you have to have more buckets than the straight math would indicate. You can't fill the buckets brim full. Second a full 5 gal. bucket weighs 60 lbs. Do you want to lift that much?

If you have half filled frames from the spring flow it will get finished and capped with sourwood. That is not a concern. You just have 2019 wildflower honey that tastes good. If you collect full super of sourwood it might get finished with the late July flowers. It will still taste like sourwood, but might be a little darker. There are ways to segregate your frames by color after they are capped if you want to be a purist.

Should you use shallow, medium, or deep frames for honey supers? You should use shallows. A shallow super full of honey will weigh 45 lbs. A medium will weigh about 65 lbs., and a deep will weigh in at 90 lbs. How strong is your aching back? Then there is the question, if the season isn't long enough to cap off the honey from one nectar flow, do you want it all mixed up? Generally, speaking you would like to segregate your nectar flows just to create a better quality, discernable honey. The smaller the frames the faster they will be completely capped. This leaves you less honey getting mixed with the next nectar flow. It does not make your honey less tasty but it does make it more "common". I like my honey to be unique to my farm.

I am eating some 2 year old spring honey. It is starting to sugar (a little) in the bottom of the jar. Does that matter? Yes! Not to eat though. As the honey sugars the ratio of moisture to sugar changes in the liquified honey. If there is wild yeast in the honey (which there likely is) the liquid honey can start to ferment as the moisture rises. You will notice bubbles in the honey. You might find a ball mason jar that liquid honey was squeezed out through the capped jar. As the carbon dioxide bubbles increase the pressure inside the jar. Plastic jars will swell up and feel hard before the lids blow off.

By heating the honey in the jar with a gentle long term heat up to about 90 degrees you can reliquify the sugar crystals stopping the process. If done early enough you honey quality will not be degraded. If fermentation has already started there will be a slight tang to the honey flavor. It is not particularly unpleasant but no one else might like it. You can just say "Oh, what the heck" and use that honey to make meade.