The honey keeps coming

Kirk writes:

It's been a good year for honey. Best one in a long time.

Today I went to two hives and took two buckets. I have harvested five 5-gallon buckets so far this year and have five or six more stops to make.

—Kirkobeeo

A strong year for honey in LA!

Yesterday Betty Hallock of the LA Times (pictured above) came by to check out our operation and taste some honey in the comb.

We're seeing a lot of honey production from Backwards Bees in LA this year. Last weekend here at Feral Honey HQ we got about 50 pounds from three of our hives (shameless plug: this honey is now available at Village Bakery in Atwater).

Kirk writes:

Last week I helped out Joy [of the Old Bank District bees] with a honey harvest downtown. I took along Valerie from the club.

Kirk continues:

I also took some off in April from my Silver Lake hives—I got one five gallon bucket.

My hives in Studio City are full, same with Eagle Rock. Haven't been able to get to them!

Next Meeting: Sunday August 28

PLEASE NOTE: Backwards Beekeepers meetings will now take place regularly on the last Sunday of every month. 

The next meeting is scheduled for Sunday August 28 at 11am at the Atwater Crossing arts complex

Topics to be covered:

• Your questions answered by Kirkobeeo


• Honey & harvesting


• Bee rescues


• Meet the mentors & learn how to adopt one of your own

Atwater Crossing
3265-3191 Casitas Ave
Los Angeles, CA 90039-2205

There is ample free parking in the complex parking lot so PLEASE park in the lot so the residents of the neighborhood can park near their homes.

Map link

Closest freeway exit is Fletcher off the 2 freeway
Casitas is between Minneapolis St & Silver Lake Blvd…
1 long block SW of N. San Fernando Road (across the railroad tracks)
1 ½ blocks NW of Fletcher Drive
2 ½ blocks SE of Glendale Blvd

See you at the meeting!
Anne & Gwen

4-H club learns about honey harvesting

LA Backwards Beekeeper Roberta writes:

This weekend the Palos Verdes 4H group, their leader Dee, Backwards Beekeeper Steve and I met up to learn how to do crush-and-strain honey extraction. Before we got started the group discussed their fair project which will include an observation hive set-up and a display of beekeeping equipment.

It was rainy but I took a quick peek in Dee's hive and took out some uncapped nectar cells to practice with. We passed it around and everyone took a close look at the glistening nectar. It wasn't capped yet so not ready for honey extraction but we planned on eating it right away.

Winter honey for Sue

Last weekend Amy and I helped LA Backwards Beekeeper Sue put an escape board in her hive stack so that after a couple of days the top two supers would be relatively free of bees and easier to harvest. Sue is holding the escape board in the photo above.




I went back there on Tuesday, and Sue & I found that her bees had been working hard since last June!




We filled one bucket with comb...

Winter honey!

Amy and I pulled a frame of honey today. One section of it is pictured above; the rest went to Bar Covell in Los Feliz.

Things are looking good for more in the months to come.

Unexpected honey harvest

Today Amy and I headed up to see how our hives (three mature, one new) are doing.

The first thing we noticed was how this hot weather makes the hives amazingly easy to take apart—all the propolis is softened, so you don't even need a hive tool to get the frames out. Plus, the bees are way too busy working and trying to stay cool to care about you taking their home apart a bit.


In the first two mature hives we were happy to find pretty much what we expected: lots and lots of brood surrounded by honey, and a few frames of mostly uncapped honey at the top.

In the third mature hive we found way more than we expected: plenty of brood surrounded by honey, and lots more honey to spare! This hive has been exceptionally busy over the last couple of months.


We took just a couple of frames, which we'll leave in the comb. It'll be showing up in small pieces on the cheese plate at Bar Covell in Los Feliz starting tonight.

Petal gets some honey

Kirk writes:

Here are two pics of Petal. She took over the hive at Crenshaw Garden from Anna; now she's harvested some honey.

That hive has been going for about four years now. Take the honey once or twice a year, that's all, nothing else. Leave the bees alone.

—kirkobeeo

Honey Variations-Same Harvest

This week I harvested another couple of frames of honey. We have seen a tremendous difference in the honey over the course of the year but this time it was really apparent in the two frames I pulled.

You can see the difference in the bucket before the crush and strain.

We decided to do a taste test. The lighter honey on the left almost certainly came from citrus; it had a very light almost lemony sharpness to it. The darker honey on the right was more flavorful and had more of a caramel flavor to it.

It would have been great to keep them separate but I had already put them in the bucket and figured it would be cool to find out what the 50/50 blend would taste like. It's kind of like blended Scotch vs. single malt.

I think that over time I might be able to look for signs when one flow is ending and another beginning to keep the honey strains more discrete.

Cross Posted on Ramshackle Solid

Fourth of July honey

Lawndale Backwards Beekeeper Dennis did a combination of swarm transfer, hive inspection, and honey harvest this weekend, assisted by Los Angeles Backwards Beekeepers John L. and son Arguna.

The story is on Dennis' blog:

John L. arrived with his 11 year old son Arguna (with his own bee suit). We would inspect the hives, make any honey decisions and he would leave with a nuc of nice gentle bees. This was a win-win-win situation. Arguna would learn more about beekeeping, so would I and I had time to take some pictures...

We had almost no aggessive behavior out either hive. I think they may have swarmed and I did not know about it. In the process the new queen may have mated with nicer bees. I am guessing about that but I am very happy with the quality and amount of honey they are producing...

Arguna gave his taste of approval. The honey was left to drain while I took the dogs out of town away from the noise of fireworks...

Honey Of A Fourth (The Buzz In The Dale)

Feral bees are productive bees.

