Winter Honey Harvest

So in an attempt to salvage something from the failed Mint hive, I decided I'd try to harvest their capped honey. It's always sooooooooo hot when we harvest honey, so I was thinking it would be a lot more comfortable to harvest when it was a bit cooler. Oh man, this turned out to be a terrible idea.

I thought it would hit 70 over the weekend, but it was only 60. The honey was way too cold to flow freely out of the comb, so we had a very tiny heater aimed at the extractor trying to coax it out. Here is an in progress shot with happy helper, Brandon (fiance's are mandated to help with all terrible ideas):

It took forever to get the honey out of the frames, and once we did, filtering was a several day process:

All in all, we extracted about twenty two pounds of honey - about 44 small (8oz) bottles, or 22 larger (16oz) bottles. Rather than bottling in this cold weather, we decided to wait until it was warmer. I also want to see how this honey holds up, a lot of the honey in the hive was crystalized, so I don't want to go through the work of bottling this if it is just going to solidify and be a pain to use.

Mint Post Mortem

I took apart the Mint hive today, they have definitely failed :( I'll talk about them from the top down, Box 5 will be the top-most box where Box 1 will be the lowest box.

Box 5 only had three or four bees in it, there were about 7 frames of uncapped or partially capped honey. Most of it was granulated. My latest harvest in August granulated completely after a few months, that is probably what they had left in the hive. Here is what the honey looks like when it granulates inside of the cells:

Box 4 was almost completely capped honey, untouched by the bees.

Box 3 had five frames of capped honey towards the outsides, one frame of pollen and capped honey, and four frames of honey and capped brood. Usually the brood moves upward throughout the winter through the middle of the hive. The four frames of brood were close to the middle of the box, the bees probably ate the honey, then when the weather warmed up, the queen started laying eggs in those cells. Unfortunately after a bit of warm weather, the temperature cooled right back down to almost freezing every night. So those baby bees were probably abandoned because the colony couldn't keep the adult bees and the capped brood warm. Some of them were just barely hatching and had their tongues out (asking for food which they never got).

Box 2 is where I found the cluster. The cluster is literally a cluster of bees around the queen, they bunch up like this in the winter in order to keep warm. This cluster was way too small, about the size of a grapefruit, and sure enough, the queen was in the middle:

The bees are head first into the cells trying to find food. From that picture, they almost look ok, but all of them are actually dead. It was bizarre looking at them like this, it is much different from the bee-pocalypse in Oct. 2011 where all of the bees looked sick. These bees look fine, just like they stopped moving...

Box 1 had three frames of pollen, brood and empty cells, two frames of just honey and five frames of just pollen. It must have been very wet in the hive, because the pollen was getting very moldy:

Beneath Box 1, there was a pile of dead bees on the base board. This is probably from gradual attrition, but finally the bees numbers were too low to drag out the corpses:

Overall, quite sad, but nothing catastrophically wrong. These guys probably failed from a combination of things:

• Me trapping the queen in the honey supers for a few weeks, keeping her from laying eggs
• Me leaving on the honey supers over the winter, leaving much more space for the bees to keep warm. A smaller space would have been easier to heat
• This hive gets a few hours less of sun every day due to it's placement nearest to the fence.

All those things probably forced the colony into winter with a low population and a lot of space - so it was hard for them to keep warm. When the cluster isn't big enough, they cannot travel as freely through the hive to search for capped honey to eat. So these bees didn't have anything wrong with them, no pests, no diseases; they just froze/starved to death because there weren't enough of them.

At least Thistle is still going strong, it looks like they'll make it through the winter at this point.

Freezing Failure

I went to check on the bees today, it looks like Mint may have failed... for those unfamiliar with the term, that means all the Mint bees seem to have died.

I've been checking on the hives throughout the winter to make sure that there is activity in the day time. There are bees coming in an out of the Thistle entrance every few seconds, even a few are bringing in pollen:

No bees are coming in and out of the Mint hive... Thistle gets a lot more sun than Mint throughout the day, even though they are only a few feet apart. Thistle's temperament is also slightly more aggressive and they were always a bit ahead of Mint in terms of building comb and producing honey.

I'm not really prepared to break down the hive today - so I'll leave Mint's postmortem inspection for another weekend. Luckily this seems like it would just be a failure due to the very cold weather we have been having, so I should be able to re-use the Mint equipment (unlike with my first hive and the "Beepocalypse"). It usually doesn't get quite as cold as it has been over the last few weeks. The evening temperatures have been dropping to below 30 degrees Fahrenheit, and daytime temperatures have been in the mid 40s (which are approaching the record lows for Los Altos)

I'm definitely not as sad about the Mint failure as I was last October when my only hive failed; especially since Thistle still seems to be doing ok through this freezing weather. Once it gets a bit warmer I could split the Thistle hive so I have two hives again in the spring.

July vs. August

I've been doing some honey tastings recently. I had one bottle of the July honey left, and I've got one of the August honey. Even thought they are from the same hives and harvested only a little over a month apart, they have very different tastes.

The July batch (on the left) is still very clear even though it was harvested earlier. The taste is very mild, you can't pick out any strong flavors.

The August batch (on the right) crystallized around November, it started out the same color and texture as the July batch, but has a much stronger taste. There have been a lot of guesses as to what flowers gave this batch its unique flavor, but I think we've decided that it's fennel. There are tons of fennel plants in the Los Altos area, and it does bloom in late July and August. This batch is the clear winner for taste.

