Live Stream Lip Balm

Hey everyone!

If you're curious how I make my lip balm, check out the Live Video Tutorial that I'll be doing tonight at 7PM! You can download their app (in the App Store only) to watch :-)

If you miss it, or you're an Android user like me, you can usually also catch it on their blog: Boxtiq Blog. It won't be posted right at 7 (because we'll still be recording!) but it should be up within a few days.

Don't feel like you have to crazily take notes from the video, because I have all of the instructions written here: Lip Balm Tutorial

Enjoy!

Brisbane Library Talk

Today I did a backyard beekeeping talk at the Brisbane Library. There were only a few students, so we were able to customize the class to be exactly what the attendees wanted :)

Crystallization Experiment Followup

In trying to get the prettiest honey for the San Mateo County Fair this weekend, I conducted a crystallization experiment with some of my May harvest honey.

The categories were:

1. New Comb: the category that I qualified as "New Comb" was comb with bright white cappings. I believe that the bees capped this honey less than a month before harvesting.
2. Old Comb: the category that I qualified as "Old Comb" was comb with darker cappings or darker honey. There is nothing wrong with this honey, in fact, I prefer the taste of this honey, but due to the types of pollen in this honey, it tends to granulate more quickly.

Within each category, I had 3 sub-categories:

1. Normal: the "Normal" honey, I just extracted and put in the jar. That's it. This is exactly how I sell it when it is bottled.
2. Microwaved: the "Microwaved" honey, I microwaved for 30 seconds at a time until it just started to bubble at the top (approximately 180 degrees Fahrenheit). I never heat the honey I sell, but my Mum claims that microwaving my honey keeps it nice and clear. Heating it also eliminates natural enzymes and counts as "altering" the honey, which is why I never heat the honey I sold. I figure if you'd like to heat it, you can microwave it just like I did here :)
3. Frozen: the "Frozen" honey is honey that I bottled as normal, then popped in my freezer. I've heard that this reduces the likelihood that the honey will crystallize. I think this also counts as "altering" the honey, so I don't freeze my sold honey either. Again, I'm just kind of curious which of these methods might actually work.

Now, it is one month later, and here are the results:

There was no notable difference between the Old Comb and New Comb honey. However, the sub-categories did seem to make a difference.

The Normal honey has a bit of crystallization at the bottom. You can see the white flecks near the very bottom of the container, but most of the rest of the honey looked exactly as it did one month ago:

The Microwaved honey looked the best, all of it looked exactly as it did one month ago:

The Frozen honey, in my opinion, looks the worst right now. Perhaps the cloudiness is due to the bubbles not settling out of the honey, perhaps it is crystallization. This honey has been out of the freezer overnight:

The Normal and Microwaved honey have been sitting in my living room. During some of the high points over the last month, the living room has reached just over 100 degrees Fahrenheit. Perhaps that mild heat helped the bubbles settle out of the honey.

Though the Microwaved honey is the clear winner, I will submit the Normal honey to the San Mateo County Fair because the Normal honey is the honey that I sell.

Backyard Beekeeping Talk at the Brisbane Library

Another beekeeping talk! Come check me out at the Brisbane Library on Saturday, June 14th at 2:00PM.

What: Backyard Beekeeping Talk

Date: Saturday, June 14th

Time: 2:00PM

Location: Brisbane Library. 250 Visitacion Avenue, Brisbane, CA 94005

I'm going to be covering:

• Benefits of beekeeping: pollination, honey, wax and other products.
• Honey bee biology and behavior.
• Caring for your bees.
• Beekeeping equipment: what you need to get started.
• General time, space, and legal requirements.
• Additional resources to learn about beekeeping

Maker Faire: Backyard Beekeeping

There was an amazing turnout of over 100 people at my Backyard Beekeeping talk at Maker Faire today! 

My 25 minute presentation covered:

• Benefits of beekeeping: pollination, honey, wax and other products.

• Honey bee biology and behavior.

• Caring for your bees.

• Beekeeping equipment: what you need to get started.

• General time, space, and legal requirements.

• Additional resources to learn about beekeeping

The talk was a high level primer aimed at providing a base level of knowledge about beekeeping and multiple sources for additional information. I got an excellent response from the audience and many compliments from the Maker Faire staff! An absolutely amazing experience!

Here are a few more pics:

Maker Faire Presentation Details

Details about my Backyard Beekeeping presentation have been posted on the Maker Fair Website! Check it out: Backyard Beekeeping

My talk is at 2:30pm on Saturday, May 17th. Come check it out!

Little Visitors

Today I had my littlest visitors! Brynn and Cavan (along with their parents/our friends Tiffany and Justin) came over to take a peek at the bees.

Tiffany suited up to help me lift supers and inspect the hives. We ended up seeing a lot of honey and a little bit of capped brood. I suspect that all three hives may have swarmed at some point in the last two months, so there were no baby bees to be seen.

I took a gamble and opened the new little hive to see if there were any eggs yet. The little white hive is the hive that I split from the yellow hive, these bees will have to raise their own queen now. There were no eggs yet, but lots of pollen and nectar coming in. There were no queen cells, and no eggs or larvae. This is not a bad sign yet - if this new little hive has successfully raised their own queen, she would have hatched by now, hence no queen cells. However it is still very early for the queen to be laying eggs, so I'll have to check again in the next few weeks.

Coming Soon - Maker Faire

I just learned that my Backyard Beekeeping talk has been accepted at Maker Faire Bay Area! How exciting! I do not know whether I will be presenting on Saturday, May 17th or Sunday, May 18th, I will update later with the details.

Introduction to Beekeeping Class

Today was the Introduction to Beekeeping Class for the Beekeepers' Guild of San Mateo. This year I helped organize the event by coordinating volunteer speakers, collecting raffle items, managing signups and participating in a Q&A panel at the end of the day. Here I am answering some questions during our lunch break:

This was an all day event with 60+ new beekeepers in attendance! It was a great success thanks to everyone's help :)

School Talk

I recently visited a local preschool to talk about bee life cycles and how we get various products from bees. This was an awesome experience - the kids were actually really engaged. I was really surprised at some of the questions that they asked, they must have been briefed :) They were asking how bees communicated and what they do in the winter to keep warm.

I'm glad I brought so much of my equipment because that seemed to be their favorite part. They really liked squishing up beeswax, and of course they loved tasting the honey at the end.

Beekeeping Class at Bear Foot Honey

Today Brandon and I took a beekeeping class at the Bear Foot Honey Farm. It was all the way up in Santa Rosa, so we had to get up pretty early and it was an all day class. The morning was spent going over Colony Collapse Disorder, so I am glad that we brushed up on the basics by reading our books (Beekeeping for dummies is turning out to be a great book, very informative). In the afternoon we actually got to go out to the hives and take a look inside. I have never seen so much pollen all at once, apparently you can harvest it until mid to late summer. It tastes a lot like powdered flowers, it was interesting in small quantities, but a bit gross if you ate too much. Below is a picture of me holding a little fistful of pollen at the Bear Foot Honey Farm (I'm wearing a veil to keep the bees away from my face).

 

After the class I ordered a starter hive, it should be ready in late May, and then I will officially be a bee keeper (though inexperienced bee keepers are generally referred to as "bee havers" because they just have bees, and don't know much about tending to the needs of the bees, I'll try to be a "bee keeper" instead of a "bee haver").