Backwards Beekeeper Vincent recently wrote to our Yahoo group:

I inspected all my colonies yesterday and I always marvel that swarms work so hard. They outperform my regular package bees and my bred Italians and hybrids.

I believe feral bees are the best—maybe temperamental, and swarm a lot if you're not careful, but some of the hardiest all-around bees. They've adapted to all. As a commercial/hobbiest beekeeper with 50 colonies at times, I hope to adapt as a beekeeper as well and do right by my bees.

Amy and I only have 3 hives, and we've only ever had feral bees, but we sure agree about how hard they work. We did a small-ish honey harvest a month ago, then opened up the boxes again yesterday to find frame after frame after frame of capped honey.


The bees were very manageable, especially considering how much carnage and mess we were causing to their homes. We ended up stopping the harvest because we ran out of buckets to cram honeycomb into.



Here's the end result. These are some insanely hard-working bees.

Feral is the way to go.

Photos of Studio City Honey Harvest

My daughters and I harvested about 16 pounds of honey yesterday. I hope the bees are going to be OK. I don't know what I'm doing, really. But I sure am having fun!

Mark's honey harvest

Kudos to Backwards Beekeeper Mark Frauenfelder on his recent honey harvest using the crush-and-strain method.

Mark blogged about his project in this post on Boing Boing.

Leonardo's swarm trap and honey harvest

I conferenced Kirk in to a phone call I was having today with John, a soon-to-be beekeeper in Nashville who needed some reassurance that bees can actually survive without chemical treatments and pre-printed factory wax in their hive frames. Well, John, your timing couldn't have been better—take a listen to what Kirk saw today.



By the way, Kirk adds that Leonardo's bees were mean when he first trapped them out last year, but now they're calm and easy to deal with.

Another Honey Harvest

A couple of weeks ago Kirk came over and helped me do a hive inspection. We found that my bees were honey bound even though I had added a new box a few weeks prior. We moved things around a bit and took out a frame of honey at that time with the idea that I would take the top box the next time the weather warmed up.

This weekend the weather finally warmed up and I was able to collect a few more frames of honey. Not quite as much as I had expected. I thought that the whole top box had been full of honey when Kirk and I opened it up a couple weeks ago but when I went back in this time there was 1 frame of brood - half drone and half worker, 1 frame was partially drawn with new comb, another frame was half drone and half honey, a few had uncapped honey, some only capped and some mixed.

I took as much as I could before the bees got really peeved but that ended up being only about 3 and a half frames (I tossed the half a frame of drone brood at Kirk's instruction). As you can see in the picture above, some of the honey was uncapped but I think we stayed within the 10% limit. Uncapped honey has a higher water content and will spoil in the jar if it exceeds 10% of the mix.



The bees are doing well overall though. If you click this picture you can see two large drones on the porch and two foragers laden with pollen. I still need to finish the starter strips on a deep box I put together last weekend. Once I do that I think I'll call Kirk for another house visit to help me add it to the bottom of the hive and with reshuffling the rest of the frames. I'm confident I could do it myself at this point but with Kirk's help I know we'd get it done much faster with less stress on the bees.

Next month will be the one year anniversary of the hive. We've pulled 148 oz of honey so far. I hope to bring a sample for tasting to the next meeting.

Yin: My Beekeeping Experience

Backwards Beekeeper Yin writes:

My bees came to me several years ago. One day in my back yard in a ceramic jar I saw a lot of bees buzzing in and out, a bee hive settled down there. A couple of years later I found the bees abandoned the hive. I felt upset they left my yard. We cleaned the jar and put it back to the same place. Without paying any attention to it and to my surprise another hive came in there again. I was so happy to see them back again.

Last March I saw a swarm hanging in my tomato plant wire support , I called a beekeeper who always sells his honey at our school fair and asked for help. He gave me the instruction by phone and then I bought a box, and shook the bees inside the box. Luckily I got the queen inside the box. Since then the only thing I do to my hive is to keep adding the super on the top.

I am so happy to go to the urban beekeeping meetings and get to know the people there. I appreciate everyone who shared their experience with me. Kirk came to inspect my hive at the beginning of December and said I had a very healthy hive. All of this gave me confidence in my beekeeping. Kirk told me I could harvest honey at early Spring.

Can you believe my chickens gave me eggs for my Christmas gift and my sweet bees shared their honey with me at 2010 New Year! No gift is better than that!

When I took out the frame full of honey, my eyes were full of tears. Thanks nature and thanks to the busy bees!

—Yin

Small Honey Harvest

A week and a half ago I pulled 2 frames of honey from our hive after doing an inspection. I had 2 replacement frames with starter strips so I just swapped those out and brought the entire full frames inside. Of course this wouldn't work if you had a lot of honey but it was nice to get a really good look a the full frames away from the hive.

This past weekend I finally had time to wash the buckets, drill the holes and crush and strain the honey.
We couldn't wait to taste the honey.


It was a family affair. We all took turns crushing the comb with the spatula.


Anticipation.


We modified the bucket set-up that Kirk recommends because we have a really small house and two mischievous boys who I am sure would find the dripping honey and tip the top bucket over. Instead we used a 3 gal bucket (with half inch holes drilled into the bottom) fitted into the 5 gal bucket with the honey gate. That made it a little shorter and locked the whole thing together. With the lid snapped on top if it gets tipped over it won't be a disaster as long as we get to it soon enough.


Here's the harvest from just two frames. The bees are going gangbusters so I need to get that other box on this weekend.

Corey harvests honey

Check out Backwards Beekeeper Corey (and daughter Chloe), doing some Very Urban Beekeeping.