Meanwhile, I will start where I left off, at the last post containing
homestead content, which was in late March, 26 March to be precise. The weekend of 29 March offered the opportunity to evaporate yet more sap to the state of delicious maple syrup. The yield was 16 cups of syrup. While we stopped collecting sap on the 6th of April because temperatures were routinely staying above the freezing mark, and because sap had largely ceased flowing as a result, the business of evaporation continued through the weekend of April 12th; at that point there was no more snow to maintain the sap for extended periods of time without refrigeration. In fact, we still have about 30 gallons of sap in the chest freezer awaiting processing. We learned a great deal about maple sugaring this season, and I hope to be able to expand the operation significantly next year. Our first season was great fun, and allowed us to connect with so many people while engaging in such a traditionally American endeavor; we will treasure the memories.
It is safe to say that we have hundreds of sugar maples on the property, though expanding from 13 taps to even 100 would require a much higher capacity and more sustainable evaporation process than that we have currently provided for. Based on the production of our trees this year, 100 trees would deliver more than 2,000 gallons of sap, resulting in approximately 50 gallons (800 1-cup bottles) of syrup. If I assume a 5 week season, 400 gallons of sap would need to be processed per week, or about 115 gallons every other day. To put that in perspective, we collected, in total, approximately 250 to 300 gallons from 13 trees this year, processed in batches of about 25 gallons, each batch requiring a full day (sunrise to well beyond sunset) to be reduced to syrup.
The weekend of 5 April was fun-filled, to say the least. First off of course, more maple sugaring was on tap (pun intended); I lit the burners early in anticipation of receiving a "come pick up your bees" phone call around midday. Sure enough, the call came in. Unfortunately I was on my own at the homestead that weekend, and picking up the bees entailed a four hour drive round-trip to Chicago and back, so I lowered the burn rate to ensure that the fires under the sap would not go out before my return, and so that I did not return to evaporators full of burnt maple sugar.
Greg Fischer installing package bees in Langstroth hives. Smoker on the ground to his left. |
Five packages, somewhere between 60,000 and 75,000 bees, in the back of the Jeep for the 2-hour ride to the homestead. |
We thought she made her way back into the hive, and so I put the "quilt" on top of the box, upside down to make room for the food bag and pollen patty, and then put the roof on the hive. On to the next hive. Installation into hive number two seemed to go more smoothly, in fact there were so many bees about that we thought perhaps the bees from the first hive had made their way over to the second. And, crucially perhaps, I did not melt the bag of sugar water. Finally, on to the third hive, which is of the "honey cow" type, and hand-made by Dennis. We took the same approach, and again seemed to have trouble keeping the queen inside the hive; one time I picked her up from just outside the hive with the flat side of my Swiss Army knife blade, and put her back in the hive. Still, hive number three seemed to have gone more smoothly than hive one, which is not saying a whole lot necessarily. At completion, we had some serious concern about hive one, and thought we had probably achieved success with hives two and three.
Upon checking the hives on 12 April, it was perfectly clear that the bees had abandoned hive one and the "honey cow" for whatever reason(s.) I have to say that was very disappointing, not to mention expensive. By the end of the day I figured I was batting .333, not bad, at least in baseball. On the 13th I had planned to add a second box to the only active hive, hive two. First, I planned to remove the roof because I wanted to remove the food (supposing it had become unnecessary), turn the quilt right-side up, and then planned to add the second box below the existing box. I found most of the bees, including the queen, up in the quilt, and I found that the bees had built comb all around the queen cage that I had left hanging in the single hive box at the install. I decided to not attempt removal of the queen cage, and to simply add the second box on top of the first; I assumed the bees would "move in" to the higher, top box. I did remove the food bag, and left what remained of the patty in the hive as the bees can be expected to completely consume it.
As of this writing, all seems well with hive two. I thought I had pretty well made a mess of things, though I suppose it is not any worse than the inside of a tree. I plan to add a third box, under the first two boxes, on 31 May; hopefully the colony will not already have outgrown the space available and swarmed.
Next time, I will do several things differently, using the process below:
1) Use two hive boxes under the roof and quilt, instead of one
2) Put the bottom box on the floor, with the top bars installed
3) Cover the hive entrance
4) Instead of making slits in the zip-lock I would poke holes with a small nail or large needle; the slits I made this first time were too long, and allowed bees to enter the bag and drown
5) Place the food on the top of the bars in the bottom box (bag and patty)
6) Put the second box, with half (four) of the top bars installed, on top of the bottom box, effectively to use it as a funnel
7) Shake/dump a third of the bees or so, into the open-top second box, and onto the waiting pollen patty and food bag on the bottom box
8) Pull the cork on the queen cage and shake the queen into the top box; do not leave the cage in the hive
9) Dump the remainder of the bees into the top box
10) Install the the remaining four bars in the top box
11) Install the quilt, "right-side up" on the top box
12) Install the roof
13) Return next day and uncover the hive entrance
Since this post will grow to longer than I would like, I am going to split it into two parts, and end Part I here. As always, your comments and criticisms, your inputs and acknowledgements, are welcomed, and will help me to improve my posts. Please "follow" the blog.
-- John, 23 May 2014