Holiday Bazaar

My work had a Holiday Bazaar today - usually a lot of my coworkers sell their art; paintings, drawings, sculptures, pottery, etc. So I figured I would try my hand at selling honey. Mom had a lot of success selling to her quilting guilds, so I brought about 10 large (one pound) bottles of honey, roughly 30 small bottles of honey, 2 votives and two larger candles. I sold out completely within 30 minutes!

Here is the one picture I managed to snap before I got mobbed. I wasn't fully set up yet, so only a small portion of the honey was on the table. I also had two of my favorite honey pieces on the table for decoration (good thing too, because they were the only things left on the table!) Thanks to my friend, Kris, for the honey spoon and Evan for the honey pot :)

Honey Label: Hometown Honey!

I figured I should have a proper label for the upcoming Holiday Bazaar at my work (where I plan to sell some honey). So we've finally come up with a name: Hometown Honey! Thanks to my friend, Emma (of Emma San Cartier Illustration) we have a beautiful new label too!

Recipe: Lemon Honey Macaroons

I gave a bottle of the August Harvest honey to my friend, Psy, and here is the recipe she came up with. These were soooo delicious!

Lemon Honey Macaroons

Photo Credit: Kendal Sager
Recipe Credit: Psy Delacy

Makes 30-50 cookies depending on shell size

Lemon Shells

Ingredients:

• 4 egg whites, separated when cold, then aged, covered, for 24 hours.
• 1/4 teaspoon cream of tartar
• 1/4 cup superfine granulated sugar
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract (or for an even more lemony shell, 1/2 tsp
• vanilla extract and 1/2 tsp lemon extract)
• 2 cups powdered sugar
• 1 cup almond meal
• Yellow gel food coloring, if desired
• Lemon zest, lemon sugar or fairy dust (optional)

Directions:

1. For the egg whites: they separate better when cold, so separate them, cover lightly with saran wrap, and leave on the counter for at least 24 hours.
2. Preheat the oven to 325F.  Line an aluminum or otherwise light colored baking sheet with silpat.
3. Grind the almond meal in a food processor for about 10-15 seconds to break up any larger chunks. Sift together the almond meal and powdered sugar, and set aside.
4. Whisk or beat the egg whites and cream of tartar on medium-high until soft peaks form.  Slowly add the granulated sugar, and continue to whisk on medium-high until stiff peaks start to form.  Add the extract and food coloring, and then continue to beat until you have a glossy, stuff meringue.
5. Fold in the powdered sugar/almond mixture carefully, as to not deflate the meringue.  Mix until just incorporated, and then mix gently until you notice that if you lift up the spatula and let the batter flow back into the bowl, the "ribbons" that form disappear in about 10-18 seconds.
6. Add the mixture into a pastry bag with a #11 or #12 type round tip. To pipe it onto the silpat, hold the bag over the silpat so that the nozzle is about a centimeter above the silpat, and squeeze so that the batter comes out of the pastry bag nozzle and spreads itself out until it's about the size of a quarter to a half dollar, depending on how big you want your macarons.  Space them about an inch apart on the silpat - they don't bake well if they are crowded.
7. Once an entire sheet is piped, take the entire cookie sheet and whack it on the counter a few times to get any air bubbles out.
8. Lightly dust the piped shells with lemon zest or sugar, if desired.
9. Let the shells rest for about 15-30 minutes, depending on humidity. If you can, pipe the second batch as soon as the first goes into the oven, so that they will be ready when the first batch comes out.  Only cook one batch at a time, otherwise they won't cook well.
10. Bake the cookies for 13-15 minutes, or until just barely golden on the bottom.
11. Let them cool on the sheet for 5-10 minutes before moving them.  To get them off of the silpat, gently peel the silpat out from underneath them.  The bottoms should be flat, and they should peel off easily.
12. If you did not opt for lemon zest or lemon sugar, once the shells cool they can be dusted with fairy dust using a small foodsafe paintbrush.  Edible fairy dust can be found at most kitchen or baking supply stores, and it's completely safe to eat.

Whipped Lemon Honey White Chocolate Ganache:

Ingredients:

• 1 bag of white chocolate chips or baking chocolate (about 12 oz), plus
• extra if needed
• Juice from 1 lemon
• 1/8th cup honey (or more, to taste)
• 1/2 cup heavy cream

Directions:

1. Juice the lemon and remove any seed pieces.  Set aside.
2. Combine the white chocolate and honey in a heat safe bowl.
3. Heat the heavy cream over medium heat, stirring often.  Once it's just about to boil, pour it over the chocolate chip honey mixture and whisk until the chocolate is melted.
4. Add the lemon juice and stir until combined.  The mixture should be thick and syrupy - if it seems too thin, you can add more white chocolate to thicken it.  Be sure to taste it as well - if needed, add more honey or lemon juice.
5. Refrigerate for a few hours until completely cool.  It should thicken considerably in this time.
6. Whisk the mixture on high to developed the whipped white chocolate ganache.  Once it is light and fluffy, pipe it onto half of the macaroon shells using a pastry bag.
7. Cover and refrigerate the complete macaroons overnight so that the flavors meld properly, and bring to room temperature prior to serving. If refrigerated they will last up to a week (if they don't all immediately get eaten).